The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 33

'I was met at the station by Prince Bismarck's official secretary--Rottenburg of the Foreign Office--with an open carriage, although the house was formerly the railway hotel (Frascati) and adjoins the station. I wrote to my wife on Sat.u.r.day, September 7th: "The great man has been very sweet to me, though he is in pain from his sinews. We had an hour's walk before lunch together. Then Hatzfeldt, the Amba.s.sador in London, came, and all the afternoon we have been driving, and went to the harvest-home, where the Bismarck grandchildren danced with the peasants on the gra.s.s. The daughter, and mother of these children, does the honours, and is the only lady; and at dinner we shall be the Prince, Hatzfeldt, self, Countess von Rantzau, Count von Rantzau, Rottenburg the secretary, a tutor and another secretary, the two last 'dumb persons.' The forest is a Pyrford of 25,000 acres, but the house is in the situation of a Dockett, and must be damp in winter till the great January frost sets in, when the Baltic is hard frozen."'

Sir Charles notes upon this: 'Hatzfeldt was the Chancellor's right-hand man--of action. But Bismarck did not consult him: he said, "Do," and Hatzfeldt did.'

The letter continues:

'"When Bismarck's Reichshund died, a successor was appointed, but the Emperor, who had heard of the death and not of the appointment to fill the vacancy, gave another, and the Prince says: 'Courtier as I am, I sent away my dog to my head-forester's and kept the gift one, but as I do not like him I leave him at Berlin.' Here the favourite reigns, and her name is Rebekkah, and she answers very prettily to the name of Bex. The old gentleman is dear in his polite ways.... The daughter is equally pleasant, and the son-in-law as well. We were loudly cheered at the harvest festival, of course....

You can write to our friend J. R. [Reinach] of the R.F. [_Republique Francaise_] that I found the Chancellor very determined on peace as long as he lives, which he fears will not be long, and afraid of Prussian action after his death."

'In another letter the next day, Sunday, September 8th 1889, I wrote: "I expected the extreme simplicity of life. The coachman alone wears livery, and that only a plain blue with ordinary black trousers and ordinary black hat--no c.o.c.kades and no stripes. There are only two indoor men-servants: a groom of the chambers, and one other not in livery--the one shown in the photograph of Bismarck receiving the Emperor, but there, for this occasion only, dressed in a state livery. [Footnote: Photographs which Bismarck gave Sir Charles, showing the Chancellor with his hound receiving the young Kaiser, and Bismarck alone with his dog, always hung on the wall at Dockett.] 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, and each man that form of dress that he finds most agreeable to himself, provided that it be not that which he calls evening dress and tall hats--a sort of 'sham uniform.' Countess von Rantzau, however, dresses in a high, short evening gown like other people.

The Prince eats nothing at all except young partridges and salt-herring, and the result is that the cookery is feeble, though for game-eaters there is no hards.h.i.+p. The table groans with red-deer venison, ham, grouse, woodc.o.c.k, and the inevitable partridges-- roast, boiled, with white sauce, cold, pickled in vinegar. A French cook would hang himself. There is no sweet at dinner except fruit, stewed German fas.h.i.+on 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."

'Other points which struck me in the manners and customs of Friedrichsruh were that the Chancellor invariably took a barrel of beer out driving, and stopped halfway in the afternoon and insisted on his guests consuming it out of a two-handled mug which appeared from under the coachman's seat. I had some talk with him about the wisdom of his going unprotected for great distances through the woods, and he answered, "But I am not unprotected," and showed me a pistol which he carried, but, of course, a man with a blunderbuss behind a tree might easily have killed him. He never takes a servant on the box by the side of the coachman, and generally drives entirely alone. He rides alone without a groom, and walks alone with only his dog, or rather the forester's dog, the daughter of the Reichshund, who walks six or seven miles every morning to go out with him, and six or seven miles every night to come to dinner.

'The Prince was evidently discontented with the Emperor, but wholly unable to believe that he himself could be done without. He told me that he must work each day and could never take a holiday, but that even a few minutes' work was sufficient, as all that was necessary was that he should keep an eye on what was going on. All was now so well arranged that the only thing which gave him trouble was the internal condition of Alsace, which as a Reichsland had him alone as a Minister. In the evening he chatted much about the past; told me of his visit to London in 1842, of how a cabman tried to cheat him, and how at last he held out all his money in his hand and said to the man, "Pay yourself"; how then the man took less than that which he had refused, his right fare, and then with every sign of scorn e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "What I say is, G.o.d d.a.m.n all Frenchmen!" Bismarck speaks admirable English, with hardly any trace of accent, but spoken very slowly. French he speaks more rapidly but less well; and of Russian he has a fair knowledge. He told me how (also in 1842) he had visited Barclay and Perkins's, and had been offered an enormous tankard of their strongest ale. "Thinking of my country, I drank it slowly to the last drop, and then left them, courteously I hope; I got as far as London Bridge, and there I sat down in a recess, and for hours the bridge went round." He told me how he had striven to keep the peace through the time of Napoleon III., but finding it useless had prepared for war; and he made no secret of the fact that he had brought the war about. He told me himself, in so many words, that at the last moment he had made war by cutting down a telegram from the King of Prussia, as I have said above; [Footnote: See Chapter XL (Vol. I., p. 157).] "the alteration of the telegram from one of two hundred words to one of twenty words" had "made it into a trumpet blast"--as Moltke and Von Roon, who were with him at dinner when it came, had said--"a trumpet blast which" had "roused all Germany." As he mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which, to work, required the King to be an angel. "Now," he said, "Kings, even when good, have women round them, who, even if Queens, govern them to their personal ends." It was very plain that he was on bad terms with the Emperor, and equally clear that he did not believe that the Emperor would dare dismiss him.'

A commentary on the last sentence follows at no long interval, when _Problems of Greater Britain_ appeared and 'Herbert Bismarck, in thanking me for a copy of my book, said: "My father ... sends you his kindest regards. He is just going to disentangle himself from the Prussian administration altogether, and will resign the post as Prime Minister, so that he will only remain Chancellor of the Empire." This was on February 10th, 1890, and before long Bismarck had been still further "disentangled," not by his own act,' but by a blow almost as sudden and dramatic as that which, in 1661, had struck down the owner of Vaux. [Footnote: See the _Memoires de Fouquet_, by A. Cheruel, vol.ii., chap, x.x.xviii.]

'In a second letter that young Bismarck wrote, he thanked me for sending him the famous sketch from _Punch_ (Tenniel's cartoon) of the captain of the s.h.i.+p sending away the pilot. He wrote:

'"My Dear Dilke,

'"I thank you very much for your kind note, which warmed my heart, and for the sketch you have cut out of _Punch_. It is indeed a fine one, and my father, to whom I showed it yesterday when your letter reached me, was pleased with its acuteness, as well as with the kind messages you sent him and which he requites. He has left last night for good, and I follow to-night to Friedrichsruh. It was a rather melancholy historical event, when my father stepped out of the house in which he has lived for the benefit of my country for nearly twenty-eight years. When I wrote you last, my father thought only of leaving the offices he held in Prussia, but things went on so rapidly that he did not see his way to remain as Chancellor in Berlin after the Emperor had let him know that His Majesty wished him to resign. I had no choice what course to take after he had been dismissed. My health is so much shaken that I am not able to take upon my shoulders alone the tremendous amount of responsibility for the foreign affairs of Germany which hitherto fell upon my father.

When we drove to the station yesterday, our carriage was almost upset by the enthusiastic crowd of many thousand people who thronged the streets and cheered him on his pa.s.sage in a deafening way; but it was satisfactory for my father to see that there are people left who regret his departure. I shall come back to Berlin after April 1st to clear my house and to pack my things, and then I shall stay with my father till the end of April. In May I hope to come to England, and I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you then.

'"Believe me,

'"Ever yours sincerely,

'"H. Bismarck."

'He dined with me on May 15th, 1890, when Arnold Morley, Borthwick, Jeune, Fitzmaurice, Harry Lawson, and others, came to meet him; and from this time forward he came frequently to England.'

Sir Charles, while meeting the younger man thus often, never again had sight or speech of the old Chancellor. 'In Christmas week [1892] I had a general invitation from Prince Bismarck to stay with him again at Friedrichsruh. But the chance never came.' Immediately on his return from Germany Sir Charles wrote to his friend Reinach:

'Pyrford by Maybury, 'Near Woking, '_September_ l3_th_, 1889.

'My Dear Reinach,

'Bismarck c'est la paix. As long as he lives, which he thinks will not be long, he expects no movement. He agrees with me that the first movement will come from Russia. He expects the Republic to last in France. Bleichroder tells him that Ferry is the one man of energy and power.

'Yours, 'Chs. W. D.'

Three weeks later, in answer to a question by M. Reinach, this is added:

'Health as good as he says. But he does _not_ say that. He says he suffers very much. The fact is that he looks very much older than he is, and his hands look like ninety instead of seventy-four.'

What Bismarck thought of his guest may be gathered from a saying quoted in public by Dr. Stephen Bauer. Baron Rottenburg, Bismarck's first secretary, had told him that, after Sir Charles's visit to Friedrichsruh, the Chancellor spoke of him as 'the most interesting of living English statesmen.' [Footnote: At the banquet given to Sir Charles Dilke in April, 1910.]

In spite of Bismarck's efforts to bring about another meeting, this visit was the only occasion on which the two men met. It was at a time when the great maker of United Germany was nearing his fall. He was becoming the bitter adversary of the Kaiser and of his policy, a policy which he foresaw might imperil 'the strength and glory of the German Empire.' In the often-quoted words of his instructions to diplomatic representatives abroad--'Do all in your power to keep up good relations.h.i.+p with the English. You need not even use a secret cipher in cabling. We have nothing to conceal from the English, for it would be the greatest possible folly to antagonize England'--is to be found one main point of Bismarck's diplomacy; and feeling thus, he welcomed a conference with the English statesman of that generation whom he had looked upon as certain to be a force in the approaching years. When at last the meeting took place, Dilke had been overtaken by circ.u.mstances which altered his political position in England. But neither Bismarck nor any other statesman on the Continent antic.i.p.ated that they could possibly have the result of excluding permanently from office one of the very few English statesmen whose names carried weight with foreign Powers on military and international politics.

CHAPTER LI

PERSONAL LIFE--IN OPPOSITION

1895 TO 1904

Few members of the House of Commons can have been sorry to see the last of the Parliament which ended in June, 1895; and Sir Charles had nothing to regret in its disappearance. In respect of foreign affairs, he saw little to choose between the Liberal and Tory Ministers except that, of the two, Lord Salisbury was 'the less wildly Jingo.' On questions of Imperial Defence many of his old friends in the Liberal Government were arrayed against him; and with matters standing as they stood between the two Houses, there was no hope of any important Labour legislation. Lord Salisbury had again become Prime Minister, and under the new Conservative Administration everything went more easily. Sir Charles testified in one of his speeches that Mr. Balfour's leaders.h.i.+p, 'by his unfailing courtesy to all members, made the House of Commons a pleasant place'; and Mr. Balfour's leaders.h.i.+p was well a.s.sured of several years'

continuance.

A great Parliamentarian, Sir Charles nevertheless held no brief for Parliament. As a practical statesman, he realized the advantages in a strong hand of such a machine as Bismarck controlled; while his democratic instincts made him favour the Swiss methods, with direct intervention of the people through the Referendum.

'I trained a whole generation of professional politicians to respect the House of Commons,' he said, 'but I was never favourable to the Parliamentary, and I was even hostile to the Party, system.'

Nevertheless, since England was wedded to its traditional system, to work this efficiently was the first duty of an English politician. A note from Sir Reginald Palgrave in 1893 acknowledges gratefully some criticisms of the tenth edition of the cla.s.sical work which deals with this subject. No one was ever better qualified than Sir Charles to say what could or could not be done by the rules of order, and he would certainly have inculcated upon every politician the necessity of this knowledge as a practical equipment.

'What Dilke did,' writes Mr. McKenna, 'was to impress upon me the importance of a thorough understanding of the procedure and business of the House of Commons, a branch of knowledge in which he was an accomplished master.'

Sir Charles's whole scheme of existence was arranged with reference to the work of Parliament. Of it he wrote on December 15th, 1905, in reply to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who had dwelt on the interest of county government:

'The development of character in politics and the human side of the House of Commons have an extraordinary dramatic interest for me, and an attraction so strong that Harcourt told me that, knowing it, he did not see how I could live out of the House of Commons. I managed to do so, but only by shutting it for a time absolutely out of my mind, as though it did not exist. Having the happiness of being able to interest myself in everything, I suppose I am born to be generally happy. You have known me so long and so closely that few men are more aware of the kind of suffering I have gone through, but the happiness of interest in life has rarely been wanting for long in me, and if it were, I should go out--not of Parliament--but of life.' [Footnote: Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice was Chairman of the Wilts.h.i.+re County Council. He had re-entered Parliament as M.P. for North Wilts in 1898.]

Sir Charles never left London while the House was sitting, except for the annual gathering of the Forest miners at the Speech House. On all other working days of the session he was to be found in the House of Commons. He held that the House offered the extremest form of interest or of boredom, according as a man did or did not follow closely all that was going on. For this reason, the smoking-room, where most Parliamentary idling is transacted, saw little of him; cigars, of which he was a great consumer, were for periods of leisure, and he was at the House for business. He might be seen in the pa.s.sages, going by with coat-tails streaming behind him, most often in the members' lobby on his way to the first corridor, where was his locker--marvellously stuffed with papers, yet kept in a methodical order that made it a general centre of reference for himself and his colleagues, who consulted him on all subjects; or sometimes in the library, with multifarious correspondence and doc.u.ments outspread, snipping away with a pair of scissors, after his habit, all in them that was not vitally important.

[Footnote: Mr. Hudson tells how in February, 1911, after Sir Charles's death, he went down to clear his locker in the House of Commons, and found it empty. Mr. Hudson surmised that, foreseeing his need for it was over, Sir Charles had himself prepared it for his successor in its use.]

Again, since one form of relaxation which he permitted himself was his afternoon cup--or cups, for they were many--of tea, the tea-room also offered a chance to those who sought him. But whoever wanted Sir Charles went first into the Chamber itself, and in five cases out of six would find him there alert in his corner seat below the gangway, primed and armed with doc.u.mented information, and ready at any minute to interpose.

Every day he went through the whole bewildering ma.s.s of papers from which members are presumed to instruct themselves concerning the business of the sittings and to keep a check upon the general proceedings of Government. In his case the presumption was realized.

Probably no private member ever equalled him in demands for 'papers to be laid,' and certainly none was ever better able to justify his requests for additional information. If these requests were refused, it was never because he wanted what was superfluous, but that which, in his hands, might become inconveniently serviceable.

One habit of his may be traced to his hatred of wasting time. The instant a division was announced he was on his feet, hurrying so as to avoid long minutes of waiting in a crush; and it came to be regarded as part of the natural order that Sir Charles should be first through the lobby.

With all this industry, the record of divisions so carefully chronicled by the hard-working M.P. was not of moment to him. If the business did not seem to him important, he had no objection to absent himself and dine at home. He was weatherwise in the a.s.sembly, and knew the conditions which might lead to unforeseen disturbance.

In questions raised by alteration of rules or standing orders, he was never averse from innovation, and even generally an advocate of change.

But while the rules were there he insisted rigorously on their observance, in so far as they affected the larger interests of division or debate. Also he fulfilled punctiliously the prescribed courtesies, making it a usage to be down early and to secure his place, although no one ever thought of appropriating it. He rigidly observed the rule, transgressed by others, which prescribes the wearing of a tall hat by members in the House. The hat which was thus endeared to him by traditional usage is therefore inseparable from Parliamentary memory of him. He was generally to be seen handling a sheaf of papers more than Ministerial in dimensions; and he made his hat the receptacle for them; often it would be crammed to bursting before the speech had concluded.

Yet there remained with him always the trace of his younger days of grave dandyism; he never abandoned the Parliamentary frock-coat, and sketches of him in the ill.u.s.trated papers convey the austere correctness of its folds; and the hat from which so much service was exacted appeared each day unsurpa.s.sable in gloss.

The intricate ma.s.s of historical a.s.sociations delighted his imagination at Westminster. He took pleasure in all the quaint survivals, from the long-transmitted ceremonial of the Speaker's entrance, the formal knockings of Black Rod, the cry of 'Who goes home?' down to the still continued search before each session for some possible Guy Fawkes.

Keenly alive to the past and to the present, he saw with special pleasure any happy grafting of a new usage on to that old stock of memories. Speaking in his const.i.tuency after the lying in state of King Edward, which he had attended (standing next to the Prime Minister as the senior Privy Councillor present), he welcomed the precedent which gave a new a.s.sociation to Westminster Hall--that 'epitome of English history.' He recalled to his hearers the outstanding incidents and persons whose record had then come into his mind. His habit of tracing out links with the past made him at Westminster the best and most animated of guides.

So it was in Provence, in the Forest of Dean, on the road down from London to Surrey; so it was always in the neighbourhood of his Chelsea home.

There could be no such companion for a ramble through its streets. His memory, astounding in its recollections of his own time, held stories of older records; in his eager, vivid talk the past lived again. As we pa.s.sed along Cheyne Walk, George Eliot held court in her house once more, while a few doors off Rossetti's servant pushed aside the little grating to inspect his visitors before admission. Carlyle dwelt again in the house in Cheyne Row, with Whistler for his neighbour. Sir Charles would tell how earlier the Kingsley brothers lived with their father in the old rectory, and one at least of their novels was founded afterwards on the traditions of the place. Then, as layer after layer of history was lifted, Smollett wrote his novels or walked the Chelsea streets with John Wilkes; Sir Richard Steele and 'his dear Prue' reinhabited their house, and Dr. Johnson worked at the furnaces in the cellars where Chelsea china was made. [Footnote: 'Sir Charles Dilke, in hunting about for materials for his lecture on "Old Chelsea" to-morrow, has made some very interesting discoveries. He has found that part of the building once occupied by the famous Chelsea china works, which was thought to have gone for ever, exists as part of a public-house with a modern frontage looking out on the Embankment. The cellars are in an admirable state of preservation. Another interesting point has been the exploration of the old Moravian cemetery, which is now completely enclosed by houses, the ironwork of the gate worn, and, as it were, eaten out by age. Here lie the bones of Count von Zinzendorf, one of the founders of the Moravian sect, and many other famous folk. This, again, has led to some interesting discoveries about Sir Thomas More, all of which will find a place in Wednesday's lecture' (Extract from _Leicester Daily Post_, January 11th, 1888, on lecture to be delivered in Town Hall, Chelsea).]

He would give, as a curious ill.u.s.tration of the way in which many years may be covered by a few generations, the fact that he himself had known intimately the daughter of Woodfall, printer of the _Letters of Junius_; while Woodfall's acquaintance included Smollett as a resident, and Pope as a visitor to Chelsea. He would talk long of Sir Thomas More, [Footnote: He writes: 'On December 18th, 1886, Cardinal Manning wrote to me: "On Sat.u.r.day last Sir Thomas More was declared both martyr and saint, to my great joy. We have bought a house and garden, 28, Beaufort Street, which is said to be a piece of Sir Thomas More's garden. The tradition seems probable. If you can give me any light about it, I shall be very thankful."' Later (January, 1888) Sir Charles writes: 'In the course of this same month I lectured on Old Chelsea, and made a considerable attempt to clear up some points in the life of Sir Thomas More, for whom I have a great admiration. The result was that Cardinal Manning asked me to visit Father Vaughan at the house which stands on the site of Old Beaufort House, which the Roman Catholics have purchased as a house of expiation for the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More.'] 'the first of Chelsea worthies,' whose memory is loved and commemorated by every true inhabitant, and to whose voluntary poorhouse for the parish he pointed, as the direct progenitor of the Chelsea Benevolent Society and the Board of Guardians. But one episode in More's career specially fascinated him: it was when two great lives touched, and More, journeying to Calais, met that famous lady, Margaret of Austria, the first Governess of the Netherlands, and negotiated the treaty between the Emperor, England, and France, 1527. Great as was his respect for Sir Hans Sloane, after whom the street in which he lived was named, and who gave to Chelsea its beautiful Physic Garden, he never forgave him the destruction of More's house or the removal of its water gateway.

He would describe the tidal sh.o.r.e, as it lies in the picture which he bequeathed to the Chelsea Free Library, and which hangs on its staircase, when below the old church the bank sloped to the water's edge; or he would pa.s.s back to the earlier time when the boats of the n.o.bles lay there in such numbers that Charles II. described the river as 'Hyde Park upon the Thames.' Once more Bess of Hardwick lived at Shrewsbury House, Princess Elizabeth sheltered under the Queen's Elm; at the old Swan in Swan Walk, Doggett founded the coat and badge to be rowed for by the watermen's apprentices 'when the tide shall be full.'