by Roy Jenkins
During one of these visits to France—perhaps as early as 1874—Dilke was initiated into the art of fencing. He took to the sport immediately, although his style was somewhat boisterous, but for several years it provided him only with occasional holiday relaxation. During the autumn of 1878, however, he suffered unusually from want of exercise, and in the following February he sought to repair his deficiency by instituting a daily period of fencing at 76, Sloane Street, At the back of the house on the ground floor the dining-room gave out through french windows on to a paved terrace, a few steps above the small garden which lay beyond. Here on the terrace, each morning during the parliamentary session, at least five and sometimes as many as eight or nine escrimeurs would assemble for an hour or more. They came at half past nine or ten o’clock and they left at about eleven. In addition to a fencing master, the regular participants included Sir Julian Pauncefote, later permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, Lord Desborough, and Baron d’Estournelles de Constant, later French Ambassador at The Hague but at that time a first secretary at Albert Gate. There were other more occasional visitors, amongst them any of the great French or Italian masters who happened to be in London. The clash of the foils and shouts of laughter from Dilke himself were recalled many years later as being familiar sounds in the neighbouring gardens.
His guests may have been earlier risers, but Dilke normally came straight from his bed to the fencing. When it was nearly over he would return to his room to bath and dress, before breakfasting alone, at about 11.15 a.m. This routine he maintained for nearly a decade, including the period when he was in office. He continued to fence, although not with equal regularity, for much longer. Even in the last decade of his life he kept an outfit at one of the best-known Paris fencing establishments, and used frequently to appear there. He was one of the first Englishmen to use the épée, and he acquired a considerable skill with this weapon, although he was less good with foils.
The first results of the new fencing régime at Sloane Street appeared to be excellent. Within six weeks Dilke secured by far the greatest parliamentary triumph that his career had known. When Parliament reassembled in February, 1879, the Zulu War had just begun. It was a conflict to which the Government, against the wishes of the Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet, had been committed by the impetuous local leadership of Sir Bartle Frere. And it had begun badly with defeat at Isandhlwana. Hartington was uncertain what line to take; Gladstone’s eye was temporarily much more on Midlothian than on Westminster; and Dilke, who had a clear view that the war was as foolish as it was unjust, was able to take the lead. He was put up to reply to the statement with which Sir Stafford Northcote, as leader of the House, opened on the day of the re-assembly; and this led on to his tabling a motion which was certainly one of censure on Frere and might have been considered to be one upon the Government too. After some delay this came up for debate on March 27th and was the occasion of Dilke’s triumph. “I write to you under the violent excitement of a splendid personal success,” he informed Mrs. Pattison that night. “I had an extraordinary oratorical triumph, and received the congratulations of the leading men of both parties.”36
Elsewhere he wrote rather more calmly of the speech:
“I spoke for two hours and a half, and kept the House full, without ever for an instant being in doubt as to the complete success of the speech; greatly cheered by my own side, without being once questioned or interrupted by the other. But the speech was far from being my best speech, although it was by far my greatest success. It was an easy speech to make—a mere Blue Book speech. The case from the papers was overwhelming. . . . While I was gratified by the success of the speech, I could not help feeling how completely these things are a matter of opportunity, inasmuch as I had made dozens of better speeches in the House, of which some had been wholly unsuccessful.”37
The newspapers did not share all of Dilke’s own reservations. There was general comment that he was the only successful young man that Parliament had produced in recent years; and the Scotsman said that no other speech had excited such general admiration since Gladstone’s denunciation of the Treaty of Berlin in the previous summer. This suggestion that Dilke had attained great oratorical heights does not ring true, however. Truth, with a piece of Hiawathan verse,* caught much more accurately the note of keen, industrious efficiency which was the real characteristic of his speaking.
Another result of the Zulu debate was the offer to Dilke of a safe seat in Manchester, with the promise that his election expenses would be paid by the local committee. He was attracted by the offer, not least because he was expecting to be beaten at Chelsea. But he had given an undertaking to his supporters there that he would not move until this event actually occurred, which he did not attempt to evade.
Later in 1879 there was a sharp and public quarrel between Hartington and Chamberlain, which in Dilke’s view substantially damaged Hartington’s position and destroyed the possibility of his retaining the leadership. Dilke, who was not directly involved, supported Chamberlain, but with a little less enthusiasm than might have been anticipated. It was a House of Commons quarrel on the committee stage of the Army Bill. Chamberlain, who had surprisingly strong views against corporal punishment—he had been horrified a few weeks earlier to discover that his son Austen had been beaten at Rugby—was trying to secure the abolition of flogging as a military punishment. Hartington was not opposed to this. Indeed, Henry James, whom Dilke described as the leader’s “right-hand man,” had encouraged the radicals to make as much as they could of the issue. But when the Government accused them of obstruction, Hartington, strolling casually into the House late on the night of July 7th, decided to throw his weight behind the Treasury bench. Chamberlain was deeply angered. “It is rather inconvenient that we should have so little of the presence of the noble Lord, lately the leader of the Opposition, but now the leader of a section only,” he announced with frigid bitterness; and a quarrel began which could only be ended by an apology from Hartington. But this apology, which was forthcoming, could not put matters back where they had been before.
“Never absent, always ready
To take up the burning question
Of the hour and make a motion:
Be it Cyprus, be it Zulu,
He can speak for hours about it
From his place below the gangway.
No Blue Book avails to fright him:
He’s the stomach of an ostrich
For the hardest facts and figures,
And assimilates despatches
In the most surprising fashion.”
“Later in the month,” Dilke wrote, “the Whigs, or men above the gangway, showed great anger at the completeness of Hartington’s surrender to us, which, indeed, meant more than the immediate conquest, for it involved the ultimate supersession of Hartington by Gladstone. Harcourt, James and Adam (the Chief Whip), in giving Chamberlain the victory, by insisting that Hartington should yield, were considering the constituencies, not the House. As regarded the House, the popularity of stamping upon us would have been great. There was strong Whig dislike of our activity, and strong radical personal hatred among ourselves. If Chamberlain were to have fought Hartington on any question on which he had not the Liberal constituencies with him, he would have got the worst of it; but then he was too wise to stir on any question on which he could not at least carry all the active elements of the party in large towns. The anti-Chamberlain set went to work to get up a banquet for Hartington, and were very cross with me when I told them that I was certain that the Whips would not let Hartington accept the banquet unless they obtained Chamberlain’s signature to the requisition. It, of course, turned out as I expected. Some twenty men said they would not sign unless Chamberlain did so, and he was then begged to sign, and, when he did, at once deprived the manifestation of all significance. It was all rather small and mean, but when one went to the root of the matter, one saw that the whole difficulty sprang from the fact that the Whigs had now no principles
.”38
These events not only strengthened the position of Gladstone as against Hartington—a process which was carried further in the autumn by the tumultuous success of the former’s first Midlothian campaign. They also gave a relative fillip to Chamberlain as against Dilke. The latter still had much more of a general parliamentary reputation. His range of knowledge and of contacts was much wider. He was more consulted by his leaders, and he had behind him House of Commons triumphs such as Chamberlain had never then enjoyed. But it was Chamberlain who, as the spokesman of the radical caucuses throughout the Midlands and the North, had brought to heel the Whig leader of the Liberal party. His achievement was certainly not without significance.
Nevertheless, Dilke was not disposed to feel either jealous or dissatisfied with himself. He was rather less given to jealousy than most politicians, although when in 1880 he went so far as to tell Harcourt: “I believe I am the only English politician who is not jealous,” the latter received the statement with understandable scepticism. “We all think that of ourselves,” he replied.39 Nor was Dilke ever inclined to self-dissatisfaction. But even if he had been, the winter of 1879-80 was not the time for it.
When the Liberals came back to power Dilke’s place in the new administration seemed assured, and any strengthening of Chamberlain’s position appeared likely, so long as they worked in combination, to improve rather than weaken his own. Nor was a change likely to be long delayed. The Beaconsfield Government was manifestly moving towards its end. The Prime Minister was ill and tired. The leadership in the Commons was ineffective. The diplomatic victories of 1878 were looking a little tarnished. There was a rising tide of economic discontent. And the innovation of a politician of Gladstone’s stature stumping round the country was proving highly popular with the new electorate. There was some surprise when Beaconsfield decided to meet Parliament, for the Government’s seventh session, at the beginning of February. It was not to be a long session. Encouraged by the false gleam of a chance Conservative victory at the Southwark by-election in the first week of March, the Prime Minister decided to go to the country. The dissolution was announced on March 8th, with most of the polls to be declared in the first week of April.
Chapter Six
The Dust without the Palm
On April 2nd Dilke was returned for Chelsea. He was top of the poll, but his new electoral partner, J. E. B. Firth, Q.C., was only a few hundred votes behind him; they both had comfortable leads over their Conservative opponents.[1] Dilke’s fears about the safety of the seat had proved quite unfounded—at least in such a year of Liberal triumph as 1880. On April 5th, when Gladstone was elected for Midlothian, it was already clear that there was to be a big majority against the Government. When the results were complete they gave 349 seats to the Liberals, 243 to the Conservatives, and 60 to the Irish Nationalists. Mr. Gladstone returned to Hawarden, ruminating “on the great hand of God, so evidently displayed.”
Chamberlain, in Birmingham, ruminated on the great hand of the Caucus, which had also been in evidence and which he was determined to display. He wrote privately to Gladstone calling attention to the victories in the boroughs which had been achieved by the National Liberal machine, and publicly to The Times to stress the same point. And The Times responded by describing him as “the Carnot of the moment.” Encouraged by the results and by this and similar tributes to his part in achieving them, Chamberlain raised his sights. Earlier in the year he had entertained Harcourt at Birmingham, had been beguiled by the latter’s wit and flattery, and had been willing to contemplate the acceptance of what a Whig Government might be disposed to offer him. Now, after the first results, he thought that he might take his place, not as an individual, but as one of the leaders of a recognised wing of the party. In this spirit he wrote to Dilke on Sunday, April 4th, offering the conclusion between them of a firm political treaty. The letter is sufficiently important to be given in full:
Southbourne, Augustus Road, Birmingham
My dear Dilke:
I find the same fault with your letters that the Scotch laird found with the Dictionary—“the stories are varra pretty but they are unco short!”
The time has come when we must have a full frank explanation. What I should like—what I hope for with you—is a thorough offensive and defensive alliance and in this case our position will be immensely strong. I am prepared to refuse all offices until and unless both of us are satisfied.
Can you accept this position with perfect satisfaction? If you think I am asking more than I can give I rely on your saying so—and in this case you may depend on my loyalty and friendship. I shall support your claims cordially and just as warmly as if I personally were interested. But my own feeling is that if you are stronger than I am in the House, my influence is greater than yours out of it—and, therefore, that, together, we are much more powerful than separated; - and that, in a short time—if not now—we may make our own terms.
To join a Government as subordinate members—to be silenced and to have no real influence on the policy—would be fatal to both of us. If we both remain outside, any Government will have to reckon with us and on the whole this would be the position which on many grounds I should prefer. I am ready to make all allowances for the difficulties in the way of giving to both of us the only kind of place which it would be worth our while to accept. If these are insuperable, I will give a hearty support to any Government which is thoroughly liberal in its measures; but I am not going to play the part of a radical minnow among Whig Tritons.
The victory which has just been won is the victory of the radicals—Gladstone and the Caucus have triumphed all along the line, and it is the strong, definite, decided policy which has commended itself and not the halting half-hearted arm-chair business. The Times sees this and said it yesterday—the country feels it—and we should be mad to efface ourselves and disappoint the expectations of our strongest supporters.
You will see that my proposed condition is—both of us to be satisfied.
As to what ought to satisfy us, if you agree to the principle, we will consult when the time comes, but my present impression is—all or nothing. Tout arrive à qui sait attendre. Write me fully your views and tell me whether and when you will pay me a visit.
Yours ever,
J. Chamberlain1
On the evening of the day on which this letter was written Dilke dined with Harcourt He found him still inclined to Hartington rather than Gladstone as Prime Minister, but otherwise in a cynically radical mood. “I found his ambition to be to worry out Lord Selborne with Radical measures to which he would be unable to assent, and then to succeed him as Lord Chancellor,” Dilke noted. “He asked me what I should like,” he added, “and I told him that I did not expect to be offered a great post, but that if there were any such chance the Navy was the only one that I should like.”2
The next morning Dilke received Chamberlain’s letter, and replied, on the same day, in the following terms:
My dear Chamberlain:
When I’m in London and you don’t want to risk your letters being opened by Kennedy (Dilke’s secretary)—you can write to the Reform Club. I generally go there each day. (I opened yours myself this morning.) I leave for Toulon on Wednesday night. I shall stay there for about a fortnight. I quite agree generally to the position that we should continue to work together and that each should see that the other is satisfied. My first enquiry when I hear anything will be—what about you? I also think that we are far more powerful together than separated and that we are in a position to make our own terms. I am convinced that the county franchise must be done at once and that makes it difficult for Lowe and Goschen to remain in. If Lord G(ranville) is Premier his personal affection will make him cling to Lowe, and if they keep Lowe—I don’t see how they can offer the Cabinet at once to both of us. If Hartington is Premier—I don’t see why they should not offer the Cabinet to both of us. The real difficulty will arise if they offer the Cabinet to one of us, and high office outside it with a
promise of the first vacancy in it to the other. I call this a difficulty because I agree that neither of us would like to be responsible for a policy in which he had no voice. When a strong land Bill is brought in Lord Selborne must resign. The same difficulty stands in the way of Lord Derby and the Duke of Argyll, so it seems to me that they want us both, either now, or very soon. So much for the personal matter. For the political—I think we shall have no difficulties of principle in the first Session. They will only begin in November.
Ever yours,
Charles W. Dilke3
Garvin, Chamberlain’s biographer, has summed up this letter as pouring water into Chamberlain’s wine and amounting to a rejection of his offer. Dilke, Garvin believed, had been seduced by Harcourt’s blandishments, set store by his own ability to move with ease “in what was still called the highest Whig society,” and wished to try his hand at securing entry to the Cabinet without worrying too much about the provincial radical. Furthermore, in Garvin’s view, Dilke’s decision to go to his house near Toulon, and not to Birmingham, underlined his slight to Chamberlain.4
Dilke himself states clearly that he had a difference of opinion with Chamberlain at this stage. “In other words,” he wrote later in a comment upon the correspondence, “Chamberlain’s view was that we should insist on both being in the Cabinet. My own view was that we should insist on one being in the Cabinet, and the other having a place of influence, giving him the opportunity of frequent speech in the House of Commons. . . .”5 But there was no necessary slight to Chamberlain in such a view; and Dilke’s persistence in his plans to go to Toulon, whatever else it indicated, certainly showed no desire to exercise his entrée into “the highest Whig society” during the crucial period of speculation about the shape of the Cabinet.
