by Roy Jenkins
In the autumn of 1884, in the midst of the Salisbury negotiations, Dilke had become engaged to be married. A few months earlier, in July, Mark Pattison had died after a prolonged period of ill-health. His widow, as has been seen, had long been on very close terms with Dilke, and their engagement followed almost automatically. Arrangements were made for Mrs. Pattison to spend the summer of 1885 in Madras with the Governor and Mrs. Grant Duff, and for the wedding to take place in Christ Church Cathedral, at Oxford, on her return in October. Perhaps because of the recentness of Pattison’s death, perhaps because of a certain taste for mystery which was endemic in Dilke’s character, the engagement was not made public. Only six or seven people were told, of whom Chamberlain alone was politically prominent. On receiving the news the President of the Board of Trade wrote to Mrs. Pattison. He began with the curiously constructed sentence: “Dilke has told me his great secret, and I sympathise with him so warmly in the new prospects of happiness which are opening for him that I have asked leave to write to you and to offer my hearty congratulations”; and he went on to refer to Dilke’s friendship as “the best gift of my public life.” “I rejoice unfeignedly,” he continued, “that he will have a companion so well able to share his noblest ambitions and to brighten his life.”12 A self-conscious and heavy-handed benignity was the keynote of the entire letter, but it so impressed Dilke that he referred to it later as “the best letter of his (Chamberlain’s) life.”
The “secret,” not unnaturally, soon began to leak out. Lord Granville offered Dilke his congratulations, which were coolly refused. Bodley, Dilke’s secretary, found that by the spring he was constantly asked to confirm the rumour of Dilke’s engagement, and developed the practice of asking in reply: “Do you think he would have time to get married? “At the end of April Dilke was writing to Mrs. Pattison, who had already left for India, and saying: “I hear that the subject of congratulation has been in a cheap and nasty society paper called Society.” But he still persisted in his attempt at secrecy. One reason now driving him in this direction was his belief that someone was plotting against him, and his fear that news of his impending marriage might drive them to redoubled efforts. At the turn of the year, when he was at his house in Provence, he wrote to Mrs. Pattison in terms of unspecified foreboding. “I slept very badly last night as I had horrible nightmares of (you) unhappy,” he wrote on January 1st.13 And six months later he was further disturbed by the continued arrival of anonymous letters. “I had another of those dreadful letters a day or two ago,” he wrote to her on June 10th. “They always suggest conspiracy, but why should those who conspire let me know. I fancy it must be some lunatic.”14
There were familiy worries also.
“I am so distressed at having from time to time to bother you with unpleasant subjects . . .” Dilke wrote, again to Mrs. Pattison, on March 6th. “Maye (Mrs. Ashton Dilke) has discovered that her sister Mrs. Crawford is carrying on a correspondence with an officer now at Dublin and is in half trouble already with Crawford and likely to get into worse trouble. Maye consults me as to whether she shall write to the man and in the form of calling on him to discontinue writing to her sister to try to frighten him. . . . I have told her that, as I feel sure that if she writes she will write wisely and with good feeling, perhaps it would be right as well as wise that she should do so.”15
At this stage, however, Dilke could not spare much time for these private concerns. The first half of 1885 was a period of unusual political fluidity. When the year began Gladstone was weary and depressed and the air was heavy with rumours of his early retirement. It was assumed that Hartington would succeed, but there was little reason to believe that the Government could long survive the disappearance of its chief. Into this atmosphere of decay Chamberlain threw the challenge of the Unauthorised Programme. This was based to a large extent upon a series of articles which had been appearing in the Fortnightly Review over the previous eighteen months. But the ideas contained in the articles were given a far sharper cutting edge when expressed by Chamberlain, both because of his position as a member of the Cabinet and because of his command of trenchant, insolent language. He launched his programme in a series of three January meetings, the first and the third in Birmingham, and the second at Ipswich. Amongst its principal features were manhood suffrage, the payment of members, small-holdings for agricultural labourers, a restriction of game-preserving, a drive for better working-class housing and the full recognition of the rights of local authorities to acquire land on fair terms. The impact of Chamberlain’s speeches, however, owed as much to their form as to their substance. At Birmingham on January 5th he asked “what ransom will property pay?” At Ipswich, nine days later, he proclaimed: “We are told that this country is the paradise of the rich: it should be our task to see that it does not become the purgatory of the poor.” And at Birmingham on January 29th he announced:” I hold that the sanctity of public property is greater even than that of private property, and that if it has been lost or wasted or stolen, some equivalent must be found for it and some compensation must be fairly exacted from the wrongdoer.” The period in which the speeches were made was one in which politicians habitually used strong language against each other, but it was not one in which Cabinet ministers were expected to challenge the sanctity of private property. Chamberlain’s words were accordingly received with a sharp thrill of horror. From Windsor to Hatfield and from Chatsworth to Hawarden the ruling figures of England recoiled from their purport. They saw in Chamberlain’s appeal the threat of a direct class conflict at the centre of politics, and they did not like the prospect.
Gladstone wrote a letter which was courteous in form but which hinted strongly to Chamberlain that a continuance of his agitation would lead to trouble in Parliament, Whig replies and the possibility of a break-up of the Government. Chamberlain answered that he was quite ready to resign, and set off for London to see Dilke. Dilke approved of the Unauthorised Programme, but he did not want it used, at least at that stage, as a reason for radical resignations. He was anxious to complete his seats bill; furthermore, at a time when Gladstone’s retirement from politics seemed imminent, he saw little sense in provoking an open quarrel with the G.O.M. and, in effect, handing over to the Whigs the political bones of the saint. He therefore advocated restraint, and was probably the more successful in so doing because of the arrival on February 5th of the news of the fall of Khartoum and the death of Gordon. On the one hand this diverted attention from Chamberlain’s excursions and on the other made it more difficult for any minister to leave the Government. Resignation was abandoned, but the shadow of the Unauthorised Programme continued for the rest of the year to lie heavily upon the minds of both Whigs and Tories.
Despite this tactical difference Dilke and Chamberlain were still basically agreed, and in the spring they moved together towards a new approach to the Irish problem. For several months past Chamberlain had been negotiating through O’Shea for Parnell’s acceptance, as a final settlement, of a scheme of advanced local government, under which a single national board would be responsible for most purely domestic Irish affairs. There would be no question of a separate parliament. It is now clear that Chamberlain and Parnell were never near to reaching a full agreement. The Irish leader was prepared to accept a national board as a step towards a parliament, and perhaps pay the price of a limited renewal of coercion, but he would not consider it as a final settlement. “But no man has the right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation,” he had announced at Cork on January 21st. On there terms, Garvin has told us,16 Chamberlain would not have been prepared to make an offer. He wanted the Irish vote for the Liberal party and he wanted it on a long-term basis, which a final settlement alone could secure. O’Shea, the inveterate go-between, succeeded not in smoothing out this difference, but in pretending that it did not exist. For several months he deceived Chamberlain into believing that agreement was near. And Chamberlain, in turn, passed on the false optimism to Dilke.[4]
In April the
prospect seemed still brighter. Manning, who was anxious to overcome British Government opposition at the Vatican to Dr. Walsh, his candidate for the vacant archbishopric of Dublin, took a hand in affairs. He urgently requested an interview with Dilke. When it took place the Cardinal announced that he spoke on behalf of Archbishop Croke of Cashel, of Archbishop McEvilly of Tuam, and of five other Irish bishops who had all been staying with him on their way to Rome. They were unanimous in being prepared to accept Chamberlain’s scheme and then “to denounce, not only separation, but also an Irish Parliament”; and they believed that they would be supported by the whole Irish hierarchy. Further meetings between the Cardinal and Dilke took place. Then Chamberlain called at Archbishop’s House, and so, later, did Parnell and Sexton. Everything seemed to be going well, and on May 8th Dilke wrote excitedly to Grant Duff: “Chamberlain and I have a big Irish Local Government scheme on hand, which is backed by the R.C. Bishops, and which may cither pacify Ireland or break up the Government.”17
The next day the scheme was discussed in Cabinet. It was supported by the Prime Minister but opposed by Spencer and Carlingford and seemed more likely to wreck the Government than to settle Ireland. Harcourt, at first hostile, swung over to support, and the final alignment was that all the commoners except Hartington were in favour, and all the peers except Granville against. This was too indecisive a result for action, and the scheme was effectively shelved. The Prime Minister was not pleased with his Whig colleagues. “Within six years, if it pleases God to spare their lives,” he said to Dilke on leaving the room, “they will be repenting in ashes.”18
Despite this setback Dilke remained in the closest touch with Manning. The Cardinal dined at Sloane Street on May 13th, and on the 17th he was urgently requesting another meeting:
My dear Sir Charles,
The General Election is not far off, and I am very anxious to talk with you upon the point which will determine the Catholic vote. I seem to see a safe and open way. But no time (must) be lost. The Liberalism of England is not yet the aggressive Liberalism of the Continent, but it may become so, and then the breach with us and with Ireland will be irreparable. I am most anxious for all motives that you should avert this. Hitherto you have been safe: and you can keep so. I would come to you at the L.G.B. any day at 2 after to-morrow.
Believe me always yours very truly,
H. E. C. Archbp.19
The negotiation was already yielding dividends from the Cardinal’s point of view, for Dr. Walsh’s appointment as Archbishop of Dublin had been announced, Spencer’s opposition being to some extent neutralised by Dilke’s support.
Dilke then proceeded to behave with a similar but greater lack of judgment than that which he had resisted in Chamberlain at the end of January. The alternative which the Whigs put forward to Chamberlain’s Irish scheme was another land purchase bill. The radicals were sceptical about the merits of this bill, and were in any event opposed to its introduction because this could be a symbol that the Government had chosen agrarian rather than constitutional reform. In conversation with Chamberlain on May 18th, however, the Prime Minister understood that the former would agree to a short-term land measure. On the afternoon of May 20th, Gladstone, without further consultation, announced to the House of Commons that this was his intention. Dilke heard the announcement and immediately resigned. Chamberlain was furious at Dilke’s precipitate action, not entirely reasonably, for he had not informed Dilke of his conversation with Gladstone and he had previously both written and spoken to Dilke in favour of resignation. Despite his anger, Chamberlain decided to follow Dilke. He sent in his own resignation the same evening, and Shaw Lefevre, equally reluctantly, did the same.
Dilke may have been influenced by having received from Randolph Churchill, at dinner on May 17th, the first news that the Tory party would bid for the Irish vote by coming out against coercion. He no doubt realised then that the Irish stakes were to be substantially raised. Nevertheless, his choice of an issue on which to go was extraordinarily inept, and Chamberlain was right in seeing this. It was so inept, indeed, that the suspicion that Dilke’s judgment had been temporarily clouded by personal worry cannot be avoided. Perhaps he had received another anonymous letter. Perhaps it was merely the general and slightly malicious stir to which the spreading news of his engagement was giving rise. “Pray do not vex yourself about the gossip here,”20 Chamberlain had written to Mrs. Pattison on the day on which Randolph Churchill told Dilke of Lord Salisbury’s Irish intentions.
Manning, who preferred his political friends to be ministers, was also opposed to Dilke’s action.
“No third party (is) possible at this moment,” he wrote to him on May 26th. “Two parties and two parachutes will only make us (as) weak and useless as the French Chamber. The just demands of Ireland are a destiny to which Whig and Tory must give way. But if you and the like of you leave the Whigs they will fall back and unite in resisting you. So long as you are in contact with them they will yield to reason. These are the thoughts of an Old Testament Radical.”[5]21
When Dilke received this letter he was in Dublin. His position there was ambiguous in two respects. In the first place he was half in and half out of the Government. The radical resignations were not generally known, and to all appearances Chamberlain (who had gone to Paris for a Whitsun holiday) and Dilke were still members of the Cabinet. Gladstone, who was also beset by a conditional resignation from his Chancellor of the Exchequer, felt unable for the moment to do more than put their letters into suspense. Secondly, Dilke was nominally in Ireland on Housing Commission business, but he was in fact more concerned in canvassing the Lord Lieutenant, his host at Vice-Regal Lodge, in favour of Chamberlain’s scheme. His urgency became greater as the visit—the only one he ever paid to Ireland—proceeded. What he saw turned his mind increasingly towards a drastic constitutional solution. It was not the glowing prospect of a union of hearts which impressed him, but the utter hopelessness of the existing system.
“Early in the morning of Saturday, the 23rd,” he wrote, “before the meeting of my Commission at the City Hall, I had had a long talk with Spencer, and I felt, more strongly than I ever had before, that his position in Dublin was untenable, and that he ought to be allowed to go. On Whit Sunday I attended church with Spencer, and in the afternoon took him for the only walk which he had enjoyed for a long time. We passed the spot where Lord Frederick Cavendish was killed, and accompanied by a single aide-de-camp, but watched at a distance by two policemen in plain clothes, and met at every street corner by two others, walked to the strawberry gardens, and on our return, it being a lovely Sunday when the Wicklow Mountains were at their best and the hawthorn in bloom, met thousands of Dublin people driving out to the strawberry gardens on cars. In the course of the whole long walk but one man lifted his hat to Spencer, who was universally recognised, but assailed by the majority of those we met with shouts of ‘who killed Myles Joyce?’[6]
while some varied the proceedings by calling ‘murderer’ after him. A few days later, when I was driving with Lady Spencer in an open carriage, a well-dressed bicyclist came riding through the cavalry escort, and in a quiet, conversational tone observed to us, ‘who killed Myles Joyce?’ At his dinner party on the Sunday evening Spencer told us that a Roman Catholic priest who was present . . . was the only priest in Ireland who would enter his walls, while the castle was boycotted by every Archbishop and Bishop. On Monday morning . . . I paid a visit to the Mansion House at the request of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, taking by Spencer’s leave the Viceregal carriages there, where they had in his second Viceroyalty not been before, and was received by the Lord Mayor in state. . . .”22
Altogether it was not surprising that Dilke summed up his impressions by writing to Mrs. Pattison: “What a life is Spencer’s—cut off from nearly the whole people—good and bad! What sense of duty, what high-mindedness, and what stupidity!”23
On May 27th Hartington arrived in Dublin, and Dilke had two Whigs instead of one with whom to
argue. But Hartington was not a man for argument; after a few hours of it he pronounced himself suddenly ill and stayed in bed. Dilke left the following evening, slept on the boat in Kingstown Harbour, crossed on the Friday, spent a few days at Dockett Eddy, and returned to London on Tuesday, June 2nd, ready for the last week of the Government’s life.
Rarely, if ever, can an Administration have been quite so ripe for its end. The death of Gordon and the proclamation of the Unauthorised Programme, while at first they tended to neutralise each other, were both in the longer run weakening factors. Then in the spring there was a crisis over Afghanistan. The Russians had recently annexed Turkestan and were engaged in a boundary dispute with the Amir, who was under British protection. On March 31st, the Russians broke in upon the Afghans at Penjdeh and heavily defeated them. Gladstone became suddenly bellicose, and for a time war seemed near. The Prime Minister was strongly supported in his firmness by Dilke, who knew a great deal more about the subject than any other minister, but not by Harcourt, and the issue became yet another cause of dissension within the Cabinet. At the beginning of May the Russians unexpectedly withdrew and the crisis was over. But by that time the Government was quarrelling hard about Ireland on the one hand and the Budget on the other. In the four weeks from the middle of April the Prime Minister received resignations in one form or another from no less than nine of his colleagues.
In the event, however, it was not the greater issue of Ireland but the lesser one of the Budget which precipitated the Government’s end. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer had brought forward in March a proposal to increase the beer duty this had met with radical hostility, and Dilke had predicted that it would kill the Government. What the radicals wanted was an increase in direct taxation, as was suggested in the Unauthorised Programme, and when Childers offered the compromise of limiting the beer increase to one year and compensating by raising the wine duty, Dilke took the lead in resisting this also. He argued that it would cause needless trouble with the French, and carried with him all the Cabinet except for the Chancellor himself. The defeated Childers then offered his resignation and walked out of the room.
