by Roy Jenkins
When the Finance Bill was presented to the House for second reading on June 8th it was without the wine proposal and the Government was almost without a Chancellor. His resignation had not been withdrawn, and his position was as indeterminate as that of Dilke and Chamberlain. The Cabinet was in no position to sustain a challenge. This came in the form of a reasoned amendment moved by Hicks Beach and regretting amongst other things the increased duty on beer without any corresponding increase on wine.
The Government case was argued by Childers, Dilke and Gladstone, but in vain. The division was taken at 2 a.m., and the Government was defeated, unexpectedly, by 12. The result was the first fruit of the Irish-Tory alliance. Thirty-nine Parnellites voted in the Opposition lobby, and proclaimed the result with shouts, not of “cheaper beer,” but of “no coercion.” But these votes alone would not have sufficed to defeat the Government. There were also six Liberals who voted for the amendment, and more than seventy, mostly radicals, who abstained or were absent unpaired.
The issues were confused and the cross-currents were numerous, but it was not possible to doubt that the Government had had its day. None of its members questioned this. At the Cabinet on the following day they reached a decision to resign with a speed and unanimity that they had shown on few other issues. There were a few more Cabinets to dispose of routine business, but by June 24th Lord Salisbury had kissed hands as head of a minority Government. On the same day Dilke left his office at the Local Government Board, having handed over to Arthur Balfour, the new President.
Chapter Ten
Mr. Gladstone’s Successor?
DILKE LEFT office without regret. Partly this was because he was tired and had been complaining for the past month that he was without energy, although quite well. Mainly, however, it was because his political confidence was high. His ambition was unlimited and his prospects were far brighter than those of most ex-Cabinet ministers. First there was his status as a foreign affairs expert. His position in this respect was one which has rarely been paralleled in British politics. There was hardly an area of the world about which Dilke did not have detailed knowledge. When a dispute arose, perhaps about some small piece of territory, Dilke would know exactly where the frontier ran and what the terrain was like. He would know where the old frontier had been prior to the convention of 1837 and all the other diplomatic antecedents. In addition the leading statesmen on both sides of the dispute were likely to be familiar figures to him, as he would be to them. In France, in Germany, in Greece, in Russia, in Afghanistan, in Australia and in many other places his repute was far greater than could be accounted for by the ministerial offices which he had held.
The danger of such an excess of expertise is that it makes its possessor a glorified civil servant rather than a major politician. This was not a very pressing danger in Dilke’s case. As the former leader of English republicanism and as the unshakable ally of Chamberlain, the most controversial figure in politics, he could hardly be accused of a bureaucratic preoccupation with facts as opposed to policies. He not only knew a lot, but he stood for definite objectives as well. He was a leader and not merely a political encyclopedia. As such he was something more than the best qualified candidate for the Foreign Office in another Gladstone ministry. Should the G.O.M. retire he was also a strong possibility for the leadership of the Liberal party. Disraeli’s prophecy that Dilke would be Prime Minister, made more than five years before, had not become less likely with the passage of time.
But what made it likely? Why should an ex-President of the Local Government Board in a defeated Government, and a man moreover whom most people regarded as less forceful than his ally Chamberlain, view the future with especial optimism? The question needs to be answered on a number of different levels. First, what were the prospects of the early return of a Liberal Government? Here Dilke was completely confident. He regarded the Tory hold on power as slight, even with the temporary Irish alliance. There could be no elections until the late autumn when the new constituencies and electoral registers would be ready. These should ensure a Liberal victory at least as decisive as that of 1880. “We shall be in office again in January,” Dilke wrote to Grant Duff on June 16th; and his prophecy was to be true about his friends although not about himself.
Under whose leadership was such a Government likely to come in? Gladstone was seventy-five, and his retirement, which had been strongly rumoured for some time, was clearly made more probable by the end of his premiership. But Dilke, who in the previous winter would have been indifferent, had become suddenly convinced that a continuation of Gladstone’s leadership was highly desirable. On the evening of the resignation of the Government he had proclaimed this in a much-publicised speech at a dinner of the City of London Liberal Club. The battle of the future must be won, he said,” not only with his (Gladstone’s) great name, but under his actual leadership.” This faith did not prevent him, two weeks later, from engaging in one further brush with the G.O.M., about a baronetcy conferred upon Errington, the unofficial representative of the Foreign Office at the Vatican. Dilke regarded this honour as a highly undesirable public expression of the late Government’s gratitude for Errington’s activities against Dr. Walsh, and threatened in consequence to withdraw from his seat on the Front Opposition Bench and sit below the gangway. But the terms in which he withdrew his threat were significant.
“. . . (Harcourt) tells me that you have accepted a proposal to stand again for Midlothian,” he wrote to Gladstone on June 29th. “This is so great a thing that smaller ones must not be allowed to make even small discords, so please put my letter of Saturday in the fire, and forgive me for having put you to the trouble of reading and replying to it.”1
Dilke’s new-found enthusiasm for Gladstone’s leadership was probably due more to Ireland than to anything else, to his conviction that a quick solution had become essential, and to a final impatience, as a result of the negotiations of the spring, with the perpetual delaying tactics of Hartington and the Whigs. “There is no liking for Ireland or the Irish,” he had also told Grant Duff in his letter of June 16th, “but an almost universal feeling now that some form of Home Rule must be tried. My own belief is that it will be tried too late, as all our remedies have been.”2 Dilke thought that Gladstone’s new mood on Ireland offered the best chance of driving hard enough to avoid this fatal delay. And if the “almost universal feeling” did not extend quite far enough for all the Whigs to accept this hard driving, there would be some advantages in that. He was a shrewd enough tactician to see that Gladstone was an invaluable ally in the battle against Hartington. The Unauthorised Programme could obviously not be implemented until the Whigs were driven out of the Liberal party. But this could be accomplished more safely under Gladstone than by Dilke and Chamberlain; and once it was done the way would be open, when Gladstone came to retire, which it was thought could not in any event be long delayed, both for the radical programme and for radical leadership.
Even if this tactic failed, however, and Gladstone handed over to Hartington, there would still be great strength in the radical position. Hartington would probably have to compensate for his own whiggery by giving the highest posts, next to the premiership, to his radical colleagues. Indeed, at the time of Gladstone’s rumoured retirement in the previous January, Dilke had been informed by Harcourt that it was Hartington’s intention to offer him the Foreign Office and Chamberlain the Exchequer.3 Admittedly this was before the launching of the Unauthorised Programme, but as Hartington’s appointments would have been dictated by the need for a balance of power rather than by love of the radicals, there is no reason to suppose that he would have made less generous offers at a later stage. Dilke and Chamberlain were likely to possess the same paradoxical power in his Cabinet which the Whig magnates had enjoyed under Gladstone. Nor would even the Foreign Office and the Exchequer be the limit of their possible advance. Hartington was an indolent man; and it might well be that after a short period of leading liberalism from the extreme right he would
find the strain too great and throw in the Whig hand. In this event the way would be equally wide open to a radical leadership.
Both in these circumstances, and in those of Gladstone forcing Hartington out of the Liberal party before his own retirement, a choice between Chamberlain and Dilke would have had to be made. In retrospect Chamberlain looks the more obvious candidate. His speeches were more memorable; he was the favourite of the constituencies; and he had broken more new political ground with the Unauthorised Programme than Dilke had ever done. In fact, however, Dilke was the more likely choice. He had far fewer enemies; he would have been more acceptable to Gladstone; and he was on much better terms with Whigs, Tories and neutral “establishment” opinion. Whether consciously or not he had outflanked Chamberlain to the right during the previous winter, but he had done it without impairing his own radical credentials. The negotiation of the seats bill was a far better preparation for an early premiership than the proclamation of the Unauthorised Programme.
This position was recognised by one significant development which occurred immediately after the fall of the Government. The radicals of Cabinet rank—Dilke, Chamberlain, Trevelyan, Shaw Lefevre and Morley—decided to meet in regular conclave. This “cabal,” as they referred to it, assembled as often as twice a week and concerned itself both with the issues of day-to-day politics and with longer-term radical strategy. The meetings had been suggested by Chamberlain, but they were all presided over by Dilke. Furthermore, at least according to Dilke’s own testimony,4 Chamberlain at this stage recognised the fact that Dilke would be a more acceptable leader than he would be himself, and suggested an agreement with Dilke to this end. In addition, Dilke tells us, Gladstone expressed a clear wish that Dilke should be the future leader. Altogether, at midsummer, 1885, Dilke’s prospects of becoming Prime Minister were almost as good as those of anyone who is neither the leader of his party nor a universally acclaimed crown prince can ever be.
With this future to contemplate, his life in the six weeks or so after the resignation of the Government was agreeable and relaxed. He had no lack of things to do. He became more socially active and went out a great deal. He dined often at Grillion’s. He spent long and frequent days on the Thames, either at Dockett or at the houses of friends. He presided at the concluding meetings of the Housing Commission. And he tried to complete his plans for a visit with Chamberlain to the Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops in Ireland, in order to discover, in direct discussion, what were their real wishes.[1] These plans went awry, but this was a matter of much greater moment to Chamberlain than to Dilke.
Manning had promised introductions, but with the change of Government and the unfolding of the new Conservative policy, he grew cool. “What am I to do?” the prince of the church wrote to Dilke on June 25th. “I am afraid of your Midlothian in Ireland. How can I be godfather to Hengist and Horsa?”5 Dilke was disappointed, but allowed himself neither to quarrel with the Cardinal nor to be deflected from his plan. He tried to secure the introductions from the new Archbishop of Dublin, and Dr. Walsh responded to the extent of writing two encouraging letters. But the reaction of the nationalist press to the proposed visit was hostile in the extreme. “We plainly tell Messrs. Chamberlain and Dilke that if they are wise, they will keep out of our country . . .” was the advice of United Ireland.6 In the authoritative opinion of Mr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, the current of anti-radicalism, always important in Irish politics, was at this time running strongly and close to the surface. Archbishop Walsh was infected by the prevailing mood, and soon withdrew from his attitude of welcome. At the end of July he wrote to say that he, too, could give no introductions, as such an action would be interpreted as hostile to “the excellent tenor and promise of Lord Carnarvon’s Conservative regime.”7 By this time Dilke was too concerned with other matters to care, but Chamberlain, always more prickly, was bitterly affronted. He had finished with Irish nationalism. He believed himself to have been deceived by Parnell in the negotiations of the early spring, and to have been spurned by the Church and the popular press in his overtures of the summer. These experiences led on directly to a new note of hard hostility to Ireland, which he struck in his Warrington speech of September 8th, and to his subsequent actions.
Dilke, even before his attention was distracted, reacted less sharply to these rebuffs than did Chamberlain. He never expected to be acclaimed as a hero by the Irish people, and he was consequently less disappointed when difficulties arose. In any event he had much else to occupy his mind. On June 30th he wrote to Mrs. Pattison a strange disquisition upon the subject of power in politics. After some rather conventional remarks about the unattractiveness for him of the minutiae of the game, he continued:
“It is in old age that power comes. It is possible for an old man in English politics to exert enormous power without effort, and with but little call upon his time, and no drain at all upon his health and vital force. The work of thirty or more years of political life goes in England to the building up of a political reputation and position. During that period no power is exercised except by irregular means, such as the use of threats of resignation. It is in old age only that power comes that can be used legitimately and peacefully by the once strong man.”8
When he wrote these words Dilke was more than half-way through the long journey to full power, but he was never to reap the rewards which he saw ahead of him. In the third week of July his career was shattered. He was struck by a blow from which he never recovered.
The week had begun well enough. The Sunday he spent on the river at Dockett. On the Monday he presided at his Royal Commission and dined at Grillion’s. Later in the week he went to parties at Lady Salisbury’s, at the Austrian Embassy and at the Duchess of Westminster’s. He had a meeting about electoral organisation with Harcourt and Chamberlain. On the Friday evening he gave the last of his major political dinner parties at 76, Sloane Street. On the Saturday morning he presided at a meeting of the “cabal.” On the Saturday evening the Reform Club paid him the unusual compliment of organising a banquet in his honour, to congratulate him upon the passing into law of the redistribution bill. The former Lord Advocate proposed the principal toast.
He returned home late, with the intention of going next morning to Taplow Court for another quiet day upon the river. But this Sunday, July 19th, was not to be a quiet one. At Sloane Street on the Saturday evening there awaited him a note from Mrs. Rogerson, a close friend, asking him to call on the following morning as she had some grave information to give him. He went early and learned that Mrs. Donald Crawford, the sister of his brother’s widow, had announced to her husband that, soon after her marriage, Dilke had become her lover; and that Crawford, in consequence, was proposing to sue for divorce, and to name Dilke as the co-respondent.
Chapter Eleven
Mrs. Crawford Intervenes
It would be difficult to exaggerate the seriousness for Dilke of the charge. Divorce, other than by private Act of Parliament, had been possible in England only since 1857, and during this twenty-eight year period there had been no case involving a prominent politician. The nearest parallel had been the Mordaunt case of 1870, in which the Prince of Wales had been cited as a co-respondent. This case, indeed, bore some striking resemblances to the Crawford case, as will emerge later. Lady Mordaunt, aged twenty-one, had made a confession to her husband shortly after the birth of her first child. “Charlie, you are not the father of that child,” she had said according to her husband’s court evidence; “Lord Cole is the father of it, and I am the cause of its blindness.” Sir Charles Mordaunt’s account continued: “She sat silent for a quarter of an hour, then burst into tears and said, ‘Charlie, I have been very wicked; I have done very wrong.’ I said, ‘Who with?’ She said, ‘With Lord Cole, the Prince of Wales and others, often, and in open day.’”1 Lady Mordaunt, however, was declared mad by her father and a number of doctors. This, combined with the Prince appearing in the witness-box and denying on oath that there had ever been anything impr
oper in his association with her—a denial which was greeted with a burst of applause in the court—resulted in the husband losing his case.[1] But the incident did the Prince’s reputation a great deal of harm, and was one of the factors, ironically enough, which made it possible for Dilke to mount his republican offensive of the following year.
Earlier there had been cases, not involving divorce, but touching a politician as prominent as Lord Melbourne. Melbourne had twice appeared in the courts, once while Prime Minister, and had denied, with legal success if not with complete public acceptance, allegations concerning his relationship with Lady Branden (an Irish peeress) and Mrs. George Norton. But the ’eighties were a different decade from the ’thirties. The Court had become much more puritanical, and, more important for Dilke, middle-class nonconformity had become an essential ally of the Liberal party. When the Parnell case broke five years later, Gladstone, Harcourt and Morley forced the Irish party to renounce its leader, not because they were shocked by his adulterous relationship with Mrs. O’Shea, of which they had known for at least seven years, but because of the feelings of the National Liberal Federation, which was in session at Sheffield, and the thunderings of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes.
Quite apart from any changes in the moral climate, however, Dilke’s position was much more vulnerable than Melbourne’s had been. To many people he was still a dangerous radical, and an ally of that even more objectionable politician, Chamberlain. If he could be ruined what a blow it would be to the left-wing forces in the Liberal party and how much less potent would appear the dreadful doctrines which Chamberlain had enunciated in the Unauthorised Programme. This was the reasoning of many people who, in other circumstances, would have been Dilke’s natural defenders against the moralists. Furthermore, the Queen and her entourage were most willing to take the blackest view of his actions. Even before the charges were made she had received him into the Cabinet only with the greatest reluctance. How right she had been! How gratifying to discover that radical views and a republican past were associated with the blackest moral turpitude. No doubt the Queen would have looked askance at anyone who had become involved in divorce court proceedings, but she would have been a good deal more inclined to make excuses for, say, Hartington than for Dilke.
