by Roy Jenkins
Furthermore, the big towns—particularly London, Liverpool and Manchester—swung heavily against Gladstone at this election. A few days before the beginning of the campaign, Parnell, after several weeks of hesitation, decided that he preferred the prospect held out by Lord Salisbury’s Newport speech to that which emerged from Mr. Gladstone’s tortuous Hawarden letter-writing, and instructed the Irish in England to vote against the Liberals. This decision is generally thought to have swung up to forty urban seats to the Tories. In the counties the movement was the other way. The newly enfranchised electors were not much interested in Ireland, and they went mostly for the party which had given them the vote. On balance, however, the Liberals emerged from the election in a weaker position than they had achieved in 1880. Then they had 347 seats and an absolute majority of 42 over any possible alliance of Conservatives and Irishmen. In 1885 they had 335 seats, which was enough to equal, but not to surpass, the combined Tory and Parnellite vote. In Chelsea, Dilke polled 4,291 against 4,116 for his Conservative opponent.
This result was declared on November 25th. Some of the others dragged on until the third week in December. But the general pattern was clear by the beginning of the month and a most complicated manoeuvring for position then set in.
During the week-end of December 5th-7th the radicals—Chamberlain, Dilke, Shaw Lefevre and Morley—met in conclave at Highbury. Chamberlain was in a difficult mood. He had brooded over his grievances against the Irish for six months, he was disappointed and embittered by the result of the election (which added to his anti-Irish feeling), and he felt no glimmer of loyalty towards Gladstone. Indeed his opportunist pro-Gladstone feeling, which he had shared with Dilke during the previous summer, had largely evaporated by the early autumn. Correspondence in September convinced him that Gladstone would never accept the greater part of the radical programme. Furthermore, the G.O.M. was becoming much too preoccupied with Ireland for Chamberlain’s post-Warrington taste. These suspicions were not lessened when Gladstone unexpectedly summoned Chamberlain to spend a few days with him at Hawarden in early October.[10] The visit was not a great success, for both the habits of life and methods of thought of the two men were too dissimilar for easy contact. It ended without Gladstone having confided his new thoughts about Ireland to his guest.
When the radical cabal assembled, therefore, Chamberlain’s mood was one of unwillingness to promote a third Gladstone premiership. He thought it better for the Liberals to sort out their differences in opposition than to take office dependent upon Irish votes. Indeed he had written to Dilke a week before saying, “I should like the Tories to be in for a couple of years before we try again, and then I should ‘go for the Church.’”17 This offered no basis for agreement at Highbury. No one except Chamberlain himself wanted to hitch the radical wagon to the star of disestablishment, and Morley at least was preparing to give enthusiastic support to Gladstone’s Irish policy.
Dilke, however, was moved by the Highbury discussions to give public expression in an extreme form to the Chamberlain view. On December 12th he addressed the Eleusis Club in Chelsea and argued strongly, on radical grounds, in the favour of keeping the Tories in. This meant shelving Gladstone, and it directly provoked a counter move from the leader’s camp. Gladstone himself remained isolated at Hawarden, but on December 14th Herbert Gladstone went to London and, on his own initiative, announced to the press his father’s conversion to Home Rule. This flying of the “Har-warden Kite,” as it was known, was directly attributed to Dilke’s speech, and further exacerbated Gladstone-Chamberlain relations. By the turn of the year Chamberlain had come down still more decidedly in opposition to his nominal leader. “For myself I would sooner the Tories were in for the next ten years,” he wrote to Dilke on December 27th, “than agree to what I think the ruin of the country.”18
What accounts for the sudden switch of the radicals between the summer when they wanted to keep Gladstone because he could deal with Ireland, and the autumn when they wanted to get rid of him for the same reason? In Dilke’s case it was not due to a sharp revulsion from Home Rule. Indeed he subsequently attributed his Eleusis Club speech to his failure to realise “how far Mr. Gladstone was willing to go in the Home Rule direction” and to a consequent underestimate of the chances of “securing the real support of the Irish party.”19 This was an ex post facto explanation, although supported by the facts that at the Eleusis Club Dilke went rather too far for Chamberlain, but that six days later, when he had seen the “Hawarden Kite” and knew of an even more decisive letter which Gladstone had written to Hartington, he did not go far enough. In this second speech Dilke announced “that we ought not to allow ourselves to be driven either forward or backward from the principles we have put forward with regard to Ireland, and that our course should be to continue to propose the measures which we had previously proposed without reference to the Parnellite support of conservative candidates.”20 This earned from Chamberlain the cool comment: “Your own speech was most judicious.”
Chamberlain was able to carry Dilke with him in his fear that Gladstone’s obsession with the Irish problem might lead to the formation of a purely “Home Rule” government which would have no time for constructive radicalism at home, but not in his growing opposition to Home Rule as such.
What emerges most clearly from their interchanges of this period, however, is not the extent to which Dilke was in agreement or disagreement with Chamberlain but the collapse of his influence. This was partly because he was not consulted by the leadership. Gladstone, who in the previous few years had conducted most of his negotiations with the radical wing through Dilke, began to deal with Chamberlain instead. In the early autumn correspondence between Hawarden and Highbury had become much more frequent, even if not noticeably more intimate; but this led more to misunderstanding than to a meeting of minds.
Much of the decline in Dilke’s influence, however, came less from the actions of others than from the growth of his own abstraction. He had always been a less profuse letter-writer than Chamberlain, but this had never previously made him a passive participant in the correspondence. It had been his habit to return hard, sharp answers, forcibly expressing his own point of view. But from the letters of this autumn there emerges the impression of a flood of tentative views from Chamberlain breaking over the head of an almost indifferent Dilke. The importance of this can hardly be exaggerated. With Dilke either indifferent or making occasional rather thoughdess interventions—as at the Eleusis Club—Chamberlain’s old dislike of Gladstone and new dislike of the Irish were given a free rein. The consequences of this determined the course of English politics for the next twenty years.
On New Year’s Day, 1886, Chamberlain arranged a quadripartite meeting at Devonshire House. The other participants were Hartington, Harcourt and Dilke. Dilke described the meeting in the following terms:
“I did not see my way clearly, and did not say much; the other three arguing strongly against Mr. Gladstone’s conduct in having sent Herbert Gladstone to a news agency to let out his views for the benefit of the provincial press in such a way as to put pressure on his colleagues. It seemed to me that the pressure, though no doubt unfair and indefensible, had nevertheless been pretty successful, as neither Harcourt nor Chamberlain saw their way to opposing Mr. Gladstone, although both of them disliked his scheme. Hartington only said that he ‘thought he could not join a Government to promote any such scheme.’”21
At this stage, therefore, the alignment was that Hartington was firmest in his opposition, that Chamberlain and Harcourt were disaffected but more uncertain, and that Dilke was most inclined, although perhaps without enthusiasm, to go along with Gladstone. Chamberlain was forging no alliance with Hartington, but the mere fact that the meeting had taken place showed that he had moved a little since December 17th, when he could still write: “The Whigs are our greatest enemies.”
On January 11th Gladstone at last came to London. A few days later there was a meeting of Liberal leaders at 21, Carlto
n House Terrace, where the G.O.M., always ready to borrow a house, had temporarily established himself. Chamberlain was out of London, but Dilke attended, although, in his own view, he was not welcomed by Gladstone.
“I know you think me over-sensitive, but you’ve not tried what it is,” he wrote to Chamberlain on January 18th. “After Hartington’s second very kind note I thought I ought to go, but I was not wanted; I got there with Grosvenor and Harcourt, and I heard Mr. G. whisper to Harcourt, ‘This is very awkward. ‘That’s a pleasant position to be put in. . . . Please let Harcourt know that I did not thrust myself in at 21, Carlton House Terrace, but went on two very kind letters of Hartington, which grew out of the Devonshire House meeting.”22
Despite this discouraging reception Dilke attended another similar meeting of ex-Cabinet ministers at Lord Granville’s on January 21st. By this time Parliament had met, the Queen’s Speech had been presented, and Salisbury seemed prepared to carry on. Chamberlain and Dilke would still like to have kept the Conservatives in for some time—a course which was obviously in Dilke’s personal interest and which would have postponed Chamberlain’s final decision about Ireland—but they decided that this was no longer possible. The best that could be done was to avoid turning the Government out on an Irish amendment. With this end in view the two radicals drew up the “three acres and a cow” amendment, which was quickly accepted by the meeting on January 21st. Five days later it was moved by Jesse Collings. Gladstone was then convinced that it was his duty to return to office. Earlier that day Hicks Beach had announced a new coercion bill. This led Gladstone to tell Harcourt that he was prepared to go ahead without Hartington, without Chamberlain, if necessary without anybody. Late that night the Collings amendment was put to the vote, and although Hartington, Goschen, James and fifteen other Liberals voted with the Tories, the Government was defeated by seventy-four. Salisbury resigned on the following day, and Gladstone kissed hands for the third time on January 30th.
Neither the weakness of his parliamentary position nor the magnitude of his Irish task made the new Prime Minister zealous in his cultivation of the radicals. Perhaps he thought it was enough to have John Morley as Chief Secretary. Chamberlain was first offered the Admiralty, but was reluctant to accept, partly because he was unattracted by the post itself and partly because he was asked to commit himself to an enquiry into the possibility of Home Rule, although to nothing more. On the following day, after consultation with Dilke, who was clear that he ought to join in some capacity, Chamberlain saw Gladstone and asked for the Colonial Office. The Prime Minister’s reply was a classical example of his ineptitude in dealing with Chamberlain. “Oh!” he said with surprise, “a Secretary of State.” “Chamberlain is furious and will never forgive the slight,”23 Dilke recorded. Nevertheless, without forgiveness and with personal resentment added to political misgiving, Chamberlain did join the Government. On February 1st he accepted Dilke’s old post as President of the Local Government Board.
No offer was made to Dilke himself. His case was due to be heard as soon as February 12th, but Gladstone made no effort to hold a post vacant against the possibility that his name might be cleared. Instead he wrote a courteous but unyielding letter.
February 2nd, 1886
My dear Dilke,
I write you, on this first day of my going regularly to my arduous work, to express my profound regret that any circumstances of the moment should deprive me of the opportunity and the hope of enlisting on behalf of a new Government the great capacity which you have proved in a variety of spheres and forms for rendering good and great service to Grown and country.
You will well understand how absolutely recognition on my part of an external barrier is separate from any want of inward confidence, the last idea I should wish to convey.
Nor can I close without fervently expressing to you my desire that there may be reserved for you a long and honourable career of public distinction.
Believe me always,
Yours sincerely,
W. E. Gladstone24
Dilke received this letter with reasonably good grace—better than that with which Chamberlain had accepted the Local Government Board—and returned a friendly answer to Gladstone. But his exclusion was damaging not only to his political prospects but also to his private reputation. It created in the public mind a greater presumption of his guilt than had hitherto existed; and he can hardly have failed to reflect on the mischance that the formation of the Government could not have been delayed for two weeks. Had this been so, and had he in the interval secured even a formal verdict in his favour, it would have been much more difficult to exclude him. But the mischance occurred, and the exclusion took place. What it meant to Dilke emerges most clearly from a letter which he wrote to Chamberlain immediately after the latter’s acceptance of office:
“I feel that our friendship is going to be subjected to the heaviest strain it has ever borne, and I wish to minimise any risks to it, in which, however, I don’t believe. I am determined that it shall not dwindle into a form or pretence of friendship of which the substance has departed. It will be a great change if I do not feel that I can go to your house or to your room as freely as ever. At the same time confidence from one in the inner circle of the Cabinet to one wholly outside the Government is not easy, and reserve makes all conversation untrue. . . . I intend to sit behind (in Forster’s seat), not below the gangway, as long as you are in the Government. There is one great favour which I think you will be able to do me without any trouble to yourself, and that is to let my wife come to your room to see me between her lunch and the meeting of the House.[11] The greatest nuisance about being out is that I shall have to go down in the mornings to get my place, and sit in the library all day. . . .”25
At this stage, however, Dilke’s thoughts were too concerned with what was about to happen at the Law Courts to be much occupied with events either at Westminster or in Whitehall.
Chapter Twelve
An Inconclusive Verdict
The Case of Crawford v. Crawford and Dilke was heard before Mr. Justice Butt on Friday, February 12th. Dilke appeared with a formidable array of legal and personal advisers. Sir Henry James, out of office like Dilke himself, although for different reasons, remained his principal but unpaid counsellor. James’s skill and experience, however, were fortified by those of Sir Charles Russell, who had been appointed Attorney General ten days before[1] and who was then the foremost advocate at the Bar. Russell had more divorce court experience than James. But he did not stand in the same position of friendship to Dilke, and his services were not available for nothing. On the contrary, his brief was marked with the figure, phenomenal for those days, of 300 guineas; and the junior, Searle, had in consequence to be rewarded with a proportionate fee. Chamberlain was also in court, to give support and to be available for consultation on any nontechnical point.
During the morning Crawford went into the box, and was led by his counsel through the confession which had been made to him. Mrs. Crawford was not in Court. Two witnesses only were called to offer corroborative evidence. The first was Anne Jamieson, who had been parlourmaid in the Crawfords’ house from the beginning of 1882. She stated that, in February, 1883, when Crawford came to London later than his wife, Mrs. Crawford spent the two intervening nights away from home, returning on the first occasion at about 7-30 in the morning, and on the second at some unspecified hour. Anne Jamieson also said that, during the session of 1883, she remembered Sir Charles Dilke paying a series of morning calls upon Mrs. Crawford. He came about once a fortnight at noon or 12-30. The visits lasted approximately half an hour, and while he was there his carriage waited in the street. Mrs. Crawford received him in the ground-floor drawing-room and gave orders that, during the visit, no one was to be admitted. Under cross-examination by Russell, Anne Jamieson said that Mrs. Crawford, in July, 1885, had told her “to tell Mr. Crawford all that I knew about Sir Charles Dilke.” She also admitted a series of visits to the house from Captain Forster, fi
rst stating that these began in 1883, but later correcting this to 1884.
The second witness was George Ball, who had been butler to Mrs. Harrison, one of Mrs. Crawford’s elder sisters, at her house in Cromwell Road. Mrs. Crawford had told Anne Jamieson that she had spent the nights away from home at this house. Ball was called in order to refute this. He was not cross-examined.
This was the case for the plaintiff, and it was one which put Dilke and his advisers in a position, as it appeared to them, of extreme difficulty. No evidence of any legal force had been offered against Dilke. This was fully recognised by Mr. Justice Butt. In the course of his summing-up he was to say: “I cannot see any case whatever against Sir Charles Dilke. By the law of England, a statement made by one party in the suit—a statement made not in the presence of the other—cannot be evidence against that other. I cannot see the shadow of a case.”1 In these circumstances, should Dilke be put into the witness-box to deny upon oath the uncorroborated story which Mrs. Crawford had told to her husband and which he had repeated to the court? There was no legal advantage to be gained. The purpose of such a course would be to convince the public not the judge. But there were two objections. The first was the belief, held by all Dilke’s legal advisers and expressed by Russell, that if their client went into the box he would be open to cross-examination about the whole of his past life and about his relations with Mrs. Crawford’s mother in particular; and the fact that Crawford was known to have spent a good deal of money—employing two men and two women in the task——trying to hunt up pre-1882 evidence against Dilke’s general character may have added to their fear. But it was a curious fear, for there seems no doubt that under the rules of evidence as they existed in 1886 (and as they exist to-day) such questions would have been inadmissible. They would have dealt with matters not at issue and, as such, were excluded by the Evidence Further Amendment Act of 1869.[2] If Dilke had been asked about his adultery with Mrs. Eustace Smith an objection from Sir Charles Russell would almost certainly have been enough to rule out the question.[3]
