by Roy Jenkins
The letter ended: “Yours very truly, J. Chamberlain,” a form which he had not used in his correspondence with Dilke for many years past.
Dilke replied at length and with pained agitation on May
“I need not say to you who know what I am what it has been to receive from you a letter which ends with a form of words intended to be cold by the side of that which for so great a number of years you have used to me. Your letter must have been written just at the moment when I was trying to express something of what I owe to your affection, which it seems that at this very time I had lost. . . . I care so much (not about what you name, and it is a pity that you should do so, for one word of yourself is worth more with me than the opinion of the whole world)—not about what people will say, but about what you think, that I am driven distracted by your tone. I beg you to think that I do not consider myself in this at all, except that I should wish to so act as to act rightly. . . . My seat here will go, either way, for certain, as it is a Tory seat now, and will become a more and more Tory seat with each fresh registration. If I should make any attempt to remain at all in political life, I do not think that my finding another seat would depend on the course I take in this present Irish matter. This thing will be forgotten in the common resistance of the Radicals to Tory coercion. . . . As to inclination, I feel as strongly as any man can as to the way in which Mr. Gladstone has done this thing, and all my inclination is therefore to follow you, where affection also leads. But if this is to be—what it will be—a fight, not as to the way and the man and the past, but as to the future, the second reading will be a choice between acceptance of a vast change which has in one form or the other become inevitable, and on the other side Hartington-Goschen opposition, with coercion behind it. I am only a camp follower now, but my place is not in the camp of the Goschens, Hartingtons, Brands, Heneages, Greys. I owe something, too, to my constituents. . . . If I voted against the second reading, unable as I should be honestly to defend my vote as you could and would honestly defend yours, by saying that all turned on the promise as to the retention of the Irish members, I should be voting without a ground or a defence, except that of personal affection for you, which is one which it is wholly impossible to put forward.”24
Chamberlain wrote again the next day. It was a letter which began with a half apology—“I must have said more than I supposed, and perhaps in the worry of my own mind I did not allow enough for the tension of yours”—and finished “Yours ever sincerely,” which, while it was not his usual ending, could at least be considered an improvement on “Yours very truly.” But he was still full of complaint against those who would not agree with him, combining this, however, with a self-confident appreciation of his own political future: “On the whole—and in spite of all unfavourable symptoms—I think I shall win this fight, and shall have in the long run an increase of public influence!”25
Thereafter the correspondence dragged on for several weeks, but there was no longer any hope of its promoting real agreement. Sometimes it was acrimonious (on Chamberlain’s side at least), and sometimes it was apologetic. Thus, on May 20th, Chamberlain complained bitterly about some of the speeches at a meeting of the London Liberal and Radical Council, over which Dilke had presided; but on the next day he wrote: “Your note makes everything right between us. Let us agree to consider everything which is said and done for the next few weeks as a dream.”26 During this period, however, Chamberlain was moved steadily away from the course which Dilke hoped he might follow. On May 16th, although racked with toothache, he attended a meeting of Hartington’s supporters at Devonshire House and advised Whigs and radicals to sink their differences in a policy of common resistance to Gladstone. On May 27th he refused to attend a meeting of the Liberal Parliamentary party which the Prime Minister had summoned at the Foreign Office. On May 31st he held his own decisive meeting of dissentient radicals in a committee room of the House of Commons. Of an attendance of a little more than fifty, forty-eight pronounced in favour of a straight vote against the second reading. In view of this, concessions by the Prime Minister on the retention of Irish members at Westminster would have been of little moment. They were not in any event forthcoming. Gladstone was unwilling to risk alienating Parnell for the doubtful prospect of conciliating Chamberlain. The vote in the House took place at one o’clock on the morning of June 8th. Chamberlain went into the “No” lobby with 92 other Liberals—46 of them his own radical followers—and 250 Tories. Dilke went into the “Aye” lobby with 229 other Gladstonians and 83 Irish Nationalists. The bill was defeated by a majority of thirty, and the third Gladstone Government, having failed in the sole task which it had set itself, was effectively at an end. So was the Dilke-Chamberlain political partnership.
Dissolution followed almost at once, and Dilke set about the task, which he would have regarded as hopeless even had his energies not been otherwise engaged, of defending Chelsea. His result there was declared on July 5th. He was out by 4,304 votes to 4,128. If anything this was better than he had expected. “The turnover in Chelsea was very small, smaller than anywhere else in the neighbourhood, and showed that personal considerations had told in my favour, in as much as we gained but a small number of Irish, it not being an Irish district, and had it not been for personal considerations should have lost more Liberal Unionists than we did.”27 This was a reasonable appraisal, and one which was fortified by comments in many of the letters of commiseration which reached Dilke. “No one but your husband could have polled so many Gladstonian votes,” Sir Henry James wrote to Lady Dilke. “London is dead against the Prime Minister.”28
Even if we discount a little both this and Dilke’s own comment it is clear that the seat was not lost because of the divorce case. Nevertheless, the case meant that it was lost at a time when it would be exceedingly difficult to find another. The situation was quite different from that which prevailed in 1878 when Dilke was receiving pressing offers to stand for Manchester, or in 1884 when he could have chosen any part of the old Chelsea division. Furthermore, for a man in middle age to lose a seat which he has held since the age of twenty-five is at the best of times a considerable blow. When it happens eleven days before the commencement of legal proceedings upon which his whole future depends and the omens for which look increasingly dark, it is apt to seem an almost insupportable further trial. It is not surprising that he awaited the outcome with deep foreboding.
“I had at this moment,” he wrote of the period between the election and the opening of the case, “through worry fallen into a condition of mental despondency. . . . I had made up my mind that untruth would triumph, that Stead, who had been professing to be strongly friendly to me since the Queen’s Proctor’s intervention had been asked for by myself, as he professed on his bidding, would turn round and insist on my prosecution for perjury; and, lastly, that in the then state of London opinion I should be convicted by a London special jury, and sent to penal servitude away from my brave and devoted wife for as many years as my strength might last—till death in fact.”29
This was the mood in which Dilke presented himself at the Law Courts on the morning of Friday, July 16th.
Chapter Thirteen
The Case for Dilke
The Case was heard before Sir James Hannen (who was referred to in the transcript as “the Right Honourable the President”[1]) and a special jury. The Queen’s Proctor was represented by Sir Walter Phillimore, Q.C., H. Bargrave Deane and Marshall Hall, the last-named then so junior that he was allowed to take no part in the proceedings. For Crawford there appeared Henry Matthews, Q.C., Inderwick, Q.C. (who had led in the first trial) and R. S. Wright. Mrs. Crawford had Lockwood, Q.C., and H. F. Thompson. Murphy, Q.C., held a watching brief for what was rather mysteriously referred to as “a person interested in the proceedings” and who was in fact Captain Forster. Dilke was described by The Times as having been refused leave to appear, but as “sitting in court with the Attorney General, Q.C., the Rt. Hon. Sir Henry James, Q.C., and Mr. Searle.” The
array of legal talent was formidable. The court, it need hardly be said, was crowded to the doors.
Almost at the beginning the odds were further weighted against Dilke. At the conclusion of his opening speech Sir Walter Phillimore proposed that Mrs. Crawford should immediately be put into the witness-box. The following interchange then took place:
The Right Hon. the President: “No, you must leave that entirely to me.”
Sir W. Phillimore: “Then I shall have to ask your Lordship at what time Mrs. Crawford shall be called, and certainly I shall have to ask that Sir Charles Dilke shall not be called until after Mrs. Crawford.”
The President: “I may say at once I cannot assent to that. The issue lies on the Queen’s Proctor to lay such evidence before the Jury as he thinks will establish the case.”
Sir W. Phillimore: “If your Lordship pleases. Then that is a settled matter which was a matter of some difficulty in my mind with regard to the conduct of this case.”
No decision could have underlined more thoroughly the curious form which this second trial was to take, or done more to undermine Dilke’s interests. Had the form of the case coincided with its substance—was Dilke guilty of the accusations made against him or was he not—the natural course would have been for Mrs. Crawford to specify her charges, for Dilke to answer them as best he could, and for the court to decide between them. The reversal of this procedure meant that Dilke in his evidence had to seek to controvert allegations before they were fully made and to demonstrate, not merely that specific charges were false, but that he could never have had an adulterous relationship with Mrs, Crawford. Furthermore, Mrs. Crawford was given the inestimable advantage, if she wished to fabricate a story, of sitting in court and hearing Dilke’s defence before she formulated her attack. She could, if she desired, shape her evidence to circumnavigate his rebuttals.
Before Dilke was put into the box the evidence given at the first trial was read to the court, and so were the last two anonymous letters which Crawford had received, together with a correspondence between Mrs. Crawford and Crawford’s solicitor, Stewart, all of which had been “put in” in February. The correspondence had taken place in July, 1885, after Mrs. Crawford’s confession to her husband, when Stewart was endeavouring to persuade her to go to his office and make a written statement. This she hesitated to do, and Stewart attempted pressure, first by informing her that Dilke denied the charges and alleged a conspiracy, which allegation she would have to meet. She replied to this by writing: “I am horribly frightened at the prospect of Sir Charles Dilke fighting the case, as it complicates it so dreadfully.” Stewart then adopted a more threatening tone.
“I wish to say,” he wrote, “that your husband is resolved, at all costs, to obtain a divorce, and that it will depend on you whether it is obtained quietly, without unnecessary exposure and without implicating others, or after offensive investigations, and with the painful, but unavoidable necessity of making charges against many others whom you may wish to protect—I mean female relations of your own—and another co-respondent, Captain Forster. It will depend on you, therefore, which course is adopted. If you will assist in supplying the necessary information, a great deal which is painful to yourself and incriminating (to) others will be avoided, which will not be the case otherwise.”
Dilke then took the stand. For the remainder of the morning and a short time after the luncheon adjournment he was examined-in-chief by Phillimore. Early in the afternoon his cross-examination by Matthews began and was continued for the remainder of the day and for a short time on the Saturday morning. Matthews asked him 453 questions. Phillimore then re-examined him for half an hour.
Dilke was an almost impossibly bad witness.[2] He was vague in his recollection of simple facts, he was full of verbose explanations, and he showed an extreme reluctance to answer a question with a straightforward affirmative or negative. His favourite method of denying a fact was to omit to say “no” but to explain why it was inherently improbable. The interventions of the President during the examination-in-chief indicate the way things were going. “Sir Walter, I think you must put the question,” Hannen said after a quarter of an hour. “It is natural that Sir Charles should go into the question with greater detail than is necessary.” Half an hour later he interjected again: “It will be much better if Sir Charles allows himself to be conducted by you in the material parts of the case. All the details of the business of the House of Commons are immaterial. It is the time he was there.” And then again: “We do not want the reasons.” .
The examination-in-chief was directed to meeting the points put forward by Mrs. Crawford in her proof. It dealt with six principal issues. The first was Dilke’s degree of acquaintanceship with Mrs. Crawford. He had known her slightly as a child, when she was probably brought to 76, Sloane Street by her parents to call upon Mrs. Chatfield, Dilke’s grandmother. He believed that he had not attended her wedding, but he might have paid a family call on her at Bailey’s Hotel some time afterwards, although he had no distinct recollection of this. He might also have called once at the Crawfords’ house in Sydney Place during the session of 1882, but he had no recollection of the interior of the house, and believed they were not at home. Mrs. Crawford, he thought, had called at Sloane Street on perhaps two or three occasions in the years 1882-5, while he was at breakfast between 11 o’clock and 11-30, which was the normal time for family and other callers. That was all. There had certainly been no impropriety between them.
The second issue was that of the house off the Tottenham Court Road where Mrs. Crawford alleged that Dilke had taken her, and the address of which—65, Warren Street—she had specified in her proof. Dilke said that he knew the house well, although he had certainly not taken Mrs. Crawford there. It was the house where Anna Dessouslavy, a Swiss woman who was a pensioner of the Dilke family, lodged. The pension had been originally granted to Rosalie Dessouslavy, Anna’s elder sister, who had been twenty-three years in the service of the family, and had been Dilke’s own nurse. She had lived to enjoy it only for two years, and it had then been transferred, by Dilke himself, to Anna. Anna had at times assisted in the nursery and had returned to the Dilke household, in which two of her younger sisters had also at times been employed, when she was out of a job elsewhere. Her health had become bad, and Dilke used to call upon her at Warren Street perhaps once or twice a year.
The third issue was that of Dilke’s general pattern of life and the domestic arrangements at 76, Sloane Street. The point here was whether Mrs. Crawford’s statements were to prove compatible with these. Dilke described his day as beginning with the newspapers and tea being brought up to his room, followed by the arrival of the fencing party at 10 o’clock. This consisted (besides himself) of the fencing master and an average of two or three other people, who came without notice, as they chose, for the invitation was a general one. The fencing took place on a terrace at the back of the house if the weather were fine, or in the dining-room which led on to it if it were wet. It lasted until 11 o’clock. Dilke did not fence all the time, but used to spend part of the hour sitting in the dining-room reading Foreign Office telegrams which were brought to him by messenger. The messengers, several of whom would come on a normal morning, used to sit in the hall waiting to take the telegrams on to the next person on the list. In addition, one of his two footmen used invariably to be on duty in the hall, for the period from 10 to 11-30 was a busy one, with the arrival of the fencers, the messengers and other callers causing the door-bell to be constantly rung. When he joined the Cabinet at the end of 1882 he continued to see the telegrams; and the Foreign Office messengers were supplemented by others from 10, Downing Street and the Local Government Board.
By 11 o’clock Dilke would have dressed himself, and from then until 11-30 he breakfasted in the room adjoining the dining-room at the front of the house. During the meal he continued to read telegrams and deal with work prepared by his private secretary, Bodley, as well as to see callers, who frequently came at this hour. At
11-30, according to a standing order, his coachman brought his brougham to the front of the house, and at this time or a few minutes later he left home. As a rule he drove straight to the Foreign Office (or later the Local Government Board), but he occasionally paid brief calls before doing so.
He usually remained at his office until it was time to go across to the House of Commons, which met at 4-30; sometimes, if the pressure of work were light, he would go out to luncheon. In the evenings, if he were dining away from the House of Commons, he would dress in his room there, or if the House were not in session in his room at the Foreign Office or the Local Government Board. He rarely returned to his own house until late at night.
This house he described as being “a very old house” with only one staircase. On the first half-landing was the “blue room,” which had curtains and no door, and into which callers were normally shown. On the first floor proper were two drawing-rooms, leading into each other and again without doors. Above the blue room was Bodley’s room, which looked straight out to the staircase. This room had a door, but it was invariably left open. Off the passage-way leading to it was another, smaller and doorless room which was used by Ireland, Bodley’s clerk. Ireland used to arrive at about eight in the morning, Bodley somewhat later, but before Dilke was up. Above the drawing-rooms were a suite of three rooms which were used by Dilke’s son when he was at home (which was not often) or by Dilke’s great-uncle when he came from Chichester to pay his one month’s annual visit. On the third half-landing, above Bodley’s room, was Dilke’s own sitting-room, which he chiefly used for keeping his letters and other papers. Then, above his son’s suite, came his own bedroom, together with another, unused room, which communicated with it, but which was kept locked. On the floor above, the top floor, were the servants’ quarters.
