Dilke

by Roy Jenkins

  Q.: Have you any document, or any entry, that will show at what hour you reached the Foreign Office that day?

  A.: No. With regard to that, or any specified day, I have a great many letters passing between Lord Granville and myself.

  Q.: You have nothing whatever in writing to show what hour you reached the Foreign Office that day?

  A.: I have a great many letters passing between Lord Granville and myself which will show that the answers to the questions were settled in the morning.

  Q.: Show me anything to fix the hour at which you arrived at the Foreign Office.

  A.: No, nothing will fix the hour; they only show that I was there before the levée and did a great deal of work.

  Q.: Whom did you first see when you arrived at the Foreign Office?

  A.: Always my private secretary; he was the first person I should see.

  Q.: Is there any person you can mention as having seen earlier?

  A.: It is impossible for me to fix the first person I saw any day.

  Q.: Then you cannot fix it.

  Matthews did not cross-examine on the evidence about February 13th and 14th, 1883, the only other dates mentioned in Mrs. Crawford’s proof, but he introduced several new dates, the 5th and 6th of May, and December 7th, 1882. “Where were you on the 5th or 6th May, 1882?” he asked suddenly. Dilke immediately applied for the President’s protection. This was a date which had not been mentioned in the examination-in-chief. Surely he ought not to fix the hours before Mrs. Crawford had given her evidence? Phillimore supported him. “I do think, my Lord,” he said, “that considering the nature of the cross-examination, and of certain questions I shall have to address to Mrs. Crawford, your Lordship ought to hesitate before hearing the defence on that part of the case before the attack.” But the President gave no help. Indeed by this stage his hostility to Dilke had become marked: “I must conduct the case on known principles,” he replied. “I know of no principle on which I can exclude this cross-examination.”

  The witness: Of course I shall take your Lordship’s direction absolutely. Shall I state the matter definitely as to hours?

  The President: Be kind enough to answer the questions put to you; that is the only advice I can give you; if any improper questions are put to you the learned counsel who represents the Queen’s Proctor will take the objection, but until that objection is taken you must answer.

  The witness: Of course I shall do what I am directed, the reason I was going to give——

  The President: You must excuse me. I do not desire to hear any reason from you except it be in explanation of a question which is put to you.”

  The cross-examination continued. Matthews concentrated on May 6th and having asked to see Dilke’s diary for that day found the following entries: “Earle,” “Duchess,” “Greenwich dinner,” and “Evening party.” He was most interested in the morning; and, having discovered that “Earle” meant a luncheon engagement at Mrs. Charles Earle’s in Bryanston Square at 1-30 or 1-45 and that Dilke had left home by 11-45, he thought he had discovered a lacuna. But Dilke explained it by saying that he had gone to Mrs. Earle’s at twelve o’clock in order to meet his present wife who was staying there and who had returned from France that morning.[5] Dilke was also able to volunteer the fact that May 6th was the day of the Phoenix Park murders and, for this reason, was particularly clearly fixed in his mind.

  Matthews then asked, rather casually, about May 4th and May 5th, and in looking at the entry for one of these days was struck by the condition of the diary. It was remarkable, like that of all Dilke’s engagement books, for many years both previously and subsequently. His habit was to buy these books in half-yearly units, with a large page to each day and a perforation running down the centre. Entries were made in duplicate, and at the beginning of each day one side of the page was torn off to be carried about by Dilke and destroyed when the day was past, while the other remained on a table in Bodley’s room and was kept as a permanent record. In addition, however, the permanent pages were frequently lacerated, sometimes by the excision of large segments, sometimes by the cutting out of neat little circular holes. It was an unfortunate habit for someone who was to appear in the Divorce Court, and it excited a good deal of incredulous questioning from both Matthews and the President:

  Mr. Matthews: I suppose these pieces have been cut out since?

  A.: I always reduce it in bulk as much as possible. It is done in the morning, and I cut it so as to make it as small as possible.

  Q.: Do you mean you cut holes like that?

  A.: Yes; it would be an engagement that has gone off.

  Q.: You mean that when an engagement goes off you cut a hole like that.

  A.: Yes; you will find it done everywhere.

  Q.: What do you mean by an engagement going off?

  A.: I mean to say if I have made an engagement to see a person, and that person did not come, I should cut it out.

  The President: Do I understand you to say that you carried that very book which we see out with you?

  A.: No.

  The President: Then I do not very well see why it is necessary to cut it so as to reduce it in bulk as you say.

  A.: Because it goes into my letter-box; if you like to send to my house now you can get any of my boxes.

  Mr. Matthews: When was it you cut the holes?

  A.: If any of my engagements go off, I take the scissors and cut it out.

  Q.: You sit down with scissors or a penknife and cut it out and cut holes in your diary?

  A.: I should naturally cut it out, not cutting the diary through—cutting the part off—I should cut it out.

  Q.: If I really understood you rightly that because an engagement goes off, instead of just striking a pen or pencil through it, you would sit down with a penknife and cut a hole in it like that?

  A.: I sometimes strike a pencil through it, but the blot of a pen is a trouble. I always sit with scissors by my side.

  It all sounded most unconvincing and helped to deepen the bad impression which Dilke had already created. In fact, however, it was undoubtedly a habit of long standing, in which Dilke indulged freely and publicly, certainly in front of Bodley and Ireland. In later years he habitually sat in the House of Commons library with a pair of scissors at his side, and his passion for laceration (or “reducing the bulk,” as he would have called it) was such that he frequently cut off the tops and bottoms of letters, without disturbing the text, before putting them away for keeping.

  December 7th, 1882, was the other new date which Matthews suggested. Dilke in answering first looked at his diary for the previous year and denied that he was in England. Matthews put him right with unconcealed pleasure—“Just think, Sir Charles”—and then elucidated that he had met Harcourt to discuss the Government of London Bill in the morning and had dined at 143, Piccadilly, in the evening. Dilke obviously had no idea what was being alleged for this day, but Matthews eventually put the point to him direct—asking whether he had met Mrs. Crawford in Hans Place that evening and taken her home with him—and received a clear denial.

  The next point upon which Matthews decided to cast doubt—and managed again to get the witness floundering—was the plausibility of the degree of acquaintanceship with Mrs. Crawford to which Dilke admitted.

  Q.: This was a young married woman with whom, as you say, your relations had been extremely slight since her marriage. What did she come to see you for in the morning?

  A.: We got to know each other better, as I had seen her, as I said, some two or three times a year, and her sister, Mrs. Dilke, used occasionally to call on me in the morning.

  Q.: I am not asking you about her sister, Mrs. Dilke, but Mrs. Crawford; what on earth did Mrs. Crawford, a young married woman, come to the house of a bachelor about eleven o’clock for?

  A.: She looked upon me as I looked upon her, I should think, as a member of the family.

  Q.: Looked upon you as a member of her family. Did you ever speak of these visits to Mr. Cr
awford?

  A.: Whenever I met him after I always asked after her by her Christian name.

  Q.: Sir Charles Dilke, is that an answer to my question? Did you ever speak to her husband of these visits of a young wife to your house in the morning?

  A.: It never occurred to me for one moment that he was not aware of them, if there were more than one.

  Q.: You know from his evidence that has been read that he was not aware of it. . . . You cannot suggest any legitimate business she came to you about?

  A.: If you want topics of conversation I can give some of them. I do not remember that particular occasion when she called upon me.

  Q.: That is what I am talking about. I want you to tell us what business this young woman came to your house upon, by herself, without her husband?

  A.: The topics of conversation she occasionally started on two or three occasions I saw her had relation to what she was trying to do in Whitechapel and sometimes to her husband’s position.

  Q.: What do you mean by “sometimes to her husband’s position”?

  A.: She was very anxious indeed that Mr. Crawford should obtain a permanent place in any Scotch Home Rule arrangement.

  Q.: Do I understand you to say that she came to you about her husband having a permanent place?

  A.: Yes, I do. I won’t say she ever came for that, to press his claims for such an appointment; but she was certainly anxious that those claims, which were great, should be considered.

  Q.: Had Mr. Crawford ever asked you for a place?

  A.: No, he never asked for any services from me except on the last occasion but one when I saw him.

  Q.: Do you suggest that was the purport of these visits?

  A.: I do not know. I had my suspicions.

  Q.: You had your suspicions.

  Another section of Matthews’s cross-examination was apparently based on some straws of information obtained from Dilke’s servants. He asked whether Dilke had ever told his footman that Mrs. Crawford was coming to the house. Dilke denied it, and Matthews went on:

  Q.: If they say that, then that is untrue.

  A.: Yes.

  Q.: Have you ever told your footmen that a lady was coming to look over the house, and you wished the windows cleaned?

  A.: There have been people who went over the house to see the pictures, but I have no recollection of any particular lady, or having the windows cleaned.

  Q.: I am afraid you will oblige me to repeat my question. Have you told your footmen, any day when Mrs. Crawford was coming, that a lady was coming to the house?

  A.: No, no, no.

  Q.: You are not in doubt about that, you are positive?

  A.: Yes. I do not think Mrs. Crawford is a lady who would be interested in pictures or things of that sort.[6]

  Dilke was then asked whether a housemaid of his, Mary Ann Gray (Sarah Gray’s niece) had not “come upon a lady with her outer garments off” in his bedroom at 11-30 in the morning and whether this servant had not in consequence been forbidden by Sarah to go to that part of the house? Dilke returned negative answers to both these questions, and Matthews proceeded, without much success, to insert some insinuations about the witness’s relations with Sarah.

  The last main point in the cross-examination was concerned with a quarrel which had taken place between Dilke and Captain Forster at Mrs. Rogerson’s flat in Albert Mansions in June, 1885. Mrs. Rogerson had asked Dilke to go and see her and had told him that Forster was extremely angry, having heard that Dilke had written a letter to the War Office which mentioned the captain’s intrigue with Mrs. Crawford and was designed “to blast his military prospects.” When Dilke was leaving Forster came out of another room and accosted him on the stairs, using very violent language and challenging him to fight. According to Dilke, Forster said: “I know that you are a good fencer, and boxer, and a good shot or so forth, but I am one of Angelo’s pupils.” Dilke implied that he laughed the whole thing off as being utterly ridiculous, denied that he had written to the War Office about Forster, and said that the only person to whom he had mentioned Forster’s relations with Mrs. Crawford, of which he had been told by Mrs. Ashton Dilke, was his present wife.

  At this stage the court adjourned. The first day’s sitting was at an end. On the following morning, Matthews took only another quarter of an hour, mostly reverting to points of the previous day to which he had no doubt given further thought during the evening. He ended with a characteristic innuendo, based obviously on one phrase in Mrs. Crawford’s confession, which Dilke tried hard to repulse:

  Q.: Have you spent a good deal of your time in France?

  A.: Not of late years.

  G.: But in youth and early manhood?

  A.: No, not in youth. I first bought a small property in France in 1876.

  Q.: Since that you have been frequently to France?

  A.: From 1876 to 1880 I was in France each winter for two and a half months.

  Q.: And you are familiar with French habits and ways?

  A.: I can hardly say that, because my property is away in the extreme south, and manners there are very different to the ordinary French ways. I am familiar with the habits in Provence on the coast, where they do not even speak French, but speak a different language.

  Phillimore then re-examined briefly. He made a few rather half-hearted attempts to throw out life-lines to Dilke, but the latter grasped at them incompetently, continuing his habit of diffuse and inconclusive answers. Then, at last, he was able to step down. His five hours in the witness-box had not only been a formidable personal ordeal. They had also, without doubt, been immensely damaging to himself and his cause. The case for the Queen’s Proctor was already looking weak.

  Over the next two and a half days, Phillimore called twenty-three other witnesses. The first of these was Sarah Gray, who was then aged 41 (much older than her sister, Fanny, who was at that time 21) and whose difficulties in the box were greatly increased by her deafness. She had seen Mrs. Crawford once at 76, Sloane Street, but that was in old Mrs. Chatfield’s time and before her marriage to Crawford. She had never seen her since. She had certainly never let her in, let her out or dressed her. She herself had never been Dilke’s mistress, nor had Fanny. She had never seen Fanny and Dilke together.

  Most of her cross-examination and all the evidence of the next two witnesses, Humbert, Dilke’s solicitor, and Mrs. Ruffle, the farmer’s wife from Stebbing in Essex, was concerned with the Fanny mystery. From the answers of the three it was possible to piece together the following story. At the end of July, 1885, Fanny came with her father to see Humbert. She had been badly frightened by the visit of two detectives working for Crawford. They had threatened her with a prosecution for perjury if she did not agree to appear in court and give the evidence which was required. She had wished to leave her father’s house, where she had been staying, in case they came again. Humbert accordingly arranged for Mrs. Ruffle, as a special favour to him, to take her on as a housemaid for a short time. She stayed at the Ruffles’ for four months, and at the end of November was married from their house to a local journeyman coach-builder called Stock. Sarah attended the wedding. Fanny then left with her husband, and her whereabouts were unknown until a week after the first trial, when she appeared at the house of a married sister at Forest Gate. She was seen there by Sarah and by Humbert, and she also went, at this time, to stay for a few days at Stebbing. Contact was again lost (as a new trial was not contemplated at this stage Humbert had no particular interest in preserving it), but in April she arrived with her husband at an address near King’s Cross, and wrote to Humbert to say she was there. Humbert in consequence took a statement in writing from her and sent it to the Queen’s Proctor. At Humbert’s request Mrs. Ruffle twice came up to London to see Fanny and to endeavour to persuade her to appear in court and swear to her statement. This Fanny refused to do. She was also seen by Sarah during this “King’s Cross” visit to London. After ten days she left without notice, and had not been heard of since.

/>   There were several loose ends to this story. It was difficult to see who had paid the Stocks’ expenses on their April visit to London—Stock being at the time an out-of-work journeyman, and Humbert denying resolutely that he had done so. There was another mystery about where Fanny had lived in the year or so before she went to Warren Street. Sarah, whom she had visited constantly during this period, believed that she had been in service in Brixton, but was unable to state at what address or with whom. Mrs. Ruffle and Humbert, on the other hand, both stated that Fanny declined to account for her movements during this period. The general impression that there was a good deal to hide was accentuated by the fact that Sarah gave her information with obvious reluctance, only admitting the Forest Gate meeting, for instance, after sustained probing by Matthews.

  There followed the examination of Dilke’s other servants. First came the three footmen: Samuel Goode, who had been at 76, Sloane Street for two years until August, 1882; William Goode, his brother, who replaced him and stayed until December, 1884, and Henry Shanks, who was there from March, 1882 to April, 1885. All three received a rough handling from Matthews, with the worst treatment being reserved for Shanks, who was most unwell and had just come out of an infirmary. Nevertheless, they gave practically no corroboration for Mrs. Crawford’s allegations. Samuel Goode had let her in one morning in 1882. Dilke came out into the hall to meet her (he might have seen her coming through the breakfast-room windows) and took her to the blue room. Goode let her out after a quarter of an hour. Shanks had let her in twice, again in the mornings, in the summer of 1884. On the first occasion Dilke saw her in the breakfast-room, and she left after a quarter of an hour. On the second occasion he saw her in the blue room and she left after ten minutes. It was possible that he had let her out on one other occasion when he had not let her in. Once during his service he was told by the other footman that a lady was coming to look over the house and asked to clean the windows. He cleaned those of the dining-room, the blue room and the drawing-room. He had no idea whether the lady came or who she was. He was pressed very strongly by Matthews to confirm some slightly more incriminating statements which the latter believed he had made to Stewart, Crawford’s solicitor, in the autumn of 1885. He resolutely refused to do so, and made it clear, on re-examination, that Stewart had taken no statement from him in a regular form.