BOOKS.
SIR CHARLES DILKE.* Mess TUCKWELL is to be congratulated with Mr. Gwynn, who was called away to the war, on the completion of an interesting and difficult task. Her biography of Sir Charles Dilke is a valuable addition to the authoritative memoirs of Late Victorian statesmen, and, though planned on the grand scale and filling over eleven hundred pages, it is very readable. As a member of his family and as his literary executrix, Miss Tuckwell naturally regards Sir Charles Dille as a very great man whose merits were not fully recognized by his generation ; and, not once or twice, she invites us to believe that, but for a private misfortune, he might have led a reconstructed Liberal Party after Mr. Gladstone's retirement. Sir Charles himself thought so. He wrote in his diary on July 23rd, 1885, four days after he had been made co-respondent in a suit for divorce :- " Left for the last time the House of Commons, whore I have attained some distinction. It is curious that only a week ago Chamberlain and I had agreed, at hie wish and suggestion, that I should be the future loader, as being more popular in the Homo, though leas in the country, than he wee, and that only three days ago Mr. Gladstone had expressed the same wish. Such a charge. even if disproved, which is not easy against perjured evidence picked up with care, is fatal to supreme usefulness in politics. In the ease of a public man a charge is always believed by many, even though disproved, and I should be weighted by it through life. I prefer, therefore, at once to contemplate leaving public life."
We need not enter into the details of the case which wrecked Sir Charles Dilke's political career at the age of forty-two, except to record Miss Tuckwell's opinion that the affair was gravely mis- managed by his legal advisers, and that, though entirely innocent, be was prevented by difficulties of procedure from demonstrating his innocence to the world. If that was the true reading of the mystery, the ease was one of the greatest tragedies in our modern political history. Yet we cannot think of Sir Charles Mike as a possible Prime Minister. He had many admirable qualities, as a number of his old friends testify in Miss Tuckwoll's pages. He had en encyclopaedic mind; his industry was unfailing; he showed great skill in Parliamentary tactics, and was an effective, though not a brilliant, speaker in the House and on the platform. He had travelled widely in Europe, knew every one who was prominent in affairs—notably Gambetta and Bismarck—and was an admitted expert in foreign politics. Ho had visited the Coloniee before the first Dominion came into being, and had by his vigorous youthful book on Greater Britain done much to make the British Empire conscious of its miseion. He had entered the House as Member for Chelsea in 1868, with the prestige of a successful young author of twenty-five, and, helped by his family and his social connexions and by his Cambridge reputation, he had rapidly come to the front. He delighted in political work, and tried, not without a measure of success, to build up in London, with the Chelsea Eleusis Club as a nucleus, a Radical Party organization similar to Mr. Chamberlain's famous caucus in Birmingham. He made himself as prominent that,after servingunder Lord Granville at the Foreign Office, hawse promoted in 1882, at the age of thirty-nine, to the Cabinet as Presi- dent of the Local Government Board with hie friend and follow- Radical Mr. Chamberlain to keep him company. As a Minister he proved himself a good administrator, and he took a loading part in framing and carrying the Franchise and Redistribution Bills of 1884.85. Nevertheless we do not believe that he would have risen to the leadership of hie party or to the Premiership. He had not, we think, among his many talents the gift of managing men, and he had not any strong backing either in the middle class, like Lord Salisbury, Lord Beaconsfield, or Lord Palmerston ; or in the Noneonformieteommunity,likeMr.Gladstone in his later years;
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e r in a section of the country, like Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- man in Scotland or like his friend Mr. Chamberlain in the Midlands. A statesman without a connexion cannot rise to the highest place in Great Britain, unless indeed be has a personal magnetism of a wholly exceptional kind, and to this Sir Charles Dilke, with all his ability, could lay no claim.
Miss Tuckwell, however, has unquestionably shown that Sir Charles Dilke was a greater force in Liberal politics before 1885 than many people supposed. His exceptionally full and accurate knowledge of affairs and his keen interest in naval and military problems compelled his colleagues to pay more attention to his views than he could have exacted by virtue of his advanced Radi- calism alone. The full, true, and particular history of the Cabinet of 1880, printed in this book from Sir Charles DiIke's memoirs, exposes anew the internal differences which rent that unhappy body of Ministers, and led them into a whole series of blunders at the expense of their country. It shows that Sir Charles DiIke was not merely accentuating the Radical revolt against Lord Hartington and the Whigs, but was also carrying on an equally resolute fight against the " Little England" policy of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, which meant starving the Navy and Army, and making "graceful concessions" to any foreign Power which chose to be unpleasant. This dual aspect of Sir Charles Dilke's political activity is properly emphasized in the biography, and Professor Spenser Wilkinson contributes an important chapter on his old associate's work for Imperial Defence. He says :— " In the effort of a quarter of a century to have his country pre- pared for the struggle which was to come Dilke was associated with others, many of them conspicuous for knowledge and zeal ; the services of Arnold-Forster, of John and Philip Colomb, and of Chesney, have boon too little appreciated by their countrymen. Of their common endeavour Dilke was the chief exponent. At every singe of the movement his was its most characteristic and most comprehensive expression, marking the central lino of thought. Some of the dominant ideas were his own. From him came the con- ception of defence as not merely national but imperial. Ho first pointed out the true function of the Primo Minister in relation to it. Tine actual development proceeded along the lines which he drew—a strong navy ; a general staff at the War Office ; a regular army of first-rate quality, that could be sent abroad at short notice, most likely for the defence of Belgflun against attacks from Germany ; expansion to be sought, in the first instance, from the numbers fur• Mulled by the volunteer system. There were points which he tailed to carry—the provision of arms and ammunition for the multitude of soldiers who would be forthcoming from the Empire, as well as of that modern artillery which most play so great a part in a future campaign ; the search for generals capable of command in war ; the enforcement of the responsibility of Ministers for preparations neglected. What was accomplished and what was left undone give the measure of Sir Charles Dilke as the statesman of Imperial Defence."
After his return to Parliament as a more or less independent Liberal Member far the Forest of Dean lie devoted most of his time to Labour questions and to the assistance of the nascent Labour Party ; but he never ceased bravely to show his interest in the Services and to plead for a strong Navy and a well-equipped Army, despite the indifference or hostility of too many of his political allies.
The book abounds in anecdotes, of winch Sir Charles, as all who met him will remember, had gathered an infinite store. Thus, according to the Rev. W. Tuckwell- " He told a story of a well-known dandy, now a peer. The talk turned on ' Society in the second intention of the word. — had enumerated certain houses in which you most be at home if pre- tending to the exclusive social set. It was objected that the inmates et some amongst these houses were persons whom the Queen (Victoria) would not receive. ' The Queen 1' said — in a tone of pained surprise—'the Queen was never in Society.'" Iii his own memoirs there is a rhyme written in the Cabinet room by Mr. Chamberlain in reply to a note in which Sir Charles com- plained that Mr. Gladstone " will fight a whole day in Cabinet to avoid telling Parliament something and then after all will tell them twice as much in reply to Aslunead Bartlett." Mr. Chamberlain wrote :— " Here lies Mr. G., who hat{ left us repining,
While he is, no doubt, still engaged in refining ; And explaining distinctions to Peter and Paul, Who faintly protest that distinctions so small Were never submitted to saints to perplex them, Until the Prime Minister came up to vex them."
Sir Charles has a story of General Grant's visit to London in 1877 :- " At this time General Grant come to London, and, as I had known him at Washington and he had liked me there, I had to go about a good deal to meet him at his wish, and he also dined with me on June 10th, when I invited him to choose his own party. Ho knew, however, so few men in London that I had to suggest men to him, and asked him whether he would like to meet Butt as the leader of the Irish party, He said he should, but was very silent all through dinner and until he had begun the second of two big cigars. Then, as usual with him, he began to thaw under the influence of tobacco, and whispered to me—when Butt was talking very pleasantly wider the influence of something besides tobacco, and with his enormous, per- fectly round face assuming, as it always did after slimier, the ap- pearance of the harvest moon—' Is he a Papist 1 ' to which I replied • No' ; whereupon Grant became friendly to him. General Grant's chief weakness, unless that position be assigned to his cigars, was his detestation of the Roman Catholics." We must quote, too, characteristic anecdotes of Tennyson and Wellington, gathered at a dinner-party :-
" It had been at seven o'clock in honour of Tennyson, who would not dine at any other hour, and Tennyson sat on one side of the hostess, and Lord Houghton on the other ; and the latter was cross at being made to dine at 7, preferring to dine at 8.30, and sup, after dinner, at 11. The conversation turned on a poem which had been written by Tennyson in his youth, and Tennyson observed : I have not even a copy myself—no one has it.' To which Lord Houghton answered I have ono. I have copies of all the rubbish you ever wrote.'—A pause.—' When you are dead I mean to publish them all. It will make my fortune and destroy your reputation.' After this Tennyson was heard to murmur, ' Boast ! ' It most have been a real pleasure to him to find himself survive his brother poet. On the same evening I heard a story (probably a well-known, one, but cer- tainly good) of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon s body ; how the Government of the day wrote to the Duke to tell him they had agreed to let the French transport the corpse from St. Helena, the Duke being in Opposition at the time ; how the answer ran :
F.-M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to H.M.'s
Ministers. If they wish to know F.M.. the Duke of Wellington's opinion as on a matter of public policy, he most decline to give one. If, however, they wish only to consult him as a private individual, F.-H. the Duke of Wellington has no hesitation in saying that he does not care one twopenny daunt what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Buonaparte.'" Sir Charles Dilke's curiously intimate knowledge of nineteenth- century history comes out in many notes, as it did in the reviews which, as his biographer tells us, he used to contribute to the Athenaeum for runny years. He stated, for example, that the disclosure of the secret Anglo.Russian Agreement of 1878 by the Globe through Mr. Marvin, which mused a great stir, was made at the instance of the Russian Government, who wanted to show that, after all, they had really overcome Lord Beaconsfield at Berlin. His account of his visit to Prince Bismarck in 1889, shortly before the old Chancellor's fall, is highly interesting. " It was very plain that he was on bad terms with the Emperor, and equally clear that he did not believe that the Emperor would dare to dismiss him." The old man, Sir Charles thought, was afraid lest the young Emperor's policy should Imperil " the strength and glory of the German Empire," and in that ho was a true prophet.
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