Chapter XIII: Renewal of Activity

I.

On his return from Algeria Sir Charles reached Paris and crossed to England in the last week of January, 1875.

'On reaching London, instead of going to Harcourt's, I had to go
first to my own house, for I was sickening with disease, and had,
indeed, a curious very slight attack of smallpox, which passed off,
however, in about two days, but I had to be isolated for another week.
When I became what the doctors called well I moved to Harcourt's; but
my hand still shook, and I had contracted a bad habit of counting the
beating of my heart, and I was so weak of mind that the slightest act
of kindness made me cry. To my grandmother and brother I wrote to ask
them to let me go on living with Harcourt for the present, not because
I preferred him to them, but because I could not live in my own house,
and should have a better chance of sleep if I returned elsewhere at
night from the House of Commons.'

From this prostration he slowly recovered, occupying himself partly in arranging for the publication by Murray of _Papers of a Critic_, which he describes as 'a reprint of some of my grandfather's articles, with a memoir of him by myself which I had written while in Paris.'

The book was well received, and a copy sent to Mr. Disraeli brought this acknowledgment:

"2, WHITEHALL GARDENS,
"_June 28th_, '75.

"DEAR SIR CHARLES,

"I am obliged to you for sending me your book; I find it agreeable and
amusing. _Belles Lettres_ are now extremely rare, but, I must confess,
very refreshing. Your grandfather had a true literary vein, and you
have done wisely in collecting his papers.

"Very much yours,

"B. DISRAELI."

This pleasant note was the beginning of an acquaintance, though by a series of chances Sir Charles never met the Tory leader outside Parliament till Lord Beaconsfield was in the last year of his life.

When coming through Paris he had, 'of course at once' gone to see Gambetta, whom he found 'privately ridiculing the various suggestions made as to a constitution for his country.' Gambetta suggested as an alternative that they should allow the National Assembly elected after the war--

'to continue to govern the country without filling up death vacancies,
and with the provision that when at last it became reduced to one
member, he should take any title or give to any person that he pleased
any title, or adopt any form of government that he should think fit!'

Shortly after Mr. John Morley went with an introduction from Sir Charles to Gambetta, which nearly miscarried.

"I went for two nights" (he wrote) "to Gambetta's office (the office
of the _République Française_), and found him 'not come.' As I would
not sit up late three nights ... I desisted. Then he wrote me the most
courteous letter, making a more sensible appointment at his private
quarters. This I kept. He gave a most gracious and even caressing
reception, and I was intensely interested in him."

On this Sir Charles comments: 'Morley was no doubt told by Gambetta's faithful secretary to call at "2 a.m.," which was a playful way this old gentleman had of choking off callers.'

As his health became re-established Sir Charles took an increasing part in political life. The independent man is on much better terms with his party when that party is in opposition; his critical faculty is directed against other men's measures, and if he has force, he easily passes into the position of being consulted. The process was the easier in Sir Charles's case, because the governing group of the Liberal party in Parliament was much disorganized. A great effort was being made to escape from the unsatisfactory relations between Liberals and their Front Bench, which a witty member had defined by saying that the party sat "like Scotch communicants trying aspirants for the ministry of their church by their sermons."

'Fierce fighting was taking place over the choice of a leader of the
Liberal party. Up to the day on which there went out the notices for
the meeting there was the greatest doubt as to the result.... Sir H.
James reported 'Forster very loyal and quite willing to give way.
Hartington careless. Mundella, Fawcett, and Trevelyan working hard for
Forster, but Adam" (the Chief Whip) "says the great bulk of our men
all for Hartington. Richard very strong against Forster, and he
represents a great many Nonconformists. Adam says Fawcett is going to
Birmingham to-morrow in order to support Forster there, but this I do
not believe.' James added that he had ventured to say to Adam that as
far as he knew Harcourt was not disposed to take any part, one way or
the other, in reference to the matter, which was the case also with
himself.'

Sir Charles had declined to attend the meeting, but before it took place the matter was arranged.

'At one moment, after a fiasco by Mr. Bright at Birmingham, it had
looked as though Forster might win, in spite of Chamberlain and the
Nonconformists. Although James professed Harcourt's indifference in
the matter, Harcourt and James were both, as a fact, for Hartington.
Harcourt had conceived a strong feeling against Fawcett immediately
before this, in January, for trying to keep Mr. Gladstone as the
leader, a course to which Harcourt was bitterly opposed....'

In these years Sir William Harcourt, then a widower devoted to his one boy, stood nearer to Sir Charles than any other of his English friends. Dilke wrote to him: "How little credit you get for your heart! How few people know you have one!"

'In this month of February, 1875,' he goes on to say, 'I revived an
acquaintance which had slumbered for thirteen years, but was destined
not again to drop.'

Account has already been given of Sir Charles's boyish friendship with Emilia Strong, a brilliant girl three years his elder. In 1861 she had married Mark Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, and from that time onward Dilke, although he had seen something of the famous scholar, her husband, had scarcely met Mrs. Pattison, as she seldom came to London, and he at that time never went to Oxford. Now, in 1875, she was staying with her husband in Gower Street, under the roof of Sir Charles Newton, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, and was gradually becoming convalescent after a terrible attack of gout, which had left both her arms useless for many months. During this time they were strapped to her sides, and she had to invent a machine to turn over the pages of her book. But the bracing influence of her mind on those around her was unimpaired. In the years which followed, the habit of correspondence grew up between them, strengthening, until at any important crisis in his political life it became natural to him to consult her or take her into his confidence.

We have also at this moment reference to the beginnings of an acquaintance with a remarkable opponent.

Sir Charles notes that at Easter, 1875, when crossing to France, he met Lord Randolph Churchill, already known to him in the House, who expressed a wish to be presented to Gambetta. The meeting was a success, and Gambetta, delighted with his talk, asked him to breakfast along with Dilke, fixing the hour at noon; but later there came this note:

"MON CHER AMI,

"Je vous prie en grâce de vouloir bien avancer notre déjeuner au Café
Anglais et de prévenir votre ami de ce petit dérangement.
L'enterrement d'Edgar Quinet doit avoir lieu à une heure à
Montparnasse et je ne peux manquer à cette cérémonie. Donc à demain
lundi 11h au Caf. Anglais.

"Votre toujours dévoué,

"LEON GAMBETTA."

At the breakfast talk turned naturally on Quinet, the professor and critic who was exiled after the _coup d'état_, and whom the Third Republic welcomed back to his place on the Extreme Left. This led to mention of the recent occasion when Gambetta had "assisted" at the funeral of another famous Republican exile, Ledru-Rollin, who had died on the last day of 1874. Hereupon--

'Randolph turned to Gambetta, and in his most apologetic style, which
is extremely taking, said: "_Would_ you mind telling me who Ledru-
Rollin was?" Gambetta looked him all up and down, as though to say,
"What sort of a politician are you, never to have heard of Ledru-
Rollin?" and then broke into a laugh, and replied: "Ledru-Rollin was a
republican in the days when there were none, so we were bound to give
him a first-class funeral."'

Sir Charles adds:

'When I was a boy, Hepworth Dixon used to tell a story of how an
omnibus driver had nudged him one day when he was sitting on the box-
seat, and pointing out Ledru-Rollin in Oxford Street, had said, "See
that gentleman? I have heard say how he once was King of France"--
which had been pretty true at the beginning of 1848.'

After the Easter recess 'was the moment of the German war scare' of 1875 in France--

'Bourke' (the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs) 'kept me quiet in
the Commons by keeping me informed. He told me of the Queen's letter
to the Emperor William the day it went. Gavard, the French Charge
d'Affaires, told me that England and Russia received official thanks
from France for preventing war by pressure at Berlin. Peace was not in
danger.'

There is a note referring to conversations held earlier in 1875 with Gambetta, and to other conversations with Bismarck in 1889:

'I had heard a rumour that Thiers had signed secret articles of peace
in addition to the public treaty, and further that in these articles
there was something about the number of men to be kept under arms by
France. In the Arnim trial it came out that one of the despatches
concerned Prussian spies in France in 1872, while two of the
despatches were "so secret that they could not be even named or
catalogued." It was thought that these despatches concerned the secret
articles, and it was sought in this way to explain the efforts made by
Germany to prevent the fall of Thiers on the ground that he must be
kept on his legs for fear a different Government would disregard his
secret articles. Bismarck himself, it should be remembered, spoke of
the two uncatalogued despatches as "perhaps decisive of the question
of peace or war." [Footnote: Secret articles of the Versailles and
Frankfort.]

When at Friedrichsruh in September, 1889, [Footnote: This was during
Sir Charles's visit to Prince Bismarck, described in Chapter L.
(Volume II.).] as Bismarck was talking very freely about everything
that was past and gone, I asked him about this, and he said that I
should agree with him that it was plain that the suggestions as to the
limit of the number of men had been wrong, inasmuch as France had
repeatedly increased her forces; but the sudden risk of war between
France and Germany which arose in 1875, when war was only prevented by
the interference of the Russian Emperor, has never been adequately
explained.

On this point Sir Charles afterwards pencilled in the margin: 'The Prussian Staff wanted war; I doubt whether the old German Emperor intended to permit it.'

There follow other references of this year to foreign politics and politicians:

'Don Alfonso at this moment (January, 1875) had become King of Spain.
Two years previously Moret told me to a day when Amedeo, whose
Ambassador in England he then was, would fall; and on Boxing Day of
1874 in Paris, before I left for Algeria, he recalled to me this
prophecy, and told me that Serrano would "bring back" Alfonso that
week, and so he did. [Footnote: Marshal Serrano was Minister of War to
Queen Isabella II., with whom he had great influence. His opposition
to the illegal prorogation of the Cortes led to his imprisonment, but
after the revolution of 1868, when Isabella was dethroned and her
dynasty proscribed, he became Regent of Spain from 1868 to 1871. He
resigned this power when Amedeo I. entered Madrid, but remained
President of the Council and Minister of War. On the abdiction of
Amedeo and proclamation of a Republic he was again at the head of
affairs until Alfonso II., son of Isabella, was "brought back."]

'Sigismund Moret is not only the handsomest and pleasantest of men,
but about the cleverest; but at this moment his country offered him no
place, and his friends could only regret that he could find nothing
better to do than play whist. He afterwards became Prime Minister.

'Alfonso was said to be greatly under the influence at this time of
the Duchesse de Sesto--my old friend of 1860, the Duchesse de Morny,
lovely of the lovely at that time at Trouville, but afterwards when I
saw her at La Bourboule, I think in 1881, become much like other
people, and somewhat weighed down by the responsibility of being the
mother of that terrible young man "Le petit Duc."

'It was about this time that Rochefort, who had escaped from New
Caledonia with Pascal Grousset (died 1909), came to London, and I saw
them. I afterwards quarrelled with Rochefort, or rather ceased to see
him, for I had seen him only this once, because of his behaviour
towards Gambetta, who had been very good to him.'

Of Grousset Sir Charles writes:

'This handsome youth had in 1868 just become notorious for his grossly
impertinent and indecent reply to the President of the Tribunal at the
trial of Prince Peter Bonaparte for shooting Victor Noir. Grousset was
the principal witness, and when asked the usual first question of
French law, "Witness, are you the husband, wife, father, mother, son,
daughter, brother, sister, ascendant or descendant, or any relation of
the prisoner?" replied: "It is impossible to say; Madame Letitia was
not particular"--alluding to the mother of Napoleon the Great.

'Grousset had conducted the "Foreign Affairs" of the Commune of Paris,
and had been so polite to the representatives of the Embassies that
George Sheffield, the private secretary to Lord Lyons, who conducted
British affairs at Paris, used to declare that of all the many French
Governments he had known the Commune was the only one that knew how to
behave itself in society....'

But this feeling was not universal.

'Mrs. Wodehouse (formerly Minnie King, an American beauty, and
afterwards Lady Anglesey) asked me to breakfast with her to meet
Grousset.' (She was receiving the refugee at the request of Madame
Novikoff.)

'When her butler, who was an old French gendarme, found who was coming
to breakfast, he refused to serve, and a hired waiter had to be called
in, the old man saying that he had had charge of Grousset to convey
him from Versailles to the hulks before the Communalists had been sent
to New Caledonia, and that Grousset had been so impertinent to him
that nothing would induce him to wait upon him as a servant.

'This clever boy of all the persons deeply compromised in the Commune
was, with one exception, the one who made his peace most rapidly with
French society, and in 1890 he was received by the President of the
Republic officially as elected Director of the federation of all the
Gymnastic Societies of France.' [Footnote: It was perhaps on account
of his youthful appearance that Pascal Grousset was described as a
boy. He was only two years younger than Sir Charles, and was twenty-
six at the time of the Commune. He was later, for twenty years, one of
the Deputies for Paris.]

II.

Sir Charles in this Session contributed to the gaiety of Parliament by his motion upon unreformed Borough Corporations, and, said the newspapers, "kept the House of Commons in a roar."

'But the fact was that the subject was so funny that it was impossible
to make a speech about it which would not have been amusing, and
Randolph Churchill, who replied to me, was funnier than I was, though
he was not equally regardful of the truth.'

'One of the Corporations which I had attacked was that of Woodstock,
and Randolph Churchill brought the Prince of Wales down to the House
to hear his defence of his constituency. I had said in my speech that
the Mayor of Woodstock had been lately fined by his own Bench, he
being a publican, for breaking the law in a house the property of the
Corporation, and that he had said on that occasion in public court,
after hearing the evidence of the police: "I have always had a high
respect for the police, but in future I shall have none." Randolph
Churchill, answering me, said that I had slightly mistaken the Mayor's
words, and that what he had really said was: "I have always had a high
respect for the police, but in future I shall have _more_." After this
debate was over, Randolph came up to me outside, and said: "I was
terrified lest you should have heard anything to-day, but I see you
have not." I said: "What?" He said: "He was fined again yesterday."'

In the same speech the case of New Romney was described--"the worst of all" the Cinque Ports, where the number of freemen, twenty-one at the passing of the Reform Act (of 1832), had fallen to eight--

"the only town in England in which six gentlemen elected themselves to
every office, appointed themselves magistrates, let the whole of the
valuable town properties exclusively to themselves, audited their own
accounts, and never showed a balance sheet."

A cartoon in one of the comic papers displayed one selfsame and highly complacent person, first as "Our Grocer," then as "Our Mayor," then as "The Gentleman who elects our Mayor," "The Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts," "The Gentleman who benefits by our Public Trusts, "and "The Committee appointed annually to look into the Accounts of the Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts."

Another of Sir Charles's topics in 1875 was the working of the Ballot Act. 'A dull speech on a dull subject,' it secured, however, the appointment of a Committee to inquire whether secrecy of voting was not menaced by the form in which ballot papers were issued. But the main object of his activity in the field of electoral reform was redistribution, and this object was the hardest to attain, because more than 400 members of the House sat for constituencies not numerically entitled to representation. The over-represented had a majority of two-thirds in Parliament, and this was a tremendous vested interest to assail. Still, the whole Liberal party was now committed to the support of his principle.

The same general support was given to his Bill 'known as the Allotments Extension Bill, to provide for the letting to cottagers of lands held for the benefit of the poor'--a scheme originally proposed by Mill.

'My Parliamentary Session of 1875 was my most successful.

'My motion on Ballot Act,
" " " Unreformed Boroughs,
" " " Redistribution,
" Bill " Allotments,
were all four great successes, and so spoken of in all the papers. On
the first I got my way. On the second I prepared it for next year, and
on the third and fourth I got the support of the whole Liberal party
and most of the Press.'

There are a good many pleasant stories of what seems to have been a very easy-going Session of Parliament:

'At this time Plimsoll's name was in every mouth, and the only
formidable opposition in the House was that which he offered to the
Government in the sailors' name. Old Adderley, afterwards Lord Norton,
who was at the Board of Trade, assured me, in his solid hatred of the
man, that when Plimsoll told the House of Commons that he had stopped
a fearful shipwreck by taking a telegram to the Board of Trade at 3
a.m., and ringing for the porter and sending it then and there to the
President's house, Plimsoll had neglected to state that this telegram
had reached him at five o'clock in the afternoon, and had been kept
back by him till the middle of the night for the production of a
sensation....

'The other hero of the Session was Major O'Gorman, a hero of four-and-
twenty stone, who on two occasions at least made the House laugh as
they never laughed before, nor have laughed since. We used at first to
lose him at a quarter to twelve each night, as he had to get to the
Charing Cross Hotel, where he lived on the fourth storey, before the
lift had gone up for the last time. But later in the Session we
managed to keep him till 1.15, for he made the brilliant discovery
that the luggage lift, which just suited him, was available till 1.30.

'Some of his finest things are lost in the reports. For example,
"Swill the whisky through the streets till the very curs lie
prostrate," and this, which, however, in a weakened form, survives in
Mr. Lucy's Diary: "Some men who call themselves my constituents tell
me that if I oppose this Bill I shall never sit again. Well, _what
then?_" (This in a stentorian voice that nearly blew the windows out.)
"Athens ostracized Aristides."

'After midnight a postponed Bill is fixed for the next sitting by the
words "This day." O'Gorman was opposing and watching such a Bill, and
shouted out: "_What_ day?" "This day" was solemnly repeated. Then the
puzzled Major, looking at the clock, and bowing to the chair, said:
"Mr. Speaker, is it yesterday or is it to-morrow?" I never heard a
question more difficult of reply under the circumstances of the case.

The best Irish bull uttered within his own hearing was, says Dilke, Sir Patrick O'Brien's defence of Mr. Gladstone addressed to the Irish Nationalists: "The right honourable gentleman has done much for our common country. He has broken down the bridges that divided us."

III.

When the Session was ended, Sir Charles, according to his custom, set out on travel, following a scheme mapped out far ahead. In December, 1874, he had written to Miss Kate Field, correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ and a friend of Sir Charles and of his first wife, that he would be in America in the following September on a journey round the world, and there accordingly he appeared--'on my way to Japan, China, Java, Singapore, and the Straits of Malacca--taking with me as travelling companion my scheme for a history of the nineteenth century,' a work projected on such ample lines that a note of this year sets down 1899 as the probable date of completion, "if I live so long."

The record of this journey is to be found in the additional chapters to _Greater Britain,_ first issued in 1876 as magazine articles, and added to the eighth edition in 1885. He saw Japan before the Satsuma rebellion had broken out in a last attempt to restore the old feudal regime, and he stayed in the Tartar General's _yamen_ at Canton, where at gun-fire he and the other Europeans in the same house were shut up within barred gates, only representatives of the white race among 2,000,000 Chinese. As for the Japanese, he wrote:

"I'm in love with this country and people.... The theatre is where I
spend all my time.... There alone can you now see the soldiers in
masks, ferocious and hairy, with the chain-armour and javelins of
fifteen years ago. [Footnote: This was written in 1875.] There alone
can you now see the procession of daimios accompanied by two-sworded
Samurai, there alone have the true old Japan of the times before this
cursed 'New Reform Government' arose."

'My stay at Tokio was at the same moment as that of Shimadzu Suboro,
the old Satsuma Chief, uncle and adoptive father to the Satsuma
Princes, and last constitutional light of the Feudal party. The "great
Marshal" Saigo was commanding in chief the forces, and was in the next
year to head the Satsuma rebellion. The Corean Envoys--tall men, with
wondrous stars in their hair--were at the capital also, and I met them
often.'

The beauty of Java, where he stayed at the Governor's Palace at Buitenzorg, charmed him.

His journey from the East was very rapid, and January, 1876, saw him back in England. He was in time to address his constituents as usual before the opening of Parliament.

The speech contains what he points out as notable in one who 'so seldom spoke upon the Irish question'--an attack on the Coercion Bill of the previous year. It might be better, he said, to govern Ireland on the assumption that human nature is much the same everywhere, and Irishmen under no special bar of incapacity. A majority of the Irish representatives were in favour of Home Rule, and "a reformed dual constitution might possibly be devised which would work fairly well." This was an extreme attitude for those days, and he went on to recommend "the immediate creation of a local elective body, having power to deal with public works and the like"--in short, very much what Mr. Chamberlain advocated in 1885.

The speech also protested against Lord Carnarvon's policy as Colonial Minister, "in sending out Mr. Froude to stump South Africa against the local Ministers of the Crown, which was the beginning of all the frightful evils which afflicted South African affairs for the next nine years."

The conduct of the Opposition did not escape comment. "The duty of a Liberal leader is to follow his party, and this Lord Hartington has done with exemplary fidelity and unexampled patience." Another phrase noted that the Session of 1875 had left its mark on the House of Commons, "for pillows had been for the first time provided for members who wished to sleep," and the same atmosphere of repose marked the Session of 1876. The Memoir sketches some Parliamentary operations with which Sir Charles was connected:

'Early in this session occurred the introduction of the Royal Titles
Bill, conferring the Imperial title upon the Queen, and I wrote for
Fawcett a motion for an address to pray the Queen that she would be
graciously pleased not to assume any addition to her title in respect
of India other than the title of Queen. When the matter came on for
discussion Cowen, who had now come into the House for Newcastle, rose
to make his first speech. He had succeeded his old father, who was a
Whig in politics and an old fogey in appearance, the son being now an
ultra-Radical, now a democratic Tory, dressing like a workman, with a
black comforter round his neck, and the only wideawake hat at that
time known in the House of Commons. The next day Mr. Disraeli said: "I
am told that we are blamed for not having put up a Minister to answer
Cowen. How could we? I came into the House while he was speaking. I
saw a little man with one hand in his pocket, and the other arm
raising and waving uncouthly a clenched fist, making what appeared to
be a most impassioned oration. But I was in this difficulty. I did not
understand a word of it. I turned to my colleagues, and found that
they were in the same position. We could not reply to him; we did not
understand the tongue in which the speech was delivered." Cowen spoke
with a Newcastle burr so strong that it was not easy to follow his
words, and it was only by the context that one could guess what he
meant, when he used, for example, such a word as "rowing," which he
pronounced "woane."...

'I again brought forward my motion with regard to unreformed
corporations, with fresh illustrations and new jokes, and the second
edition was voted as popular as the first. Corfe Castle, with the Lord
High Admiral of the Isle of Purbeck, and a Corporation consisting of
one person, was a gem. Sir John Holker, who had to deal with the
question for the Government, and who prepared the Royal Commission
which sat to consider it in consequence of my motions, laid down some
law for my information, which I doubted, and thereon showed to
Harcourt, who said: "You will find the Attorney-General's law as bad
as might be expected." Holker was personally popular. But he
certainly, though a great winner of verdicts from juries, was one of
the dullest men who ever addressed the House of Commons.'

Although Sir Charles was active and, generally speaking, successful during this session, on two points he found himself without support. One was his opposition to the principle of the Bills dealing with the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, on both of which he "took a highly Conservative tone without securing any assistance from Conservative opinion." But a passage in his diary, March, 1877, describes his action and that of the Liberal party on the "Universities Bill" of that year, and mentions a meeting at which Lord Hartington, Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett, and Fitzmaurice were present, and at which 'it was decided to support my amendments to the Bill.' [Footnote: See Appendix, p. 200.]

His conservatism in academic matters revealed itself fully in 1878, as did that abiding feeling for his old college which characterized every after-- allusion to it or to his University life. The Papal diplomatist, Bishop Bateman, founder of Trinity Hall, was mentioned by Sir Charles with the respect due to a patron saint. No traditions were dearer to him than those of Trinity Hall. Speaking at the College annual dinner, he impressed upon the reforming Fellows their obligation, in the college interests, to retain its exclusive teaching and qualifications for fellowship as laid down by its founder, "for the study of the canon and civil law." [Footnote: A scrap of the menu of the dinner of June 19th, 1878, is preserved, which shows these toasts: '"The Lord Chief Justice of England-- proposed by the Master; responded to by the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Alexander Cockburn. Fellows and ex-Fellows--proposed by Sir Charles Dilke, Bart., M.P.; responded to by (Fellows) Professor Fawcett, M.P., (ex-Fellows) R. Romer, Esq. Our Old Blues and Captains of the T.H. Boat and Cricket Clubs--Proposed by Leslie Stephen, Esq."]

"It is a good thing for a small college that it should not be merely
one of the herd. It is a bad thing that a small college should be
driven to teach everything--classics, mathematics, law, theology,
medicine, and science, physical and moral--for if it teaches so many
things, of necessity, from its poverty in money and in men, it cannot
teach all well. A small college can only keep at a high moral and
social and intellectual level by having a distinguishing note or
accent. In our dear old House we have already in existence by our
history and by the Instrument of Foundation that special mark to
distinguish us from others which the most advanced University
Reformers clamour to see created as regards each College in the
University....

"It should keep its distinguishing note, and flourish for another five
hundred and twenty-eight years, not only in manners, good-fellowship,
and rowing, but as a school of law.

"In rowing and law it had fallen off, but good-fellowship still
differentiates the College, and prevents it from surrendering to the
prevailing tendency to make the colleges in our grand old University
pale copies of French _lycées_--all cut on one pattern and
administered by schoolmasters, who will rule over dunces of universal
acquirements examined to the point of death."

The other question on which he failed to secure support was his attack on the Royal Academy:

'What I really wanted was that the Academy should be reminded that
they obtained their present magnificent site upon conditions which
have not been observed, and that they ought at least to give a free
day a week at their exhibition, and give up a portion of their
privileges against outsiders.'

But the attack, as he admits, was not pressed with spirit for he had only the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _Examiner_ with him in the Press. In the House Lord Elcho [Footnote: Better known as Lord Wemyss, long the venerable father of Parliament.] and Mr. George Bentinck 'alone understood the question,' and the latter was too intimate with all the Academy leaders to afford a hope that he would do otherwise than take their side. So, feeling his isolation in the matter, Dilke limited himself to moving for some papers, which were given.

By the summer of 1876 Sir Charles was well again:

'I began this year to stay a great deal at Lady Waldegrave's, both at
Dudbrook in Essex and at Strawberry Hill; and ultimately I had a room
at Strawberry Hill, to which I went backwards and forwards as I chose.
The house was extremely pleasant, and so was Fortescue, and he
passionately adored his wife, and was afterwards completely broken
down and almost killed by her death. Fortescue was my friend; but she
was an excellent hostess, and the house was perfectly pleasant, and
that in a degree in which no other house of our time has been. The
other house which was always named as "the rival establishment,"
Holland House, I also knew. Some of the same people went there--
Abraham Hayward, commonly called the "Viper," and Charles Villiers,
for example. Lady Waldegrave always made everybody feel at home, which
Lady Holland did not always do. Those of whom I saw the most this
year, in addition to the Strawberry Hill people (who were Harcourt,
James, Ayrton, Villiers, Hayward, Dr. Smith the editor of the
_Quarterly,_ Henry Reeve the editor of the _Edinburgh,_ the Comte de
Paris, and the Due d'Aumale), were Lord Houghton and Mrs. Duncan
Stewart. Lord Houghton never met me without referring to a review of
his collected works, which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the spring,
and which had cut the old man to the heart' (because it rated his
poetry on a level with that of Eliza Cook).

'One of the most agreeable parties of clever people to which I ever
went was a luncheon given by Mrs. Stewart, when she was living a few
doors from me in my street, at which I was the only man, the party
chiefly consisting of old ladies; indeed, I was by far the youngest
person present. Besides Mrs. Stewart herself, there were friends, Lady
Hamilton Gordon, Lady Pollock, Lady Hopetoun, Mrs. Frank Hill, Mrs.
Oliphant, and Mrs. Lynn Linton--Lady Gordon, a remarkably able woman,
one of the bedchamber women of the Queen and a great gossip; Lady
Pollock, slow, but full of theatrical anecdote, being stage-mad, as
was her husband, old Sir Frederick, the Queen's Remembrancer, father
of my Cambridge friend Professor Pollock (now Sir Frederick) and of
Walter Pollock, the editor of the _Saturday Review_. A few days later
I met Lady Pollock at a great party given by Lord Houghton. Irving was
coming down the stairs, at the bottom of which we stood, having Mrs.
Singleton (now, 1894, the Ambassadress, Lady Currie) upon his arm. Old
Lady Pollock, clutching at my arm, exclaimed: "Who is that woman with
Irving?" To which I answered: "Mrs. Singleton, author of _Denzil
Place_--Violet Fane." "She won't do him any harm, will she?" was the
embarrassing question by which Lady Pollock replied to me.'

In this summer Sir Charles gave dinner-parties which included ladies--'a plan which I found so uncomfortable for a politician who had only a grandmother to entertain them that I dropped it after August, 1876.' His dinners were always among the pleasantest in London, but till 1886 they were only dinners of men.

Of men friends of this year he specially notes 'Gennadius, the Greek Secretary, afterwards Minister,' with whom his friendship was lifelong.