Chapter II: Education

The earliest memory that Sir Charles Dilke could date was 'of April 10th, 1848, when the Chartist meeting led to military preparations, during which I' (a boy in his fifth year) 'saw the Duke of Wellington riding through the street, attended by his staff, but all in plain clothes.' In 1850 'No Popery chalked on the walls attracted my attention, but failed to excite my interest'; he was not of an age to be troubled by the appointment of Dr. Wiseman to be Archbishop of Westminster. In 1851 he was taken to a meeting to hear Kossuth.

From this year--1851--date the earliest letters preserved in the series of thirty-four boxes which contain the sortings of his vast correspondence. There is a childish scrap to his grandfather, and a long letter from the grandfather to him written from Dublin, which lovingly conjures up a picture of the interior at Sloane Street, with 'Cousin' (Miss Folkard) stirring the fire, 'Charley-boy' settling down his head on his mother's lap, and 'grandmamma' (his mother's mother, Mrs. Chatfield) sitting in the chimney-corner.

For the year 1852 there are no letters to the boy; it was the time of his mother's failing health, and he was journeying with his grandfather all over England, 'reading Shakespeare, and studying church architecture, especially Norman.' It was a delightful way of learning history for a quick child of nine:

'We followed Charles II. in his flight, and visited every spot that has ever been mentioned in connection with his escape--a pilgrimage which took me among other places to my future constituency of the Forest of Dean. We went to every English cathedral, and when my grandfather was at work upon his Pope investigations, saw every place which was connected with the history of the Carylls.' [Footnote: John Caryll suggested to Pope the idea of the "Rape of the Look"; and many of the poet's letters were written to his son, a younger John Caryll. They were an ancient and distinguished Roman Catholic family, devoted partisans of, and centres of correspondence with, the exiled Stuarts.]

Mr. Dilke combined his desire to instruct the child with the frankest interest in his play. Here, for instance, is a letter to Charles of October 15th, 1853:

"DEAR OLD ADMIRAL,

"Hope you found all right and tight: a gallant vessel--tackle trim--
noble crew of true blue waters--guns shining and serving for looking--
glasses to shave by--powder dry--plenty in the locker. Wishing you
favourable gales,

"I remain,

"Your old friend and rough and tough

"GRANDFATHER."

It is worth while giving the reply--precocious for a boy of ten:

"BEDHAMPTON,
"HAVANT,
"_October 16th, 1853._

"MY DEAR GRANDPAPA,

"We arrived quite safely on Friday night, and were astonished to find
that my Aunt and Uncle and Cousin Letitia were gone to Brighton and
then to Hastings, and Godpapa had a letter this morning to say that
they found it so hot at Hastings that they went on to Folkestone, and
they are there now. The Admiral has to report for the information of
his Cockney readers that he hoisted his Flag yesterday at the main
peak. The weather was, however, so windy and wet that after hiding
himself with his honoured father under the cuddy for half an hour, the
Admiral thought that prudence was part of his duty, therefore struck
his Pocket-handkerchief and retired to luncheon. A Salute from a black
cloud hastened his departure.

"Your affectionate grandson,

"C. W. DILKE."

The boy was his grandfather's to educate, and there has not often been such an education. A man ripe in years, still vigorous--for Mr. Dilke was only fifty-three when his elder grandson was born--yet retired from the business of life, and full of leisure, full of charm, full of experience, full of knowledge, devoted his remaining years to the education of his grandson. It may be held that he created a forcing-house of feeling, no less than of knowledge, under which the boy's nature was prematurely drawn up; but there can be no doubt as to the efficacy of the method. It was not coddling--Mr. Dilke was too shrewd for that--and if at a certain stage it seemed as though excessive stimulus had been given, maturity went far to contradict that impression.

'After my mother's death I began classics and mathematics with Mr.
Bickmore, at that time a Chelsea curate and afterwards Vicar of
Kenilworth. At the same time I took charge of teaching letters to my
brother. I had few child friends, and used to see more of grown-up
people, such as Chorley, [Footnote: Musical critic for the
_Athenaeum._] Thackeray, and Dickens, of whom the latter was known to
us as "young Charles Dickens," owing to my great-grandfather having
known "Micawber."'

Old Mr. Dilke's father had been employed in the Admiralty along with the father of Dickens. As for Thackeray, it was probably about this time that he came on the boy stretched out upon grass in the garden of Gore House, resting on elbows, deep in a book, and looked over his shoulder. "Is it any good?" he asked. "Rather!" said the boy. "Lend it me," said Thackeray. The book was _The Three Musketeers_, and we all know _The Roundabout Papers_ which came out of that loan.

Charles Dilke had his free run of novels as a boy, and not of novels only. In 1854, when he was only eleven:

'I began my regular theatre-going, which became a passion with me for
many years, and burnt itself out, I may add, like most passions, for I
almost entirely ceased to go near a theatre when I went to Cambridge
at nineteen. Charles Kean, and Madame Vestris, and Charles Mathews,
were my delight, with Wright and Paul Bedford at the Adelphi, Webster
and Buckstone at the Haymarket, and Mrs. Keeley. Phelps came later,
but Charles Kean's Shakespearian revivals at the Princess's from the
first had no more regular attendant. My earliest theatrical
recollection is Rachel.

'I was a nervous, and, therefore, in some things a backward child,
because my nervousness led to my being forbidden for some years to
read and work, as I was given to read and work too much, and during
this long period of forced leisure I was set to music and drawing,
with the result that I took none of the ordinary boy's interest in
politics, and never formed an opinion upon a political question until
the breaking-out of the American Civil War when I was eighteen. I then
sided strongly with the Union, as I showed at the Cambridge Union when
I reached the University. Even in this question, however, I only
followed my grandfather's lead, although, for the first time, in this
case intelligently. So far indeed as character can be moulded in
childhood, mine was fashioned by my grandfather Dilke.'

It was not only character that Mr. Dilke formed. He made the boy the constant companion of his own intellectual pursuits, imbued him deeply with his own tastes, his own store of knowledge. In the summer of 1854 he had taken his pupil to 'Windsor, Canterbury, Rochester, Bury St. Edmunds, St. Albans, and many other interesting towns.' That autumn the pair went to France together--apparently the beginning of Charles Dilke's close acquaintance with that country, which was extended in the following year, 1855, when Wentworth Dilke was named one of the English Commissioners for the French International Exhibition, and took his family to live in Paris from April to August.

'We were all with him at Paris for some time, and I acquired a
considerable knowledge of the antiquities of the town, before the
changes associated with the name of Haussmann, by rambling about it
with my grandfather, who, however, soon got sick of Paris and went
home to his books, while we remained there for four months. I was at
the party given at the Quai d'Orsay by Walewski, the son of Napoleon;
at that given at the "Legion of Honour" by Flahaut, the father of
Morny; at the Ball at the Hôtel de Ville to the Emperor and Empress
and Queen Victoria; at the review; and at the Queen's entry and
departure. The entry was the finest display of troops which I ever
witnessed, as the National Guard of the City and its outskirts turned
out in great form, and raised the numbers to 120,000, while the
costumes both of the Guard and of the National Guard were very showy.
There paraded also two hundred veterans of the wars of the First
Empire in all the uniforms of the period. I heard Lablache in his last
great part, and in this year I think I also saw Rachel for the last
time; but I had seen her in England, I believe, in 1853. I certainly
had seen her in a part in which many years later I remember Sarah
Bernhardt, and can recall Rachel well enough to be able to institute a
comparison entirely to Rachel's advantage.

'After our visit to Paris in 1855 my brother and I had taken to
speaking and to writing to one another in French, and this practice we
kept up until his death, even when he was Member of Parliament for
Newcastle-on-Tyne, and I a member of the Government.'

One memory of that year never left Sir Charles Dilke. In the evenings he used to go to the Place Vendôme to hear the Guards' combined tattoo. Every regiment was represented, and the drummers were a wonderful show in their different brilliant uniforms--Chasseurs of the Garde, Dragoons, Lancers, Voltigeurs, and many more. In the midst was the gigantic sergeant-major waiting, with baton uplifted, for the clock to strike. At the first stroke he gave the signal with a twirl and a drop of his baton, and the long thundering roll began, taken up all round the great square. Sir Charles, as he told of this, would repeat the tambour-major's gesture; and the boy's tense, eager look of waiting, and flash of satisfaction when the roll broke out, revived on the countenance of the man.

'In 1856 I became half attached to a day-school, which had for its
masters, in mathematics a Mr. Acland, a Cambridge man, and in classics
a Mr. Holme, a fellow of Durham, and for several years I used to do
the work which they set in the school without regularly attending the
school, which, however, my brother attended. My health at that time
was not supposed to be sufficiently strong to enable me even to attend
a day-school, and still less to go to a public school; but there was
nothing the matter with me except a nervous turn of mind,
overexcitable and overstrained by the slightest circumstance. This
lasted until I was eighteen, when it suddenly disappeared, and left me
strong and well; but the form which this weakness took may be
illustrated by the fact that, although I did not believe in ghosts, I
have known myself at the age of sixteen walk many miles round to avoid
passing through a "haunted" meadow.'

Also he made the experiments in literature common with clever lads:

'In 1856 I wrote a novel called _Friston Place_, and I have a sketch
which I made of Friston Place in Sussex in August of that year, but
the novel I have destroyed, as it was worthless.'

Another aspect of his education is recalled by drawings preserved in the boxes from 1854 onwards--conscientious delineations of buildings visited, representing an excellent training for the eye and observation.

In 1857 his grandfather took him to Oxford (where he rambled happily about the meadows while Mr. Dilke read in the Bodleian) and to Cambridge, going on thence to Ely, Peterborough, and Norwich. Later in the same year the pair travelled all over South Wales, everywhere rehearsing the historical memories of the place, everywhere mastering the details of whatever architecture presented itself.

Each return home brought experiences of a different kind. 'I have known,' he says, 'everyone worth knowing from 1850 to my death.' At seven years old he was seeing and hearing the famous persons of that time, either at the home in Sloane Street, to which Wentworth Dilke's connection with the Exhibition drew men eminent in the world of physical science and industrial enterprise, as well as the artists with whom his connoisseurship brought him into touch; or else at old Mr. Dilke's house in Lower Grosvenor Place. He remembered visits with his grandfather to Gore House, 'before Soyer turned it into the Symposium,' and to Lady Morgan's. The brilliant little Irishwoman was a familiar friend, and her pen, of bog-oak and gold, the gift to her of the Irish people, came at last to lie among the treasures of 76, Sloane Street. Also there remained with him

"memories from about 1851 of the bright eyes of little Louis Blanc, of
Milner-Gibson's pleasant smile, of Bowring's silver locks, of
Thackeray's tall stooping figure, of Dickens's goatee, of Paxton's
white hat, of Barry Cornwall and his wife, of Robert Stephenson the
engineer, to whom I wanted to be bound apprentice, of Browning (then
known as 'Mrs. Browning's husband'), of Joseph Cooke (another
engineer), of Cubitt the builder (one of the promoters of the
Exhibition), of John Forster the historian, of the Redgraves, and of
that greater painter, John Martin. Also of the Rowland Hills, at
Hampstead.

"1859 was the height of my rage for our South Kensington Trap-Bat
Club, which I think had invented the name South Kensington. It was at
it that I first met Emilia Francis Strong. We played in the garden of
Gore House where the Conservatory of the Horticultural Society, behind
the Albert Hall, was afterwards built."

In the memoir of the second Lady Dilke, prefixed to _The Book of the Spiritual Life_, Sir Charles writes of this time, 1859 to 1860, when he "loved to be patronized by her, regarding her with the awe of a hobbledehoy of sixteen or seventeen towards a beautiful girl of nineteen or twenty." But at one point she bewildered him; for in those days Emilia Strong was devout to the verge of fanaticism:

"We were all puzzled by the apparent conflict between the vitality and
the impish pranks of the brilliant student, expounding to us the most
heterodox of social views, and the 'bigotry' which we seemed to
discern when we touched her spiritual side." [Footnote: _Book of the
Spiritual Life_, Memoir, p. 10.]

No doubt the fastings and mortifications which Emilia Strong practised at that period of her youth would seem 'bigotry' to a lad brought up under influences which, in so far as theology entered into them, had an Evangelical bent. Charles Dilke thus summed up his early prepossessions and practices in this respect:

'My mother had been a strong Low Church woman, and those of her
letters which I have destroyed very clearly show that her chief fear
in meeting death was that she would leave me without that class of
religious training which she thought essential. My grandfather and my
father, although both of them in their way religious men (and my
grandfather, a man of the highest feeling of duty), were neither of
them churchgoers, nor of her school of thought; and ... as I was till
the age of twenty a regular church attendant and somewhat devout for a
boy of that age, it was a grief to me to find that my brother's turn
of mind as he grew up was different, and that he naturally thought his
judgment on the subject as good as that of the mother whom he had lost
at three years old, and could hardly be said to have known.'

But the true spiritual influence on Charles Dilke's early life was derived from his grandfather, whose nature had in it much of the serenity and wise happiness which go to the making of a saint. This influence was no doubt ethical in its character rather than religious; but it can be traced, for example, in a humane scruple which links it with Dilke's affectionate cult of St. Francis of Assisi:

'In 1856 I had begun to shoot, my father being passionately fond of
the sport, and I suppose that few people ever shot more before they
were nineteen than I did. But about the time I went to Cambridge I
found the interference with my work considerable, and I also began to
have doubts as to considerations of cruelty, and on points affecting
the Game Laws, which led me to give up shooting, and from 1862 I
hardly ever shot at all, except, in travelling, for food.'

The taste for travel, always in search of knowledge, but followed with an increasing delight in the quest, began for him in the rovings through England with his grandfather. As early as his seventeenth year he was out on the road by himself; and this letter written from Plymouth, April 5th, 1860 after a night spent at Exeter, indicates the results of his training:

"This morning we got up early, and went to the Northerny [Footnote:
Northernhay, or Northfield, a pleasure-ground at Exeter.] and
Cathedral. Nothing much. Took the train at quarter before ten. Railway
runs along the shore under the cliffs and in the cliffs. We saw a
rather large vessel wrecked on the sands. Teignmouth pretty. Got to
Totnes before twelve. Hired a boat and two men, 10s. 6d. Down the
river to Dartmouth, twelve miles. The Dart is more like a series of
lakes than a river; in some of the reaches it is impossible to see
what way you are to get out. Very like the Wye until you get low down,
then it opens into a lake about two miles across, free from all mud,
nothing but hills and cliffs. Then it again contracts, and passes
through a gorge, which is said to be very like parts of the Rhine.

"The scene here is splendid. Dartmouth now comes, but the river,
instead of spreading and becoming ugly, as most tidal rivers do,
remains narrow and between cliffs, until you have the great sea waves
thundering up against them. Dartmouth contains a church more curious
than half the cathedrals in the kingdom: Norman (Late), fine brasses,
barrel roof with the paint on, and stone pulpit painted, etc., etc.
There are some very fine old houses also. The place is the most lovely
by far of any that I ever saw--Paradise.

"We have had a bad day--real Devonshire--where they say that they must
have one shower every day and two on Sundays. 'Shower' means about six
hours' quiet rain, _vide_ 'Murray' and our experience of to-day. The
boatmen say 'it rains most days.' I hope Mrs. Jackson is going on
well. Trusting you are all well, I send my love to all and remain

"Your affectionate grandson,

"CHARLES W. DILKE."

A scrap from one of the grandfather's letters, April 25th, 1859, which points to the terms of intellectual equality that existed in the correspondence between the two, has also some historical interest:

"Hope your news of the French troops landing in Genoa is premature.
War, however, seems inevitable; but I hope on, hope ever. I should be
sorry to see the Austrians triumph over the Sardinians, for then they
would fasten the chains on Italy tighter than ever. Yet I cannot hope
that the worst man in Europe, the Emperor of the French, should
triumph."

At the close of 1860, the lad set out on a more adventurous excursion to France, in a storm of snow so tremendous that trains were blocked in many places. However, he reached Amiens safely, saw and described it dutifully, then made for Paris.

Charles Dilke's familiarity with France was destined to be extended year by year till the end of his life. This visit of Christmas 1860 was the first which he made alone to that country; but part of the summer of 1859 had been spent by him with his family at Trouville, whence he wandered over Normandy, adding detail to his knowledge of Norman architecture.

But even stronger than the interest in historic architecture which his grandfather had imparted to him was the interest in men and affairs; above all, in those men who had assisted at great events. Throughout his life his love of travel, his taste for society, and his pursuit of first-hand information upon political matters helped to enlarge his list of remarkable acquaintances; and during this stay in France a new name was added to the collection of celebrities:

'At Havre I got to know King Jerome, father to "Plon-Plon" and father-
in-law to my friend Princess Clothilde, and was duly interested in
this last of the brothers of Napoleon. The ex-King of Westphalia was a
wicked old gentleman; but he did not let a boy find this out, and he
was courteous and talkative. We long had in both years, I think, the
next rooms to his at Frascati's; and he used to walk in the garden
with me, finding me a good listener. The old Queen of Sweden was still
alive, and he told me how Désirée Clary [Footnote: Eugénie Bernardine
Désirée Clary married, August 16th, 1798, Marshal Jean-Baptiste
Bernadotte, afterwards Charles XIV., King of Sweden. Her elder sister
Julie had become the wife of Joseph Bonaparte in 1794.] had thrown
Bonaparte over for him, and then had thrown him over for Bernadotte.
He also described riding through Paris with Bonaparte on the day of
Brumaire.'

Having completely outgrown the nervous invalidishness of his earlier boyhood, Dilke at eighteen years of age was extending his activities in all directions.

'In 1861 I find by my diaries that I was at the very height of my
theatre-going, attending theatres in Paris and in London with equal
regularity; and in this year I wrote an elaborate criticism of
Fechter's Hamlet, which is the first thing I ever wrote in the least
worth reading, but it is not worth preservation, and has now been
destroyed by me. At Easter, 1861, I walked to Brighton in a single day
from London, and the next day attended the volunteer review. I was a
great walker, and frequently walked my fifty miles within the day. My
interest in military affairs continued, and I find among my letters of
1861 passages which might have formed part of my writings on military
subjects of 1887 to 1889. I went down to see the new Tilbury forts,
criticized the system of the distribution of strength in the Thames
defences, advocated "a mile of vigorous peppering as against a slight
dusting of feathers every half-hour"; and went to Shoeburyness to see
the trial of the Whitworth guns.'

His cousin, William Wentworth Grant Dilke, was Captain and Adjutant of the 77th Regiment, and Charles Dilke remembered the young officer's visit to bid good-bye before he departed for the Crimea, where he met his death.

Though old Mr. Dilke had sympathized with the wonderful manoeuvres of the child's armies of leaden soldiers, and had added to them large reinforcements, he became troubled by his grandson's keen and excited following of all the reports from the Crimea. He had a terror of the boy's becoming a soldier, and 'used to do his best to point out the foolish side of war.' But this, as the passage already quoted shows, did not deter his pupil from beginning, while still a growing youth, detailed study of military matters.

Under normal conditions, an undergraduate going up to an English University without public school friendships is at a disadvantage: and this was Charles Dilke's case. But he went to his father's college, Trinity Hall; and his father was a very well known and powerfully connected man. Offer of a baronetcy had been made to Wentworth Dilke in very unusual and gratifying terms. General Grey, the Queen's secretary, wrote:

"ST. JAMES'S PALACE,
"_January 1st_, 1862.

"MY DEAR DILKE,

"The Queen cannot forget for how many years you have been associated
with her beloved husband in the promotion of objects which were dear
to his heart; and she would fain mark her sense of the valuable
assistance you have ever given him in his labours in some manner that
would be gratifying to your feelings.

"I am therefore commanded by Her Majesty to express the hope that the
offer of a Baronetcy which she has informed Lord Palmerston of her
desire to confer upon you, coming direct from Her Majesty herself, and
as her own personal act, may be one which it will be agreeable to you
to accept."

Proof of the Queen's strong feeling for the man who had been so closely associated with the Prince Consort in his work of popularizing the arts and crafts had already been given by the fact that Wentworth Dilke was, except for those whom she was obliged to meet on business, the first person from the outside world whom she saw after the Prince Consort's death. And indeed, but for his sense of a personal graciousness in the offer, Wentworth Dilke would scarcely have departed from his lifelong habit of deference to his father's wish and judgment. Old Mr. Dilke, though gratified by the compliment, wrote to a friend:

"My son's fortune is not strong enough to enable his children to carry
such a burthen with ease; and as to the waifs and strays which it may
help them to, I would rather see them fight their good fight
unshackled."

There came a time when the baronetcy was something of an encumbrance to one of these children:

'When I was accused of attacking the Queen, which I never did,
somebody--I forget who--went further, and said I had "bitten the hand
which fed me," and I really believe that this metaphor expressed
publicly a private belief of some people that my father had made money
by his labours. All I can say is that he never made a farthing by them
in any form at any time, and that in '51 and in '62 he spent far more
than his income on entertainments.... He wished for no reward, and he
knew the conditions under which his life was given to public rather
than to private service: but he killed himself at it; he left me much
less rich than I should otherwise have been, and it is somewhat hard
to find myself told that if I call attention to notorious illegalities
I am "biting the hand that fed me." The Queen herself has, as I happen
to know, always spoken in a very different sense.'

The newly made Baronet, in the course of his labours for the second Great Exhibition, added to his already very numerous friendships.

'My father's chief foreign friends in '62 were Prince Napoleon,
Montésinos, Baron Schwartz (Austria), Baron von Brünen von Grootelind
(Holland), Prince Oscar (afterwards King of Sweden), and Senator
Fortamps (Belgium).'

Finally, there is this entry, written in 1890:

'Just as I had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Wellington through
father in the Exhibition of 1851, so I made that of Palmerston in the
Exhibition of 1862. He was still bright and lively in walk and talk,
and was extremely kind in his manner to me, and asked me to one of
Lady Palmerston's Saturday nights at Cambridge House, to which I duly
went. I should think that there is no one living but myself who was at
the Ball to the Queen at the Hotel de Ville in 1855, at the famous
Guards' Ball in 1862, and also at one of Lady Palmerston's evenings.'

Charles Dilke matriculated at Trinity Hall in October 1862.