Chapter LXI: Table Talk

After Lady Dilke's death, the Rev. W. and Mrs. Tuckwell, her brother- in-law and her elder sister, made their home with Sir Charles Dilke at Pyrford; and notes of his talk put together from memory and from diaries by the old scholar give a vivid impression of the statesman as seen in intimacy. Mr. Tuckwell says:

During the last five years of his life I breakfasted alone with Sir
Charles whenever he was at Pyrford. It was his "softer hour," and
showed him in a specially endearing light. Not only was he fresh
from his night's rest, full, often, of matter interesting or amusing
in his letters which he had just read, but the tête-à-tête brought
out his finest social nature. In large companies, as we saw him at
Dockett, he was occasionally insistent, iterative, expressing
himself, to use a term of his own, with a "fierceness" corresponding
to the strength of his convictions. With me at our breakfasts he was
gentle, tolerant, what Sydney Smith called "amoebean," talking and
listening alternately. I was told that before his death the two
experiences to which he referred in anticipating a return to his
Pyrford home were the forestry among his pines and the early
breakfast table.

Much of his talk was, of course, Parliamentary, bearing on incidents
or persons from the House. He often spoke of Harcourt, whom he
dearly loved. When Harcourt's death was announced to a party at
breakfast in Speech House, several in the company told anecdotes of
the dead man or commented on his character. One lady spoke of him
harshly. Sir Charles remained silent, but more than once during the
meal his eyes filled with tears. He told me on another occasion that
"Lulu" promised to be a greater man than his father, just as Winston
Churchill is a greater man than Randolph. Lulu resembles his father
curiously in all things except in the paternal habit of swearing.
Once, when an attempt by the Opposition to snatch a victory in a
thin House had been foiled, Harcourt said savagely across the table:
"So that d----d dirty trick has failed!" Hicks Beach sprang up to
ask the Speaker if such language were Parliamentary. Speaker Gully
was too discreet to have heard the words. Dilke remembered being in
company with Harcourt and Mrs. Procter, amongst several more. As she
left the room, Harcourt said: "There goes one of the three most
charming women I ever knew; the other two"--a pause, during which
the ladies present looked keenly expectant--"the other two are
dead!"

He turned to talk of Dizzy, to whom he had first been introduced in
his early days by Lady Lonsdale, the great man wishing to know him.
He quoted some of Dizzy's sayings. Dizzy called Spencer Walpole and
Russell Gurney "those two whited sepulchres of the House of
Commons." Walpole, consequential and lugubrious, he spoke of as "the
high-stepping hearse-horse of public life." Of deaf Mr. Thomasson,
who, ear-trumpet in hand, was wont to place himself near every
speaker, he said that "no man had ever so neglected his natural
advantages."

Of Gladstone Dilke rarely spoke, but used to describe the periodical
entrance of Mrs. Gladstone into the meetings of the Cabinet with a
large basin of tea for the old man. [Footnote: In the last years of
Sir Charles's life, at a party given by Mr. and Mrs. Herbert
Gladstone at Downing Street, he stopped in the room where Cabinet
meetings used to be held, and pointed out to the editor of this book
the door through which Mrs. Gladstone used to enter bearing the bowl
of tea. For Sir Charles's recollections of Mr. Gladstone, see
appendix at end of this chapter.] Once he had to work out with his
chief some very difficult question. As they sat absorbed, Hamilton,
the private secretary, entered with an apologetic air to say that
----, a well-known journalist, had called, pressingly anxious to see
the Prime Minister on an important subject. Without raising his
head, Gladstone said: "Ask him what is his number in the lunatic
asylum."

He told of a Cabinet in 1883 at which ---- talked a great deal, "and
I told Chamberlain that at the Political Economy Club, where I had
been dining on the previous night, there was a closure of debate in
the shape of the introduction of hot muffins, which I thought would
be excellent for Cabinets." At this Cabinet Lord Granville said: "We
all agree that ---- is a bore, but I have never been able to make up
my mind whether that is a drawback or a qualification so far as
public service is concerned."

Asquith he looked upon as one of the greatest Parliamentarians he
had known, much superior in that capacity to Gladstone. His
allocution on the King's death was noble; still finer his
introduction of the Veto Bill in December, 1909. "His speech was
perfect: forcible in manner, statesmanlike in argument, felicitous
in epithet and phrasing." Balfour on the same occasion was at his
worst: "hampered by his former contrary declarations, trivial in
reasoning, feeble in delivery." He was ill, and ought not to have
come. I asked if Balfour's frequent inconsistencies and vacillations
were due to carelessness. He said no, but to the necessity imposed
upon him, not of proclaiming principles, but of keeping together a
divergent party. I asked what other notable recent speeches he could
recall. He said the Archbishop of Canterbury's [Footnote: Dr.
Randall Davidson.] on the Congo scandal, in the House of Lords: "a
marvellous performance, nothing said which should not have been
said, everything said which required saying; the speech of a great
statesman." Bishop ---- followed him with a mere piece of missionary
claptrap. In the Commons on the same occasion our charming friend
Hugh Law distinguished himself, silencing some of his compatriots,
the Irish Roman Catholics, whose line was to support Leopold because
the Protestant missionaries abused him. Leopold II. Sir Charles
called "the cleverest--and wickedest--man living." He broke off to
speak of the Archbishop, whom he met weekly at Grillion's, as a
delightfully instructive talker, not only full, that is, of light
agreeableness, but supporting the opinions he advances with
convincing, cogent, logical force, yet never boring his hearers. As
another powerful speech he instanced T. P. O'Connor on Sir R.
Anderson's indiscretions, "most terribly crushing in its grim,
ruthless exposition," Anderson sitting in the Gallery to hear it.

In his own great speech on Army Reform in April, 1907, Sir Charles
said that Haldane was "all things to all men." His hearers perceived
it to be a quotation (which in fact I had furnished), but no one
localized it! An amusing misquotation was Arnold-Forster's in the
same debate: he said that Haldane was like King David, who drilled
his men by fifties in a cave. In March, 1909, Sir Charles told me
sadly of Arnold-Forster's sudden death, which he had just learned.
"With some defects of manner, he was very clever, writing and
speaking well. As War Minister Balfour gave him no chance. His last
speech in the House, a fortnight before his death, just preceded
mine. 'I must speak,' he said to me, 'on those damned Special
Reservists;' and speak he did for a good, well-sustained half-hour,
going out as soon as he had finished." He had been with us at
Dockett. He and Sir Charles sparred continually and amusingly, both
equally aggressive, imperious, stentorian, iterative, each insistent
on his own declamation and inattentive to his opponent's.

Sir Charles, while on this topic of oratory, went on to quote with
much hilarity a speech by Lord ---- in the Lords: "This Liberal
Government injures friends no less than enemies. Look at me! I am a
passive resister; I belong to the National Liberal Club; I have
married my deceased wife's sister; and none of my children are
vaccinated; yet they are meddling with my rights as a landlord." The
Lords did not see the fun, the papers did not report it, but it is
to be found in Hansard.

I asked Dilke how my old pupil, Sir Richard Jebb, comported himself
in Parliament. He said: "Handsome, beautifully groomed, with a
slight stoop, slow delivery, speaking rarely and on subjects which
he thoroughly understood, his phrasing perfect, manner engaging: a
man reserved and shy, not seeking acquaintance, but, if sought,
eminently agreeable." University members, he added, should come
always in pairs: one to represent the high University ideal,
embodied only in a very few; his colleague reflecting the mob of
country parsons who by an absurd paradox elect to Parliament. Jebb
was the ideal Cantab.; didactic, professorial, the Public Orator;
seeming incomplete without a gown: but for his rare and apt
appearances, he might have overdone the part.

He told a story of Major O'Gorman. A professed Roman Catholic, he
was dining in the House one Friday on a devilled chicken, when his
parish priest was announced. "Waiter," he said, "take away the
devil, and show in the priest."

When Sir Charles first took office, he was cautioned by his
colleague, Lord Tenterden, not to read the newspapers: "If you do,
you will never distinguish between what you know and what you have
just read."

He mentioned ----. I said that his elaborate manners and bridegroom
dress marked him out as _natus convivio feminali_, meant by nature
to be a guest at ladies' tea-tables. Dilke assented, adding that he
was less bland to men than to women. "Tommy" Bowles said of him in
the House: "The right honourable gentleman answers, or, rather, does
not answer, my questions with the pomposity of a Belgravian butler
refusing twopence to a beggar."

He spoke of the decadence in costume characteristic of the present
day. I said that, according to Wraxall, we must go back for its
beginnings to Charles Fox, who came down to the House in boots. I
added that, when I first went up to Oxford, a frock-coat and tall
hat were imperative in walking out; that a "cut-away" coat, as it
was called, would have been "sconced" in Hall; that men even kept
their boating-dresses at King's or Hall's, changing there; that a
blazer in the High would have drawn a crowd. He said that till very
lately--he was speaking in 1907--the custom of dress in Parliament
had been equally rigid; that Lord Minto had recently scandalized his
peers by wearing a straw hat; that when, some years before, a member
whose name I forget had taken the same liberty in the Commons, the
Speaker sent for him, and begged that he would not repeat the
offence.

In February, 1908, we talked of the Sweating Bill. Two years before,
he said, it could command so little support that, having obtained
for it the first private members' night, he withdrew it. Now it was
accepted with enthusiasm, and the second reading passed without a
division--the change, he added, entirely due to the Women's
Trade-Union League.

He expressed satisfaction with the stiffening procedure rules of
April, 1906, but added that they would make great Parliamentary
orations impossible. I said: "All the better, we want business in
the Commons; for oratory there are other occasions." He said how
transient is the public interest in men and questions; the community
is like a kitten playing with a cork: so soon as it is tempted off
by something else, the cork becomes dead to it. He instanced
Rosebery; the Aliens Act; Tariff Reform, in spite of Chamberlain's
galvanizing efforts. Of Campbell-Bannerman, then alive and well, he
said that all his work was done for him by his subordinates: "he had
only to read novels, prepare jokes, look inscrutable and fatherly."

In July, 1909, he attended the memorial service for Lord Ripon at
the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Knowing that the leading statesmen on
both sides, Protestant to a man, would be present, the ecclesiastics
made the show as fine as they could, bringing out all their
properties. All the monks and priests in London attended; the
Archbishop, in gorgeous attire, sat on a stool, with two boys behind
holding up his train. The music was exquisite; Sir Charles had never
heard anything so sweet as the warbling of the Requiem by the
chorister boys. But the whole was palpably a show, the actors intent
on their acting, never for a moment devotional; where changes in the
service involved changes in position, they were prepared while the
part before was still unfinished, so that the stage might never be
empty nor the transformations lag: the whole thing a Drury Lane
pageant; while the richly decorated catafalque in the centre, on
which the ceremonial supposed itself to converge, was empty--
_sepulchri supervacuos honores_--the body being at Studley. Of Ripon
himself, whom everyone loved, he spoke affectionately.

Of talks on miscellaneous topics I recall the following. We spoke of
the Tilsit Secret Articles, revealed mysteriously to the English
Government. Sir Charles thought the informant was a Russian officer,
betraying it with or without the connivance of the Tsar. Evidence
has since come out connecting the disclosure with a Mr. Mackenzie,
who is supposed to have obtained the secret from General Benningsen.
Or Canning may have learned it through the Russian Ambassador in
England, who was his intimate friend, and strongly adverse to his
master's French policy. [Footnote: See for a recent discussion of
the evidence J. Holland Rose's _Life of Napoleon_, ii. 135-140.] Sir
Charles went on to say that in history lies find easier credit than
truth. All the books have said and say that England refused to buy
Delagoa Bay from Portugal. He always denied this alleged refusal;
and now Lord Fitzmaurice has caused search to be made, and finds no
confirmatory evidence. Again, he maintained in Paris, against all
the experts, that Nigra engineered the Franco-Prussian War. His
words were repeated to the Empress Eugénie, who said, "Yes, he is
right: Nigra was a false friend."

He talked of the Japanese, whom he had known in England and lived
with in Japan.... Their only religion is patriotism, and their
prayers to the Emperor are formal merely, yet they are reckless of
life and eager to die for Fatherland; indeed, so incapable of
retreating before an enemy as sometimes seriously to damage
strategic plans. Were they launched against the West, they would go
through any European army.

He spoke of the durability of the Third French Republic. It will be
unbroken while peace lasts. War may bring a temporary Dictatorship,
but the republic will of necessity revive again. The immense
majority of Frenchmen are opposed unalterably to a monarchy.

He quoted what was said to be Napoleon's only joke. In opening
negotiations with the British Government, he found it to be demanded
as a preliminary that, as matter of principle and without prejudice,
he should formally recognize the Bourbon rights, "Most certainly,"
he said, "if, also as matter of principle and without prejudice, the
British Government would formally recognize the Stuart rights."

Dilke spoke of the old Political Economy Club, to which he was
introduced by John Stuart Mill. The President was Lord Bramwell; its
dominant member William Newmarch, a rough man of powerful intellect,
of whose ferocious criticisms everyone stood in awe, and who was
habitually hard on Mill.

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 must be at home if pretending
to the exclusive social set. It was objected that the inmates of
some amongst these houses were persons whom the Queen (Victoria)
would not receive. "The Queen!" said ---- in a tone of pained
surprise--"the Queen was _never_ in Society."

I had been to church unwittingly on "Empire Day," and reported a
sermon stuffed with militarism. He poured cold water on the idea.
"Ireland won't have it; Canada won't have it; South Africa loathes
it; India has an Empire Day of its own. Only Australia cares for it.
It is a vulgar piece of Tory bluff, and a device for annoying the
Dutch."

He had lately visited Dropmore: said how frequently the Dropmore
Papers upset accepted history, but that the historian will answer,
_Mon siege est fait_. He explained the phrase. A man had written a
history of some famous siege; after it was published fresh facts
were brought to his notice: he declined them--"Mon siege est fait."
[Footnote: Ascribed to the Abbé Dubois.]

He talked of Marlborough's victories: he hummed the opening verse of
"Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre." I said it was our "For he's a jolly
good fellow": he said yes, but the tune goes back to the time of the
Crusaders. I asked who wrote the words. He said an unknown French
soldier on the night of Malplaquet, when Marlborough was believed to
have been killed. Napoleon, who knew no music, often mounted his
horse at the opening of a campaign singing the first line as he put
his foot into the stirrup.

He spoke often of Grillion's which he habitually frequented and much
enjoyed. He told of its formation in 1812; of old members whom he
had known--Sir Robert Inglis, Chenery of the _Times_, regal old Sir
Thomas Acland, Fazakerley, Gally Knight, Wilmot Horton; of its
effect in socially harmonizing men bitterly opposed in politics. He
told the story of "Mr. G." dining there by accident alone, and
entering himself in the club book as having drunk a bottle of sherry
and a bottle of champagne. He said what care was taken to exclude
undesirables, preserving thereby a high tone of company and of talk.
I asked him what was the finest conversation to which he had ever
listened. "In Boston," he said; "at Lowell's breakfast-table; the
company Lowell, Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, Agassiz, Asa Gray."
[Footnote: See Vol. I., Chapter VI.]

We talked of precious stones, recalling the Koh-i-noor in its small
gas-lighted tent at the 1851 Exhibition. He said that modern paste
is more beautiful and effective than diamonds. The finest pearls
known belonged to the Duchess of Edinburgh: she showed Sir Charles a
collar valued at two millions sterling. I named the Hope jewels,
shown also in 1851. He knew the "rich Hope," Henry, who built the
house in Piccadilly. The "poor Hope," Beresford, had only £30,000 a
year. They were a Dutch family, "Hoop" by name. Beresford's wife,
Lady Mildred, aped the Queen, driving in the Park dressed in black,
with a large hat, and finely mounted outriders. The same thing was
done by Mme. Van de Weyer. Beresford bought the _Morning Chronicle_
in order to promulgate his High Church views, writing under the
signature D.C.L. He ruined the paper.

He more than once sang the praises of Sir George Grey--honoured in
South Africa, Australia, New Zealand; statesman, aristocrat,
Radical, creator of the Australian Labour Party, terror of our
Colonial Office at home; one of the few men who have done great
things by themselves. Bismarck told Sir Charles that Cavour, Crispi,
Kruger, were greater than himself. "I had the army and the State
behind me; these men had nothing." Amongst Bismarck's minor desires
was a hope that he might outlive his physician, Dr. Schweininger,
who plagued him with limitations as to diet. "To-day potatoes will
we eat; to-morrow comes Schweininger." He owned to having over-eaten
himself once, and only once: "Nine nine-eyes (lampreys) did I eat."
"People," he said, "look on me as a monarchist. Were it all to come
over again, I would be republican and democrat: the rule of kings is
the rule of women; the bad women are bad, the good are worse."

Sir Charles spoke of Botha, whom he met here in 1907. People were
unexpectedly charmed with him: they anticipated a replica of old
Kruger; instead of that they beheld a handsome man, with the most
beautiful eyes and mouth ever seen. His daughter with him was very
pretty; fashionably dressed, in the style of a French American.

He told of an Indian official under the old East India Company
stationed in a remote place, a "Boggley Wallah," who for several
years sent in no reports, money, or accounts. An emissary,
commissioned to bring him to book, found him living in great luxury
on the borders of a lake. He said that he did his work and kept his
papers on an island in the lake, and sent a boat for them; but the
returning boat somehow sank in mid-water, and books and papers went
to the bottom. The Company dismissed him without a pension: he came
to London, took his seat daily in ragged clothes just outside the
offices in Leadenhall Street, standing up to salaam when any
Director or official passed in or out, but speaking no word. People
gathered to look at him, and at last the Company gave him £1,000 a
year. He drove down in a carriage and four, and handed in a letter
stating that he had already amassed £5,000 a year in their service,
that they had now raised it to £6,000, and that he desired to
express his gratitude.

I quoted from some book I was reading a dictum that no woman
nowadays can be called perfectly beautiful. He said he had known
only two, Lady Dudley and Madame Castiglione. The latter was in the
pay successively of Victor Emanuel and Louis Napoleon; in the second
capacity supposed to have been a spy employed by Cavour.

He spoke of John Forster, biographer of Dickens, an intimate friend
of his own grandfather and father, as a man of violent, noisy
passions, but very lovable; his attitude towards Dickens
pathetically affectionate.

He described two German Princesses whom he had met at lunch; dowdy
and of the ordinary Teutonic type, looking on their brother "Billy"
as the greatest of mortals. They had been shopping up and down
Oxford Street, delighted with their purchases, and with their escape
from Court ceremonial. He went on to say how common every Prussian
officer looks when in plain clothes. Wearing them very rarely, the
officers never look at ease in them; and the swagger which they
adopt in uniform is highly ridiculous in mufti.

When Napoleon's death was known, one of George IV.'s Ministers went
to his master with the news: "Sir, your greatest enemy is dead."
"Good G---! they told me she was better," was the royal answer. Sir
Charles spoke of Jerome Bonaparte, whom he knew; a dull man, a thorn
in the side of Napoleon III. "You have nothing of the great Napoleon
about you," Jerome said one day. "I have his family," answered the
worried Emperor. From him we passed to the death of the Duc
d'Enghien. The Princes were notoriously plotting against Napoleon's
life; by slaying a Prince of the blood he made it clear that two
could play the game. The first copy of Mme. de Rémusat's book was
thought to deal too plainly with this and other topics; it was
destroyed, and rewritten in a softer tone.

In November, 1909, Sir Charles spent some days in the Record Office,
coming back each time in much need of a bath, after rummaging
amongst papers which had not been disturbed for a century. He found
amongst other papers a letter from a Grand Duke of Modena to
Castlereagh, written just after Napoleon's fall, saying how exultant
were his subjects at his return to them, and asking Castlereagh to
lend him £14. With the letter was the draft of Castlereagh's answer,
congratulating the Duke's subjects and himself, but adding that
there would be difficulty in applying to Parliament for the loan.

Sir Charles remarked on my _Athenaeum_ review of Francis Newman's
Life. He said that when he himself was in bad odour for his early
Civil List speeches, so that he had been exposed to serious
disturbances, and a break-up of his intended meeting at Bristol was
threatened, Newman, from sheer dislike to mob tyranny, came forward
to take the chair; and through a tempest of shouts and rushes, and
amid the stifling smell of burnt Cayenne pepper, sat in lean
dignity, looking curiously out of place, but serene in vindication
of a principle. [Footnote: See Vol. I, Chapter IX.]

The publication of the Life of Goldwin Smith led us to talk of
University reform. I said how by means of it my own college had
become _ex humili potens_, had arisen from depths to heights, from
obscurity to fame. Of his, he said, the contrary was true: his
college had been ruined by Parliamentary interference. Trinity Hall
was founded for the study and teaching of jurisprudence, the old
Roman canon and civil law, on which all modern law is based. It was
the only institution of the kind, a magnificent and useful monopoly.
This exclusive character was destroyed by Parliament; scholarships
in mathematics and classics were instituted; it is now like other
colleges, and men who wish to study law at its source no longer
frequent it. He talked to me of Cambridge, and related with mimicry
anecdotes of "Ben" Latham, Master of Trinity Hall. Dining at Trinity
Hall one Sunday in 1883, he said Latham told him that he had lately
been sitting on an inter-University committee with Jowett, and that
Jowett was so sharp a man of business that "it is like sitting to
represent the Great Northern against the London and North-Western.
His one idea is to draw away passengers from the rival line." Latham
went on to say that the students for India who were made to stay two
years at Cambridge or Oxford, under Jowett's scheme, "the first year
learn _Sandford and Merton_ in Tamil, translated by a missionary;
and the second year _Sandford and Merton_ in Telugu, translated by
the same missionary. Thus they acquire a liberal education."

He talked of Waterloo, the battlefield being known to us both. It
was, he said, as the Duke always owned, a wonderfully near thing. If
Napoleon had had with him the two army corps left in France to
overawe insurrectionary districts, who would have joined him in a
week; and if at Ligny he had persevered in so smashing the Prussians
as to leave them powerless--if these two "if's" had become
realities, Napoleon must have driven Wellington back on Brussels.
Then the Belgians would have joined him, and the Austrians would
have forsaken the Allies, Metternich wishing well to Bonaparte for
the sake of his wife and child. The mystery of his escape from Elba,
which the English fleet might easily have prevented, remains still
to be explained: for the Vienna Congress was riddled with intrigue.
[Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke discussed the whole question of
Napoleon's escape from Elba in an article in the _Quarterly Review_,
January, 1910, entitled "Before and After the Descent from Elba."]

He made me laugh at a parson who in moments of provocation used to
say "Assouan!" His friends at last remembered that at Assouan was
the biggest dam in the world.

He gave me a recipe for beefsteak pudding: _no beef_, fresh kidney,
fresh mushrooms, fresh oysters, great stress laid on the epithet:
serve the pudding in its basin.

He came in to breakfast one morning whistling an attractive air. I
asked what it was; he said from _Carmen_, and hummed the air
through. He went on to say that he had well known the composer,
Bizet, who founded his opera on Mérimée's romance. It fell flat, and
Bizet died believing it a failure; afterwards it became the rage.

This whistling of music was a favourite practice with him. His
accurate ear enabled him to reproduce any tune which had at any time
impressed him. He would give Chinese airs, would go through parts of
a Greek Church service, would sing words and music of the _Dies Iræ.
On the Sunday following the death of Florence Nightingale our
Chertsey organist played Chopin's Funeral March. Sir Charles said
its _motifs_ were Greek rustic popular airs, each of which he
hummed, showing how Chopin had worked them in.

The dinner given to him in April, 1910, in connection with the Trade
Boards Bill was a great success, and much delighted him. He said
Bishop Gore had made a splendid speech. Sir Charles had a long chat
with Gore, and was, as always, delighted with his information and
bonhomie.

He talked of a Parisian jeweller who lived by selling jewels and by
lending money to the great Indian native potentates, and had
establishments for that purpose in India. This man wished to be
employed by our Government as a spy: Sir Charles applied on his
behalf to Lord George Hamilton, who handed to him the man's
_dossier_, an appalling catalogue of crimes and misdemeanours. He
had an extraordinarily noble presence; Sir Charles said to him:
"_You_ ought to be Amir of Afghanistan." "No," he replied; "I should
never have the patience to kill a sufficient number of people."

Of a French gentleman who had come to tea, recommended by the French
Ambassador, Sir Charles said that he was a French fool, the worst
kind of fool, _corruptio optimi_.

He showed the number of peerages having their origin in
illegitimacy, although the official books conceal the fact where
possible. The facts come out in such memoirs as Lady Dorothy
Nevill's. He went on to talk of divorce in the Roman Church, and to
scout their boast that with them marriage is an indissoluble
sacrament. The Prince of Monaco was for years the husband of Lady
Mary Hamilton. They tired of each other, wished for a divorce; the
Pope, with heavy fees for the transaction, declared the marriage to
have been for some ecclesiastical reason null and void. Each married
again; but the son of the nominally annulled union succeeded his
father as legitimate heir.

Sir Charles spoke--this was in 1906--of Bülow's speech in the German
Parliament, as one of the best ever made by any statesman, and
creating universal astonishment. Its appreciation of France and of
Gambetta was magnificent as well as generous. The French, after the
_débâcle_, behaved as a nation self-respecting and patriotic ought
to have behaved. His hint at the bad feeling between the Kaiser and
King Edward was dexterous; it was real and insuperable; none of our
Royal Family can forgive the seizure of Hanover by Prussia; and
added to this was our King's indignation at the Kaiser's treatment
of the Empress Frederick, a member of his family for whom he felt
strong affection.

Of Morny he said that he was very handsome, but in an inferior
style. His beautiful Russian wife never cared for him, but in
obedience to Russian custom cut off her wonderful hair to be laid
with him in his coffin.

He spoke of the brothers Chorley, one the supreme musical critic of
his time, the other a profound Spanish scholar, shut up through life
in his library of 7,300 volumes.

Dilke told me one morning that he had been writing since five
o'clock an article for the _United Service Gazette_, and had
finished it to his satisfaction, adding that papers dashed off under
an impulse were always the best. I demurred. "Those papers of mine,"
I said, "specially praised by you have been always the fruit of long
labour." "Ah!" he answered, "but you have style--a rare
accomplishment; that is what I have admired in yours." "Would you,"
I said, "admire the style if the matter were ill considered?" "Yes."

He often talked admiringly of the Provençal language, declaiming
more than once what he called a fine Homeric specimen:

"Pesto, liona, sablas, famino, dardai fou,
Avie tout affronta."

(Pestilence, lions, sandy deserts, famine, maddening sun-heat,
Ye have all this faced.)

He was fond, too, of quoting Akbar's inscription on the Agra bridge:
"Said Jesus, on whom be peace, Life is a bridge: pass over!"

He described the French Foreign Legion: two regiments employed by
the French chiefly among the natives in the Tonquin settlement--
desperate men most of them, many of high social position and of army
rank, who had "done something" and had gone wrong; disgraced, hiding
from society, criminals escaped from justice, with a sprinkling of
young adventurers and riotous Germans. No enormity they would not
commit, no danger they would not court; some even seeking death; all
knowing that if left wounded in the bush by retreating comrades they
would be tortured horribly by the Tonquin women. They had a hospital
served by Roman Catholic nurses, to whom they paid every respect.
When a man newly joined once whistled rudely while the Sister was
praying, as was her custom before leaving the ward, his comrades
severely punished him. Intra-regimental offences, such as theft,
were visited with death.

He mentioned one morning that he had just received a Privy Council
summons. I asked why the Bidding Prayer held a petition for the
Lords _and others_ of Her Majesty's Privy Council: old Regius
Professor Jacobson used to tell us that it was a mistake, that all
Privy Councillors were "Lords" of the Privy Council. He thought that
the word "others" represented the Lord Mayor, who attends Accession
Councils and signs the parchment, but, not being a Lord of Council,
is then required to leave, while other business proceeds.

Twice in these years he dined at Oxford--once at All Souls as the
guest of Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, again on the invitation of some
undergraduates, sons mostly of his political acquaintances. He
greatly enjoyed both; the young men were the pick and flower of
Oxford; the All Souls high table was full of young teachers and
professors. What a change from the aristocratic college of my time,
whose head was Lewis Sneyd, its Fellows William Bathurst, Henry
Legge, Sir Charles Vaughan, Augustus Barrington, etc.! Anson very
charmingly presided; the talk was everything except political.

He was extraordinarily impressed by the funeral of the King--a
wonderful and novel ceremony he called it. As a senior Privy
Councillor he had an excellent place with Asquith close to the
coffin. The most magnificent figure in the show was Garter
King-of-Arms, but all the heralds were splendid. The Archbishop,
with the Dean of Westminster and a cross-bearer, was the only
prominent ecclesiastic, the Bishops in their places as peers being
crowded out of sight. The colouring was most effective, black
setting off the scarlet. The singing was somewhat drowned by the
Guards' bands, but the Dead March came in grandly through the
windows from Palace Yard. He mentioned a curious fact: that
Westminster Hall is controlled, not by Parliament, not by any
Government department, but by the Great Chamberlain. It is the sole
remaining part of the royal palace, which was lent to Parliament by
our early Kings. I said that it had not witnessed such a scene
since, on Mary's accession, the Sovereign and the two Houses met
there to receive Papal absolution from the Legate Pole. He wished I
had told him so before.

He recalled the Cambridge Union debates of his time: the best he
ever heard was on a personal question, the impeachment of a man
named Harris for some breach of rule. Henry Sidgwick was in the
chair, the speaking extraordinarily animated and well sustained. The
finest orator of his time was a man called Payne. [Footnote: Payne
belonged to the same college as Dilke, Trinity Hall, and was
bracketed Senior in the Law Tripos of 1868. He had begun to make his
mark both at the Bar and in the Press, when, still a very young man,
he was killed in a mountaineering accident in Wales.] I said our
best speaker in my day was Goschen; his Union reports caused
Gladstone to pick him out and bring him forward. He said yes, but
that Goschen never fulfilled his promise until his really powerful
speech on Free Trade in 1903.

He enumerated the Jewish types in England. There is (1) the sallow
Jew with a beak; (2) the same without a beak; (3) the "hammy" Jew,
with pink face like a _cochon-à-lait_. The Florentine type, with
fair hair and beautiful clear face, is not seen in England.

His criticism of a certain lady led me to ask who, of people he had
known, possessed the most perfect manners. He said Lord Clarendon,
who had the old carefully cultivated Whig manners, yet with the
faintest possible tendency to pomposity. This style became
unfashionable, and was succeeded by what he called the "early
Christian" or "Apostolic" manners, of which the late Lord Knutsford
was a perfect exemplar. The best-mannered woman he had known was the
late Lady Waterford. Domestic servants too, he said, have manners;
he instanced as magnificent specimens Turner, Lady Waldegrave's
groom of the chambers, and Miss Alice Rothschild's Jelf. Lady
Lonsdale once spoke of the latter as "Guelph, or whatever member of
the Royal Family it is that waits on Alice."

Sir Charles talked about the Wallace Collection. Sir Richard was not
the natural son either of the fourth Lord Hertford, or of his father
the third Lord, Thackeray's Steyne and Disraeli's Monmouth. He was
brought up by the fourth Lord Hertford, under the name of Monsieur
Richard, not by any means as the expectant heir; yet, excepting the
settled estates, which went to the fifth Marquis, all was left to
him. Part of the great art collection remained at Bagatelle, which
became the property of a younger Wallace, an officer in the French
army; the rest has come to the English nation through Lady Wallace,
to whom her husband left the whole. Why Sir Richard assumed the name
Wallace no one knows. He was French, not English, speaking English
imperfectly: a kind, cheery, polished gentleman.

Apropos of the Education Bill: old Lady Wilde from her window in
Tite Street heard a woman bewailing herself in the street--her son
had been "took away," to gaol that is. "He was a good boy till the
Eddication came along;" then, kneeling down on the pavement and
joining her hands, she prayed solemnly "God damn Eddication."

Sir Charles contrasted the idiosyncrasies of some politicians: Grey
reserved, Balfour telling everything to everybody; Arnold-Forster
closely "buttoned up," Gorst dangerously frank. On Gorst he
enlarged: a nominal Tory, in fact a Radical, ever battering his own
side for the mere fun of the operation; old in years, young in
activity of brain and body; a poor man all his life.

He said that the two incomparable sights which this country could
show to a foreigner were (1) Henley in regatta week; (2) the Park on
a fine summer day: everyone out riding, and the Life Guards' band
going down to a Drawing-room.

I asked if he had heard a certain London preacher who was drawing
large audiences. He said yes, and that he was well worth hearing.
"He is High Church and anti-ritualist, Socialist and aristocrat,
orthodox while holding every heresy extant, not cultured or
literary, slovenly and almost coarse; yet grasping his listeners by
the feeling impressed on each that the preacher knows and is
describing his (the hearer's) experiences, troubles, hopes,
life-history."

I questioned him about Leonard Montefiore, a memoir of whom had
caught my eye in one of the bookcases. He was a man of brilliant
promise, unpopular at Balliol, giving himself intellectual airs;
went unwashed, with greenish complexion and generally repulsive
appearance; would have been prominent had he lived; was much petted
by Ruskin.

He said that, if London were destroyed to-morrow, in ten years' time
its site would be covered with a forest of maple, sycamore, robinia,
showing an undergrowth of Persian willow-herb.

He told of a man whom his groom pronounced to be "the footiest gent
on a 'oss and the 'ossiest gent on foot as he ever see."

He spoke of the "Local Veto Bill," forced by Harcourt on a reluctant
Cabinet; Harcourt was, he said, a genuine convert to the principle--
a curious intellectual phenomenon, this development of a belated
conviction in a mind hitherto essentially opportunist. It cost him
his seat later on.

Sir Charles described Speaker Peel's farewell to the House: said
that it was quite perfect in every way. He thought Gully undesirable
as his successor, and should not vote for him.

Of the rising I.L.P. he said once, in early days, they had done
wrongly in formulating a programme. Their name was a sufficient
programme; now they would indirectly help the Tories.

He had an extraordinary insight into the mental habits and emotions
of domestic animals, interpreting the feelings and opinions of his
horses when out riding, of his Pyrford dog Fafner, of his Sloane
Street cat Calino, in a manner at once graphic and convincing. His
love for cats amounted to a passion; a menagerie of eight or ten
tailless white or ginger Persians was kept in an enclosure, at
Pyrford. Once, when exploring a fine Ravenna church, we missed him,
returning from our round to find him near the door, caressing a cat
belonging to the custodian, which he had inveigled into his lap.

His literary dislikes and preferences were numerous and frankly
expressed, deeply interesting as the idiosyncrasies of a rich and
highly trained intelligence, even when to myself somewhat
unaccountable. While keenly appreciating the best in modern French
literature, he could see no charm in Corneille or Racine. Quite
lately Rabelais, reopened after many years, appealed to him
strongly, as keen satire and invective veiled by wit, and, so only,
tolerated by those scourged. To be laid hold of and temporarily
possessed by a book was as characteristic of him as of old
Gladstone; in their turn, _Pantagruel_, Anatole France's _Penguins_,
most of all _The Blue Bird_, which he read delightedly, but would
not see acted, formed of late the breakfast equipage as certainly as
the eggs and toast: any utterance of conventional apology or regret
was expressed by, "Voulez-vous que j'embrasse le chat?"

His acquaintance with English literature was intermittent. He was
apparently a stranger to our eighteenth-century authors, both in
poetry and prose; of those who followed them in time, he undervalued
Scott, disliked Macaulay, admired Napier, admired Trollope.
Wordsworth he condemned as puerile, inheriting the _Edinburgh
Review_ estimate of his poetry, and often called on me ecstatically
to repeat Hartley Coleridge's parody of _Lucy_. Of Keats he was
immeasurably fond, drawn to him by the poet's relation to his
family, declaiming his lines often--as he did sometimes those of
Shelley, whose verses in his own copy of the poems are heavily and
with wise selection scored--in tones which showed a capacity for
deep poetic feeling. A quotation would accidentally arrest him, and
he would call for the book, usually after short perusal discarding
the author as a "poopstick," a favourite phrase with him. I remember
this occurring with the _Rejected Addresses_, though he knew and
loved James Smith. A travesty of Omar Khayyám, called _The Rubaiyat
of a Persian Kitten_, he read delightedly, much preferring it to the
original. He professed contempt for the study of English grammar,
more especially for the scientific analysis of English
sentence-structure, which plays so large a part in modern education.
The contempt was certainly, as Osborne Gordon said, not bred of
familiarity. I fear that, like most University or public school men,
he would have been foiled by the simplest Preliminary Grammar Paper
of a University Local Examination to-day.

But his knowledge of political history, foreign and domestic, during
the last centuries was marvellously extensive and minute. In earlier
history he was oblivious often of his own previous knowledge,
argumentatively maintaining untenable propositions. Though fortified
by Freeman and Bryce, I could never get him to admit that all the
historic "Emperors," from Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C. down to
Francis, King of Germany, who gave up the Empire in A.D. 1806, were
Emperors, not of Germany or Austria, but of Rome; or that the
Reformed English Church of Tudor times, with all its servility, had
never relinquished, but steadily held and holds, its claim to
continuous Catholicity. But a query as to the French Revolution, the
Napoleonic dynasties, the Vienna Congress, the South African or
Franco-Prussian War, or the developments in India, Canada, Egypt,
would draw forth a stream of marshalled lucid information, which it
was indeed a privilege to hear.

"Neque ille in luce modo atque in oculis civium magnus, sed intus
domique præstantior. Qui sermo! quæ præcepta! quanta notitia
antiquitatis! quæ scientia juris! Omnia memoria tenebat, non
domestica solum, sed etiam externa bella. Cujus sermone ita tunc
cupide tenebar, quasi jam divinarem, id quod evenit, illo exstincto
fore unde discerem neminem" (Cicero, _De Senectute_).