Chapter 12

THE TURNING-POINT

JULY, 1885, TO JULY, 1886

[Greek: ou thruon, ou malachaen avemos pote, tus de megistas ae druas ae platanous oide chamai katagein.]

[Footnote: It is not the rush or mallow that the wind can lay low, but the largest oaks and plane-trees.]

Lucian in "Anthologia."

I.

When Mr. Gladstone's Ministry left office in the summer of 1885, there seemed to be in all England no man for whom the future held out more assured and brilliant promise than Sir Charles Dilke. He was still young, not having completed his forty-second year; in the Cabinet only Lord Rosebery was his junior; he had seventeen years of unremitting Parliamentary service to his credit, and in the House of Commons his prestige was extraordinary. His own judgment and that of all skilled observers regarded his party's abandonment of office as temporary: the General Election would inevitably bring them back with a new lease of power, and with an Administration reorganized in such fashion that the Radicals would no longer find themselves overbalanced in the shaping of policy. The Dilke-Chamberlain alliance, which had during the past five years been increasingly influential, would in the next Parliament become openly authoritative; and, as matters looked at the moment, it was Sir Charles, and not Mr. Chamberlain, who seemed likely to take the foremost place.

Chamberlain's dazzling popular success had been of the kind to which a certain unpopularity attaches. Moderate men of both parties were prone to impute it to demagogism, and Dilke was in the fortunate position of seeing those Radical principles for which he stood advocated by his ally with a force of combined invective and argument which has had few parallels in political history, while to him fell the task, suited to his temperament, of reasoned discussion. Those who denounced Chamberlain's vehemence could hardly fail to point a comparison with Dilke's unfailing courtesy, his steady adherence to argument, his avoidance of the appeal to passion. Some strong natures have the quality of making enemies, some the gift for making friends, outside their own immediate circle, and Sir Charles Dilke possessed the more genial endowment.

This capacity for engendering good-will in those whom he encountered certainly did not spring from any undue respect of persons. Members of the Royal Family, whose privileges he had assailed, were constant in their friendliness; high Tories such as Lord Salisbury, whose principles he combated on every platform, liked him, and were not slow to show it. On the other hand, the friendship which Sir Charles inspired did not proceed, as is sometimes the case, from a mere casual bounty of nature. In Parliament his colleagues liked him, but this, assuredly, was not without cause. No member of the Ministry had given so much service outside his own department. Lord Granville wrote at this time: 'I have not seen you alone since the smash, or I should have told you how much I feel the support you have given me both when we were together at the F.O. and quite as much since. I shall not soon forget it.' Sir William Harcourt at the Home Office, Sir Henry James in the conduct of the Corrupt Practices Bill, had been beholden to him for no ordinary assistance. Moreover, as he was good to work with, so he was good to work under. Those who served him at the Local Government Board remember him as in no way prompt to praise; but if a suggestion was made to him, he never failed to identify it with the suggester, recognizing its source in adopting it. If he made a mistake and was set right, he admitted his error--a trait very rare in Ministers, who feel that they have constantly as amateurs to direct the decision of experts, and are therefore chary of such admissions. Sir Charles always gave his men their due, and he took care that they should not be treated as machines. When colleagues called on him at his office, and found him with one of his staff, he never allowed the subordinate to be ignored in greetings. The Minister in a hurry would be stopped with, 'I think you know So-and-so.' These are small matters to set down, but by such small things men indicate their nature; and one of the oldest servants in that office summed up the matter in a sentence which is not the less interesting because it brings in another name. 'When Sir Charles Dilke was at the Local Government Board,' he said, 'the feeling towards the President, from the heads of departments down to the messengers in the hall, was the same as it was in the time of Mr. Walter Long, and I can say no more than that.'

Nobody, perhaps, has a better right to be counted fortunate than a man who can feel that he is strong, that he is liked, and that he is successfully promoting principles of government for his fellow- countrymen in which he sincerely believes. In July, 1885, Sir Charles Dilke had all these grounds for satisfaction, and in no common measure. Of course there were anxieties, politically speaking; Mr. Gladstone's future course of action was uncertain, and Mr. Gladstone was so great a force that he might at any time derange all calculations--as, in point of fact, he did. Still, time was on the side of the Radicals, and from day to day they held what they called 'cabals' of the group formed by Chamberlain, Shaw-Lefevre, Trevelyan, Morley, and Dilke himself. At these meetings Sir Charles regularly presided.

The work of the Commission on Housing was in its last stages; its chairman was able to announce on July 1st, when laying the foundation- stone of some artisans' dwellings in Hoxton, that the Commission's Bill would be introduced in the Lords by Lord Salisbury, and that he himself would have charge of it in the Commons. For a man who had so laboured during the past five years such duties as these were child's play, and Sir Charles was able for the first time for many months to take his share in social enjoyments. He dined repeatedly at Grillion's; he went to parties at famous houses both of his political allies and political opponents; above all, he found time for restful days upon his beloved river. He went to Henley in that July with his old rowing comrade Steavenson 'to see Bristowe's fine Trinity Hall eight'; he spent Sunday, July 12th, at Dockett in company with Mr. Cyril Flower; and for the next Sunday, the 19th, he was engaged to be at Taplow Court with Mr. W. H. Grenfell, famous among oarsmen. But of that day more has to be written.

Throughout the month one dark cloud had hung over him: Mrs. Pattison was grievously ill in the Madras hills, and not until the fourth week in July did he know even the nature of her illness. It was typhoid, and it left her weak to face what had to come, like a 'bolt from the blue,' upon her and her future husband. Her first marriage had brought her discipline rather than happiness; now in the middle years of life her vivid nature was blossoming out again in the promise of union with a man before whom there lay open an illustrious career. Illness struck her down, and while she lay convalescent there came to her as black a message as ever tried the heart of any woman.

* * * * *

II.

On the evening of Saturday, July 18th, Sir Charles Dilke was entertained at a dinner given by the Reform Club--a very rare distinction--to celebrate the passing of the Redistribution Bill into law. From this ceremony, which crowned and recognized his greatest personal achievement, he returned late, and found at his house a letter from an old family friend who asked him to call on the following Sunday morning on grave business. He then learnt that the wife of a Liberal member of Parliament had volunteered a 'confession' to her husband, in which she stated that she had been unfaithful to him with Sir Charles immediately after her marriage.

His note in his private diary on Sunday is: '19th.--Early heard of the charge against me. Put myself in hands of J. B. Balfour, and afterwards of Chamberlain and James.'

Later Sir Charles Dilke went down to Taplow, and spent the day there. This accusation found him separated from his future wife by many thousand miles; worse than that, she had been dangerously ill; the risk to her of a telegraphed message must be great; yet there was the chance from day to day that newspaper rumour might anticipate direct tidings from him to her. He was 'in as great misery as perhaps ever fell upon a man.'

He returned next morning to preside at the last meeting of the Commission on Housing, when, he says, 'the Prince of Wales proposed a vote of thanks to me in an extremely cordial speech.' From that attitude of friendliness the future King Edward never departed.

'I had a dinner-party in the evening, which was one of several in preparation for our Ward meetings in Chelsea, which I had to continue to hold in spite of my private miseries.

'I was engaged on the one night for which none of these dinners had been fixed to dine with Lord and Lady Salisbury, and to attend the Princess of Wales's Ball at Marlborough House, and I wrote to put off my engagements, for which I was much blamed; but I think that I was right.'

For three or four days Sir Henry James, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. J. B. Balfour, the Lord Advocate of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, moved to secure a court of inquiry which would act without prejudice to the right of legal action. But within the week it was certain that public proceedings would be taken.

The blow had come suddenly; it came with dramatic incidence at the moment when Sir Charles's prestige was most effectively recognized; and from the moment that it fell he knew that the whole tenor of his life was altered. On Thursday, July 23rd, four days afterwards, he wrote in his Diary of the time this judgment:

'Left for the last time the House of Commons, where I have attained some distinction. It is curious that only a week ago Chamberlain and I had agreed, at his wish and suggestion, that I should be the future leader, as being more popular in the House, though less in the country, than he was, and that only three days ago Mr. Gladstone had expressed the same wish. Such a charge, even if disproved, which is not easy against perjured evidence picked up with care, is fatal to supreme usefulness in politics. In the case of a public man a charge is always believed by many, even though disproved, and I should be weighted by it through life. I prefer, therefore, at once to contemplate leaving public life.'

Upon the first sentence of this he added in a marginal note, written after his marriage with Mrs. Mark Pattison, and after he had, in spite of that first decision, returned to the House of Commons: 'Chamberlain overpersuaded Emilia, and, through her, me, but he was wrong.'

Of honourable ambition Sir Charles Dilke had as much as any man. Yet in the innermost record of these days--in those letters which, not yet daring to despatch them, he wrote to his future wife--there is not a hint of his personal loss, not a word of the career that he saw broken. These things had no place in the rush of feeling which overwhelmed him, and left him for the moment unable to trust his own judgment or assert his own will.

Through the months of Mrs. Pattison's absence in India one note had been constant in his letters--the reiterated anticipation of what he hoped to bring her. Up to the middle of July his letters, apart from the news of his daily life, are filled with joyful forecast, not of his own happiness, but of his and hers together--of his happiness in seeing her happy. When the stroke fell, the note, even though it changed, was the same in essence: 'I feel this may kill you--and it will kill me either if it kills you or if you don't believe me.'

That was written down within an hour after he had the news. Never afterwards did he consider the possibility of her failing him.

The next day he wrote:

'Taplow Court, Taplow, _July 20th._

'The only thing I can do in future is to devote myself entirely to _you_ and helping in your work. To that the remainder of my life must be dedicated. I fancy you will have the courage to believe me whatever is by madness and malevolence brought against me....'

He wrote again:

'The less you turn from me, and the more you are true--and of course you will be all true ... --the more misery and not the less is it to me to bring these horrors on you. This thing is not true, but none the less do I bring these horrors on you.'

So desperate was the tumult in Sir Charles Dilke's mind that Mr. Chamberlain strove to tranquillize him by a change of scene. Some spot, such as is to be found in Sir Charles's own holiday land of Provence, at first occurred to his friend, though this would have meant the cancelling of all Mr. Chamberlain's public engagements at that most critical moment in politics. But Sir Charles instead went down to Highbury, where he passed his days much in the open air, playing lawn tennis and riding with his host's son, Mr Austen Chamberlain.

Here he rapidly came back to something of his normal self. As news had been telegraphed of Mrs. Pattison's gradual recovery, it was decided to inform her of what had happened. Mr. Chamberlain undertook the delicate task of wording the communications. She telegraphed back at once that full assurance of her trust and of her loyalty on which Sir Charles had counted. But it was characteristic of her not to stop there. A telegram from Mrs. Pattison to the _Times_ announcing her engagement to Sir Charles Dilke immediately followed on public intimation of the proceedings for divorce. Lord Granville wrote to Sir Charles: 'I wish you joy most sincerely. The announcement says much for the woman whom you have chosen.'

Yet days were to come when the storm was so fierce about Sir Charles Dilke and 'the woman whom he had chosen' that few cared to face it in support of the accused man and the wife who had claimed her share in his destiny.

When those days came, they found no broken spirit to meet them. Through his affections, and only through his affections, this man could be driven out of his strongholds of will and judgment; when that inner life was assured, he faced the rest with equanimity. He writes:

'_August 28th._--I continue to be much better in health and spirit. I was five and a half weeks more or less knocked over; I am strong and well, and really happy in you and for you, and confident and all that you could wish me to be these last few days.'

Mrs. Pattison, before she left Ceylon on her way to England, sent him a telegram, the reply to which was written to meet her at Port Said: 'Nothing ever made me so happy.... Though it has been a frightful blow, I am well now; and the blow was only a blow to me because of you.'

At first sympathy and support were proffered in ample measure. On being formally notified of proceedings in the divorce case, he wrote at once a letter to the Liberal Association of Chelsea, in which he declared that the charge against him was untrue and that he looked forward with confidence to the result of a judicial inquiry; but at the same time he offered to withdraw his candidature for the seat at the forthcoming election, if the Council thought him in the circumstances an undesirable candidate. To this offer the Council replied by reiterating their confidence in him. About the same time, yielding to Chamberlain's advice, he returned to the House of Commons while the Housing Bill was in Committee, and took part in the proceedings as usual.

The Prince of Wales, to whom he communicated news of his engagement before the public announcement, wrote warm congratulations and wishes for dispersal of the overhanging trouble. Mr. Gladstone, who had frequent occasion to write to him on public business, in one of these political letters added congratulations on the engagement, though he had made no allusion to the Divorce Court proceedings. But Mr. Gladstone's chief private secretary, Sir Edward Hamilton, had written at the first publication of them this assurance:

'You may depend upon it that your friends (among whom I hope I may be counted) are feeling for you and will stand by you; and, if I am not mistaken, I believe your constituents will equally befriend you; indeed, I am convinced that the masses are much more fair and just than the upper classes. Anything that interfered with your political career would not only be a political calamity, but a national one; and I do not for a moment think that any such interference need be apprehended.'

This letter represented the attitude that was generally observed towards Sir Charles Dilke by political associates till after the first trial.

Mr. Chamberlain's support was unwavering, though there were some who anticipated that the misfortunes of the one man might disastrously affect the political career of the other.

It is true that by the amazing irony of fate which interpenetrated this whole situation the Tories gained in Mr. Chamberlain their most powerful ally, and that Sir Charles had to encounter all the accumulated prejudice which the 'unauthorized programme' had gathered in Tory bosoms. But none of these things could be foreseen when Chamberlain, then in the full flood of his Radical propaganda, invited Sir Charles to make his temporary home at Highbury. Here, accordingly, he stayed on through August and the early part of September, breaking his stay only by two short absences. There still lived on at Chichester old Mr. Dilke's brother, a survivor of the close-knit family group, preserving the same intense affectionate interest in Charles Dilke's career. To him this blow was mortal. Sir Charles paid him in the close of August his yearly visit: ten days later he was recalled to attend the old man's funeral in the Cathedral cloisters.

In the middle of September he crossed to France, and waited at Saint Germain for Mrs. Pattison, who reached Paris in the last days of the month. On October 1st Sir Charles crossed to London; she followed the next day, and on the 3rd they were married at Chelsea Parish Church. Mr. Chamberlain acted as best man.

III.

Return to England meant a return to work. The General Election was fixed for November; and from August onwards Dilke had been drawn back by correspondents and by consultations with Chamberlain into the stream of politics, which then ran broken and turbulent with eddies and cross- currents innumerable. Chamberlain, sustaining alone the advanced campaign, wrote even before the marriage to solicit help at the earliest moment; and from October onwards the two Radicals were as closely associated as ever--but with a difference. Circumstances had begun the work of Sir Charles's effacement.

When the election came, his success was personal; London went against the Liberals, his old colleague Mr. Firth failed, so did Mr. George Russell in another part of the borough, which was now split into several constituencies; but Chelsea itself stood to its own man. The elections were over on December 19th. Before that date it was apparent that the Irish party held the balance of power, and Mr. Gladstone had already indicated his acceptance of Home Rule. [Footnote: Chapter XLV., p. 196.]

Parliament met early, and by January 28th, 1886, the Tory Government had resigned. Mr. Gladstone, in framing his new Administration, thought it impossible to include a man suffering under a charge yet untried, and wrote:

'_February 2nd_, 1886

'My Dear Dilke,

'I write you, on this first day of my going regularly to my arduous work, to express my profound regret that any circumstances of the moment should deprive me of the opportunity and the hope of enlisting on behalf of a new Government the great capacity which you have proved in a variety of spheres and forms for rendering good and great service to Crown and country.

'You will understand how absolutely recognition on my part of an external barrier is separate from any want of inward confidence, the last idea I should wish to convey.

'Nor can I close without fervently expressing to you my desire that there may be reserved you a long and honourable career of public distinction.

'Believe me always,

'Yours sincerely,

'W. E. Gladstone.'

Less than a fortnight later the divorce case was heard: the charge against Sir Charles was dismissed with costs, the Judge saying expressly that there was no case for him to answer.

The Prime Minister's attitude made it inevitable that while the case was untried Sir Charles should be excluded from the new Ministry; but not less inevitably his position before the world was prejudiced by that exclusion. Had Parliament met, as it usually meets, in February; had the whole thing so happened that the judgment had been given before the Ministry came to be formed, exclusion would have been all but impossible. We may take it that Mr. Chamberlain would have insisted on Sir Charles's inclusion as a condition of his own adherence; it would have been to the interest of every Gladstonian and of every follower of Chamberlain to maintain the judgment. As it was, the effect of Sir Charles's exclusion had been to prepare the way for a vehement campaign directed against him by a section of the Press.

By the law a wife's confession of misconduct is evidence against herself, entitling the husband to a divorce; but if unsupported by other witnesses it is no evidence against the co-respondent. But a question arose which afterwards became of capital importance. Should Sir Charles go into the witness-box, deny on oath the unsworn charges made against him, and submit himself to cross-examination? His counsel decided that there was no evidence to answer; they did not put their client into the box, and the course was held by the Judge to be the correct one.

In reply to the Attorney-General's representation that there was no case whatever which Sir Charles Dilke was called to answer, Mr. Justice Butt said that he could not see the shadow of a case. In his judgment he said: 'A statement such as has been made by the respondent in this case is not one of those things which in common fairness ought for one moment to be weighed in the balance against a person in the position of Sir Charles Dilke. Under these circumstances, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that counsel have been well advised in suggesting the course which they have induced Sir Charles Dilke to take, and the petition, as against him, must be dismissed with costs.'

Dilke himself notes: 'On Friday, February 12th, the trial took place, and lasted but a short time, Sir Henry James and Sir Charles Russell not putting me into the box, and Sir Charles Butt almost inviting them to take that course. Lord Granville had written to me: "Will you forgive my intruding two words of advice? Put yourself unreservedly into the hands of someone who, like our two law officers, unites sense with knowledge of the law." I had done this, and had throughout acted entirely through James, Russell, and Chamberlain. In court and during the remainder of the day, Chamberlain, James, and Russell, were triumphant....'

For the moment it seemed as if misfortune had ended in triumph. Congratulations poured in upon both Sir Charles and his wife; the official leaders welcomed the judgment. Mr. Chamberlain sent an express message to Downing Street: 'Case against Dilke dismissed with costs, but the petitioner has got his divorce against his wife.' Mr. Gladstone answered: 'My dear Chamberlain, I have received your prompt report with the utmost pleasure.' Sir William Harcourt wrote direct:

'Dear Dilke,--So glad to hear of the result and of your relief from your great trouble.--Yours ever, W. V. H.'

Lady Dilke's friends wrote to her, congratulating her on the reward that her courage and her loyalty had reaped.

But in Sir Charles's Diary of that date, where notes of any personal character are few indeed, this is written on the day after the case was heard, in comment on the action of a certain section of the Press:

'Renewed attempt to drive me out of public life. But I won't go now. In July I said to Emilia and to Chamberlain: "Here is the whole truth--and I am an innocent man; but let me go out quietly, and some day people will be sorry and I shall recover a different sort of usefulness." They would not let me go. Now I won't go.'

A man other than innocent would have rested on the strong judgment in his favour and let agitation die down, but the attacks continued and Dilke would not wait their passing. Chamberlain was included in these attacks, 'for having kept me out of the box,' and wrote in reply to Sir Charles: 'I was only too glad to be able in any way to share your burdens, and if I can act as a lightning conductor, so much the better.... Of course, if _you_ were quite clear that you ought to go into the box, it is still possible to do so, either by action for libel or probably by intervention of the Queen's Proctor.'

'This was the first suggestion made to me of any possibility of a rehearing of the case ... and though Hartington, James, and Russell, were all under the impression that I should find no further difficulty, it was the course which I ultimately took,' and which he pressed on with characteristic tenacity. And here laymen may be permitted to marvel at the fallibility of eminent lawyers. 'No one, of all these great lawyers,' foresaw the position in which he would be placed as a result of his application. Yet from the moment that this procedure was adopted it was possible that he might be judged without those resources of defence which are open to the meanest subject charged with an offence.

In March Sir Charles Dilke applied to the Queen's Proctor for his intervention in order that the case might be reheard. The application failed. In April he moved again, this time by a public letter, and this time the Queen's Proctor yielded. Application was made in the Court of Probate and Divorce to the President, Sir James Hannen, that Sir Charles Dilke should be made a party to the intervention or reinstated in the suit.

The President laid down that Sir Charles was no party to the suit, and had now no right to appear except as a witness, and might not be represented by counsel. The question was then taken to the Court of Appeal, but, on strictly technical grounds, the Court held that Sir Charles was no longer a party, and that he could not be allowed to intervene. Thus the first judgment, by declaring him innocent and awarding him costs as one unjustly accused, led straight to his undoing. He had been struck out of the case; he was now a mere member of the general public. There never were, probably, legal proceedings in which from first to last law and justice were more widely asunder.

Sir Charles Dilke was, in fact, in the position from which Sir Henry James had sought to protect him--the position described in the course of his pleading for reinstatement:

'I have no desire to put forward any claim for my client other than one founded on justice, but I cannot imagine a more cruel position than that in which Sir Charles Dilke would be placed in having a grave charge against him tried while the duty of defending his interest was committed to hands other than those of his own advisers.'

The consequences which flowed from the technical construction put upon the situation were these: In reality Sir Charles Dilke was the defendant on trial for his political life and his personal honour. Yet although Sir Henry James and Sir Charles Russell were there in court ready briefed, neither was allowed to speak. Dilke's case against his accuser had to be dealt with by the counsel for the Queen's Proctor, Sir Walter Phillimore, who, though a skilled ecclesiastical lawyer, was comparatively inexperienced in the cross-examination of witnesses and in Nisi Prius procedure, and was opposed by Mr. Henry Matthews, the most skilled cross-examiner at the bar. Sir Walter Phillimore also stated publicly, and properly, that it was not his 'duty to represent and defend Sir Charles Dilke.' So strictly was this view acted upon that Sir Charles did not once meet Sir Walter Phillimore in consultation; and witnesses whom he believed to be essential to his case were never called. But that was not all. According to the practice of that court, all the information given by Dilke was at once communicated to the other side; but as Sir Charles was not a party to the suit, the Queen's Proctor did not communicate to him what he learned from that other side.

In an ordinary trial the witnesses of the accusers are heard first. And this order is recognized as giving the greatest prospect of justice, since if the defence is first disclosed the accuser may adjust details in the charge so as, at the last moment, to deprive the defence of that fair-play which the first order of hearing is designed to secure. The only possible disproof which Sir Charles could offer was an alibi. It was of vital importance to him that the accusation should be fixed to dates, places, days, hours, even minutes, with the utmost possible precision. Then he might, even after the lapse of years, establish the falsity of a charge by proof that he was elsewhere at the time specified. But in this case, owing to the form that the proceedings took, the opportunity which of right belongs to the defence was given to the accuser. The accusation being technically brought by the Queen's Proctor, who alleged that the divorce had been obtained by false evidence, Sir Charles Dilke was produced as his witness, and had at the beginning of the proceedings to disclose his defence.

Further, and even more important, the issue put to the jury was limited in the most prejudicial way.

'On the former occasion,' said Sir James Hannen, 'it was for the petitioner to prove that his wife had committed adultery with Sir Charles Dilke.' (This, as has been seen, the petitioner failed to prove against Sir Charles Dilke; the petitioner had to pay Sir Charles's costs.) 'On this occasion it is for the Queen's Proctor to prove that the respondent did not commit adultery with Sir Charles Dilke.'

How this negative was to be proved in any circumstances it is difficult to see, and under the conditions Sir Charles had no chance to attack the accusation brought against him.

Sir Charles's own comment in his Diary of the time was:

'_July 16th_--My case tried again. I not a party, and--though really tried by a kind of Star Chamber--not represented, not allowed to cross-examine, not allowed to call witnesses; and under such circumstances the trial could have but one result, which was that the jury, directed to decide if they were in doubt that the Queen's Proctor had not established his case, would take that negative course. The trial lasted from Friday, 16th, to Friday, 23rd, inclusive, and the jury decided, as they could not have helped deciding, and as I should have decided had I been one of them.'

The situation may be thus summed up:

In the first trial the petitioner failed to produce any legal evidence whatever of the guilt of Sir Charles Dilke; in the second the Queen's Proctor failed to prove his innocence. [Footnote: Technically the verdict, by dismissing the Queen's Proctor's intervention, confirmed the original judgment, which dismissed Sir Charles from the case.]

The verdict of the jury at the second trial was not a verdict of Guilty against Sir Charles; it was a declaration that his innocence was not proven, the question put to the Jury by the clerk after their return into Court following the words of the Act of Parliament, and being whether the decree nisi for the dissolution of the marriage of the petitioner and the respondent was obtained contrary to the justice of the case by reason of material facts not being brought to the knowledge of the Court. The Jury's answer followed the same words. [Footnote: See report in _Daily News_, Saturday, July 24th, 1886.] When we add to that the conditions under which the question was tried, we see that they were such as to make the proof of innocence impossible.

Those about Sir Charles at this time remember how even at that bitter moment he began to look round for any method by which his case might be reheard. He wrote to Sir Henry James that it would be a proper course for himself to invite a trial for perjury; and though Lady Dilke was so ill 'from sick and sleepless nights' that she had been ordered at once to Royat, he waited for three weeks before accompanying her abroad, to give time for action to be taken, and wrote to Sir Richard Webster (then Attorney-General) practically inviting a prosecution.

He did not abandon hope of a rehearing, and worked for many years in the trust that the evidence accumulated by himself and his friends might be so used, nor did he cease his efforts till counsel in consultation finally assured him 'that no means were open to Sir Charles Dilke to retry his case.'

Sir Eyre Crowe, a friend valued for his own as well as for his father's sake (Sir Joseph Crowe, to whom Sir Charles was much attached), wrote at the time of Sir Charles's death: 'How he bore for long years the sorrow and misfortunes of his lot had something heroic about it. I only once talked to him about these things, and was intensely struck by his Roman attitude.' It was the only attitude possible to such a man. Placed by his country's laws in the situation of one officially acquitted by a decision which was interpreted into a charge of guilt; forced then, in defence of his honour, into the position of a defendant who is debarred from means of defence; assured after long effort that no legal means were open to him to attempt again that defence, he solemnly declared his innocence, and was thereafter silent.

'By-and-by it will be remembered that as a fact the issue was never fairly represented and never fairly met,' was the estimate of Sir Francis Jeune, afterwards President of the Divorce Court. And from the first there were many lawyers and thinking men and women who would have endorsed it. From the first also there were those who believed Sir Charles's word. Among such faithful friends, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Sir Robert Collins, Mr. Cyril Flower, Mrs. Westlake and Mr. Westlake, Q.C., Mr. Thursfield of the _Times_, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Francis and Lady Jeune, Sir Charles's old college friend Judge Steavenson, stand out in memory. He himself says: 'I received after the trial ... a vast number of letters from people who wrote to express their belief in me. Some, as, for example, from Dr. Hatch' (the eminent Oxford theologian) 'and his wife, and from Dr. Percival, Head-master of Rugby, [Footnote: Dr. Percival was President of Trinity College, Oxford, till 1887, when he went to Rugby. He became Bishop of Hereford.] and his wife, were from firm friends of Emilia, brought to me by their belief in her; some from friends, some from political foes, of all sorts--all breathing confidence and devotion.'

Mr. Chamberlain wrote: 'I feel bitterly my powerlessness to do or say anything useful at the present time.' In such a case the testimony of intimates is weighty, and Sir John Gorst sent in June, 1913, his recollection of words used by Mr. Chamberlain in the autumn of 1886: 'I assure you that, as a man of honour, I don't believe the charges made against him. If you had been in and out of his house at all times as I have been, you would see they were impossible.'

Then as now there existed a certain body of opinion which would have discriminated between a man's private honour and his public usefulness, holding that the nation which throws aside a great public servant because of charges of personal immorality is confusing issues, and sacrificing the country's welfare to private questions. Whatever is to be said for this view, it was one to which Sir Charles Dilke wished to owe nothing. He did not share it, and those whose adherence he acknowledged were those who believed his word. From different sources, then, Sir Charles had found confidence and support, but they were small stay in that gradually accumulating torrent of misfortune.

As the Press campaign had developed in the spring, he found himself avoided in Parliament and in society. In the House, where a few months before he had again and again been the Government spokesman and representative, he was retired into the ranks of private members. This short Parliament of 1886 came to an end in June, and, in the General Election which followed, London went solidly against Home Rule; and Sir Charles, though as compared with other Gladstonian Liberals he did well, found himself rejected by the constituency which had stood by him in four contests. Such a reverse occurs in the life of almost every prominent politician, and, though harassing, is of no determining import. For Sir Charles Dilke at this moment it was a cruel blow. The personal discredit against which he had to fight coincided with the discredit of his party; and when the jury came to their decision in July, after a week in which the newspapers had been filled daily with columns of scandalous detail, public feeling assumed a character of bitter personal hostility.

'Sir Charles's fall,' says the chronicler of that period, Mr. Justin McCarthy, 'is like that of a tower. He stood high above every rising English statesman, and but for what has happened he must have been Prime Minister after Gladstone.' [Footnote: This article appeared in a Canadian journal after the second trial.]