Chapter 30

THE LAST YEARS

I.

Call no man happy or unhappy, said the philosopher, till you see his end. With Sir Charles Dilke's life clear before us, if the question be put, "Was he happy?" only one answer can be given. He was happy. With a power of suffering which made bereavement poignant, with tragic experience of disappointment and distress, he never lost the faculty of enjoyment: he touched the world at many points, and his contact was complete and vital.

Therefore, in the life that he lived after his second wife's death there was nothing gloomy or half-hearted. At Pyrford and Dockett the same interests continued to hold their charm, though in his home of homes, the home that he did not make, but was born into, there was a change. At 76, Sloane Street, he still slept, breakfasted, and did his morning's work; but he would never willingly return there for dinner, except on very rare occasions when he entertained guests, or spend the evening there.

He still enjoyed the life of the House of Commons. Old friends were a pleasure, new-comers a fresh spring of interest, and the younger men naturally drew round this most willing teacher. One of the young Liberals [Footnote: Mr. A. F. Whyte, M.P.] who came within his influence describes the amazing interest of his talk, with its personal memories of the leading personalities in Europe during half a century past. But the true attraction was something simpler than that. "He made you extraordinarily fond of him."

What is implied in that very simple phrase has been set out by another friend of an opposing political school, brought into touch with him by a common interest in Social Reform: [Footnote: Mr. J. W. Hills, M.P.]

"What first brought us together I forget; I think it was some action I took with regard to sweated trades. At any rate he asked me to stay for a Sunday at Dockett Eddy; and after my first visit I went often. For one thing, we were both devoted to rowing; he was, of course, a far more distinguished and accomplished oarsman than I, but he and I went extraordinarily well together in a pair. Everyone who has rowed knows that pair-oar rowing is the most difficult, as it is the most fascinating, form of the art. We had many long rows together.

"The life at Dockett Eddy had an atmosphere and a colour different from that of other houses. Breakfast was at a fairly early hour. After breakfast, Dilke was invisible till lunch. Lunch was at 12.30, French in character, and always, wet or fine, took place on the broad verandah which ran along one side of the house. During the afternoon Dilke rowed on the river, walked about the green and winding paths of his beloved willow-clad island, and talked to his friends. The prevailing recollection that I shall always have of Dockett Eddy is good talk. No one who did not talk to Dilke knew the man. His speeches--at any rate, from 1906 to his death--did not give all his qualities. These came out in his talk. His amazing knowledge, which occasionally overloaded his speeches and diverted them from their main argument, wove itself naturally into the texture of his talk and gave it a wonderful richness and depth. And he talked to everybody and on all subjects; and to all he brought his tremendous vitality and his vivid and many-sided personality. You always felt that the whole force of the man was behind what he said--the active, eager, questioning mind, determined to master all facts that gave true knowledge, and when this was done, when all facts were noted and weighed, coming to a conclusion which was both clear-cut and unalterable. He was most tolerant of the views of others, and never overwhelmed with greater knowledge; but all that he had in him he gave freely and without stint. The talks I recollect best are either on industrial conditions in other countries, or on French history from 1848 onwards, or on English politics. On French history I always listened to him with delight; he not only knew literally every fact and every date, but he also knew personally most of the great men who had latterly played leading parts. On English politics it was characteristic of the man to have a tremendous belief in the present. For instance, I said something about the decadence of Parliament and Parliamentary speaking. He at once burst out: 'You are quite wrong. The men of to-day are much greater than their predecessors'; and then he went through all our prominent politicians and compared them with the men of the past. The only comparisons I remember are Winston Churchill with his father, and Asquith with Disraeli and Gladstone, in each instance to the advantage of the present generation.

"Dilke was a great man, if ever there was one. He was a man of big ideas, too big for prejudice or suspicion or self-interest. His mind was at once imaginative and matter-of-fact, making him that rare combination, a practical idealist. But the abiding memory which I shall retain of him as long as I live is not his wide knowledge, his singleness of purpose, his vital energy and driving force, so much as the friendship he gave me. He put the whole of himself into his friendship, and gave himself abundantly and without reserve. He was so great a man, and meant so much to his friends, that he played a large part in the lives of all he honoured with his regard. Though I only knew him during the last three years, he filled so big a place in my life that his death left a wide and empty gap. I regarded him with love and veneration."

"He talked to everybody and on all subjects," and he talked to everybody on a common ground of fellowship. Newman, the cabdriver at Shepperton, beside whom he always insisted on sitting when he came to Dockett; Jim Haslett, his ferryman; Busby, his old gardener and lodge-keeper at Pyrford: these no less than "Bill" East who rowed with him, and "Fred" Macpherson with whom he fenced, keep the same memory of his friendliness and of the pleasure that they had in being with him. For his constituents he was more than a representative: he was their friend, a personal influence, a centre of affection in the lives of many among them. "I hardly know what to do or say," wrote one of them after his death. "For one man to say of another it seems strange, but I _loved_ Sir Charles."

Into this affection there entered that peculiar tenderness of loyalty to the wronged which finds fit expression in these words of his old comrade, Judge Steavenson, who had known his life since they were young athletes together in the Trinity Hall boat: "I loved him, my oldest and best friend, and how I mourn him! The tragedy of his life has been pain and suffering to me for more years than I care to remember. Some say a little band of friends never wavered in their belief in his innocence. I am one, and so believing in good time I shall go to my grave."

Many a brave man has under the sense of injustice grown hard and bitter; it was not so with Sir Charles. After his death a friend's widow wrote to one who mourned him: "I should like to tell you how divinely kind he was to me in my great grief." A lady who for long years had been on a bed of pain said of his visits to her: "He seems to take your suffering from you and give it back to you on a higher plane. I think he understands because he has suffered so much himself."

In these last years after Lady Dilke's death, Sir Charles resumed, in some moderate degree, the old habit of travel. From 1906 it grew to be an institution that, when the Trade-Union Congress closed its sittings in autumn, he should meet the editor of this book and her friend Miss Constance Hinton Smith, [Footnote: Who attended these Congresses as visitors representing the Women's Trade-Union League.] and with them proceed leisurely from the trysting-place to Dean Forest for his annual visit to the constituency. Thus in different years they set out from Tewkesbury, from Bath, from Leicester, from Ipswich, and explored towns and country places of beauty or historic interest, under the guidance of one who had the gift for placing every detail in its setting, whether on the physical map of England or on that crowded chart which depicts the long course of British history. For him these journeys were each a revisiting of places seen before--seen, as he would often recall, under his grandfather's guidance in boyhood.

The annual Christmas visit to Paris, where his son often joined him, was revived in company of his secretary, Mr. Hudson, and his wife. In more than one autumn, after his stay in the Forest of Dean was completed, he made a journey through Switzerland to the Italian lakes. He journeyed under a resolution not to visit any gallery of pictures, for these must recall too poignantly the companionship which had made the special joy of all his picture-seeing. But he sent his companions that they might compare their impressions with his memory, always astonishingly vivid and exact. The sights to which he gave himself were sun and air, mountain and lake. Here, as in England, trees especially appealed to him, and in the famous garden of the Isola Madre on Lago Maggiore he amazed the gardener by his acquaintance with all the collection, from the various kinds of cypress and cedar down to the least impressive shrub. But what gave him most pleasure was the actual journeying, awakening not only associations with the places seen, but memories of other places in far-off corners of the earth.

In the last year of his life the International Association for Labour Legislation met at Lugano, and he stopped there on his autumn tour. His health was already failing, he attended no meetings and received few visitors; but experts in the subject, Ministers and ex-Ministers of Labour from Prussia, France, Canada, and other countries, sought him, to consult him on points of international policy. Two years later, when the Congress met again at Zurich, M. Fontaine recalled the memory of Sir Charles and the "conseils précieux" which other workers drew from him in their interviews. It was only when the Congress was over that the holiday really began, with a day on Maggiore and two days on Orta, before the travellers made for their real destination, Aosta among its hills, a scene new to him as to them, that filled him with fresh life. All about it charmed him: the mountains, the Roman gateways, the mediaeval cloisters, the long procession of the cattle coming down from the hill-slopes during the night; the keen air gave him energy to walk as he had never thought to walk again; and, for a touch of familiar humours, the landlord of the rough little inn where they stayed had been in his day a waiter in Willis's Rooms and remembered his guest among the diners there.

An accident to one of his companions had caused him to go on alone, and, accordingly, when he came back to Turin to fetch them it was as a guide already fully qualified. On the drive up from Ivrea, in a valley whence can be seen at the same moment Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and the glacier of the Gran Paradiso, he could show them the fort of Bard, blocking the gorge just as in the days when it checked Napoleon on his road to Marengo. But the memories awakened in him were not only of Napoleon; the valley of the Dora Baltea was a complete image of the Khyber Pass, and Bard the very counterpart of Ali Musjid.

As they came home through France, halt was made at Lyons, and, though he refused to see the gallery, he could describe almost every canvas and the place where it hung; but best of all he remembered Charlet's great picture of the retreat from Moscow and the army that "dragged itself along like a wounded snake." In Paris, too, on that homeward journey a stop was made, and since few of his friends were yet back from the country, there was more theatre-going than usual. Guitry, his favourite actor, was not playing, but Brasseur and Eve la Vallière amused him, and he found special delight in the _Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans_. Yet not even the acting of Jaques as the good-natured, choleric old Belgian brewer could induce him to depart from his practice of going away after the first act.

Three times in the last years of his life he went back to Provence. The first of these visits was in the January of 1909, and he with his companions set out from Paris on the last day of the old year, travelling by motor-car in defiance of heavy snow and frost. These made obstacles which only gave piquancy to his journey through scenes where stories of the Franco-German War crowded to his tongue, and when difficulties delayed the car he struck up wayside intimacies--once with an old non-commissioned officer now transformed into a _Garde Champêtre_, anon with a peasant couple from whose cottage he begged hot water to make tea. In one such household, arriving with beard and moustache frozen white, he announced himself to the children of the family group as Father Christmas, and made good his claim with distribution of little gifts.

At Hyères he was rejoined by the old servant, once his gardener and vine-dresser, who had marketed the produce of La Sainte Campagne in the days when Sir Charles was trading, like any other petty Provençal landowner, in grapes and artichokes, mimosa and roses and violets, for the Toulon market. That former life lived again in his talk as he recalled those whom he had known in his Provençal home: neighbours, servants, local politicians; and from his hotel at Hyères he never failed to make excursions to Toulon, and to visit his old friend and sometime man of business, M. Bertrand, who would carry him to the café frequented by the leading citizens, to feast on a Provençal déjeuner with red mullet and bouillabaisse. Another recurring visit was to Émile Ollivier at La Moutte, his beautiful seaward-facing house on the promontory beyond Saint Tropez.

"Sir Dilke" had friends everywhere in that corner of the world. His near neighbour at Cap Brun, M. Noël Blache, leader of the local bar, a famous teller of Provençal stories and declaimer of Provençal verse, said of him: "He knows our country and our legends better than we know them ourselves." In the years during which he lived for part of the twelvemonth at Toulon he had followed every winding of the coast, had explored all the recesses of the hills.

"It is my boast, probably vain," he wrote to M. André Chevrillon in 1909, "to have invented the Mountains of the Moors. Sizeranne had been staying there for six weeks before he came into the British Hyères, but, _he_, only on the coast. When I first showed that coast to Émile Ollivier, Noël Blache, then President of the Conseil-Général of the Var, and Félix Martin, the latter advised the narrow-gauge railway which ruined the politicians of the Var, and became 'le Panama du Midi.' My journey this time was to assure myself that the road and railway along the coast had not spoilt the _interior_. They have improved indeed, and I was glad, a road from the entrance to the forest on the main road from Hyères to Cogolin, turning to the north over two cols to Collobrières. The T.C.F. has made a road from Collobrières up the hill to the south-east, whence the walk to La Chartreuse de la Verne is easy. I used to have to reach that spot from Campo, the police post on the stream, called Campeaux upon the maps. The whole forest is unharmed. It is unknown to the British inhabitants of Hyères. Not one had been there, or, I think, heard of it; and I met no human creature upon some twelve miles of the finest parts of the improved road. Grimaud, at the other end, I have no doubt you know. It was the Moorish capital. I went there the day that I lunched with Émile Ollivier this time. There was a foot of ice on the top, at La Garde-Freinet, and one looked back, down on to Grimaud, standing baked by an African sun, and could make out the ripe oranges and the heads of the great cactus."

"Why does not someone 'discover' France?" he writes to M. Joseph Reinach. "How few Frenchmen know the sunset view _north_ from St. Tropez in January!" And again to M. Chevrillon in 1909: "I adore the solitude of Sainte Baume, and believe in Marie Madeleine--except her head and tomb at St. Maxime, where Brutus Bonaparte helped keep the inn. [Footnote: The eldest of the Bonapartes was not the only person of the Napoleonic days as to whom stories were told in the neighbourhood. Désirée Clary was said to have lived at the inn of St. Maxime, and Sir Charles wrote to Mr. Morley concerning La Sainte Campagne: "My old cottage is supposed to be that where Murat was concealed after the 100 days."] Intellect is represented here by Robert de la Sizeranne, _but_ it is only two and a half hours in motor or two and a half by rail to La Moutte, where I make É. Ollivier read his fourteenth volume!"

All the little hill towns were known to him, and their history; he could show the spot at Cavalaire where the Moorish lords of Provence trained their famous horses; he knew the path at Le Lavandou, worn into the solid rock by the bare feet of countless generations. It irked him that the plain of Fréjus was spoilt by the intrusion of white villas on what had once been called "a better Campagna." But these changes were of the surface only. Provence was still Provence, its people still unchanged from the days when Gambetta said to Sir Charles of one who projected a watercourse at Nice: "Jamais il ne coulera par cette rivière au tant d'eau qu'il n'en dépensera de salive à en parler." There was still the local vintage in every inn, still the _beurre du berger_, the cheese and the conserves of fruit which every housewife in Provence sets out with pride in her own making; still the thin breeze of the mistral through the tree-tops, still the long white roads running between fields of violets and narcissi, and still white farmhouses among the terraced oliveyards and vines. All these things were an abiding joy, but a greater joy than all, and still more unchangeable, was the daily oncoming of light, the subtle flush and gradations of colour before the sun rose from that beloved sea.

II.

In the year 1908 Sir Charles's health had been very bad, and he risked his life in attending the annual miners' meeting at the Speech House, leaving Dockett Eddy, as his custom was, at six in the morning, and returning home the same night. But by the following year he had regained his physical condition and his cheerfulness. The aspect of politics, too, had been transfigured. Speaking to his constituents in September, 1909, he reminded them how a year earlier the Liberal party had been despondent.

'This year all of them felt that the Government, with the country behind it--for the country was thoroughly behind the Government in the matter of the Budget--had taken, not only a new lease of life, but had adopted an attitude which on the whole, apart from any little doubts in reference to particular details, commanded a confident and an enthusiastic support on the part of a wider majority of people than any other movement of modern times.'

He told them of his own objections to the famous Budget--one in regard to the cider duty, upon which he had carried his point, the other to the increased tax on tobacco, which he had unsuccessfully resisted. So long as tea and tobacco were taxed as they were, the working classes, in his judgment, paid more than their just proportion. Still, a great stride forward had been taken. As for the House of Lords throwing out the Budget, "those who did not like that Chamber wanted that fight, but it did not seem to him natural that the House of Lords would desire it, because it appeared to him to be a fight in which the Peers were perfectly certain to be beaten." Nevertheless it came to pass, a General Election followed, and the huge independent Liberal majority disappeared. Sir Charles was active to keep together the various sections which most desired to limit the power of the House of Lords, and on February 22nd, 1910, he, on behalf of the Radicals, held an interview with the Labour and Irish leaders together, to ascertain and discuss the line of action contemplated. Also, since there was a proposal that Government should, as a matter of urgency, oust private members and take all the time of the House, he saw Mr. J. S. Sandars, Mr. Balfour's chief private secretary, and in Sir Charles's phrase "factotum," to find out what the Opposition was going to do.

In the debates upon the Government's Resolutions which laid the foundation for the Parliament Act, Sir Charles took no part. The matter had gone as he desired.

By April the Resolutions were adopted; but before action by Bill could be begun, the Parliamentary struggle was suspended by the death of King Edward. In that national loss Sir Charles Dilke felt special sorrow. Whether as Prince of Wales or as King, the dead Sovereign had consistently shown him, not merely consideration, but friendship. It was among the satisfactions of Sir Charles's last years of life that the principle, for which he had incurred odium by contending forty years earlier, now came to be fully recognized as that most respectful to the Crown. Lord Knollys writes that on the accession of King Edward VII., Sir Charles had called and "offered to support any reasonable Civil List which might be proposed." A Civil List Committee was appointed, on which Sir Charles served, and the result of its deliberations was to recommend a discontinuance of occasional grants from Parliament to members of the Royal Family. It did not, indeed, go to the length of making adequate provision for the family and leaving its distribution to the King, which was what Sir Charles always recommended; but it moved far in that direction, and to that extent carried out his views.

The royal funeral brought to London another Sovereign with whom Sir Charles had friendly personal relations, and the last page in his Memoir tells of a 'long talk with King George of Greece at Buckingham Palace.' The King was inclined to deprecate the summoning of a National Assembly for that autumn. He called it "stupid," whereat, says Sir Charles, 'blank look on my part.' Then, after a pause ('whereas till then we had talked in a perpetual duet'), the King went on to admit that the National Assembly was his own creation.

"Well, I was against it at first because we can do by law already everything that is to be done by the National Assembly. But I saw that it was the only way out."

"I am glad, Sir," Sir Charles quickly rejoined, "that I was not 'stupid,' for I attributed the invention to" (and he pointed) "its author."

The King, however, was afraid that some might "blame him," and when Sir Charles answered, "No one," he quoted the phrase once applied to him: "Bon petit roi, manque d'énergie." The reply was: "I don't know who said that, Sir! Your prestige is exactly opposite to the German Emperor's prestige, but equally important to your country and to peace. It may have been a fool who said it, but it was probably chaff."

"... My family?"

"Oh, well, that is chaff--that is what I meant by chaff."

But Sir Charles took occasion to tell a very important member of the "family" that "Berlin and Athens were different."

When autumn came, the sitting of the Constitutional Conference silenced Sir Charles and all men who desired a fair field for that great experiment. Its failure precipitated a new General Election.

By this time there was no doubt in Sir Charles's mind as to the gravity of his physical condition. To a friend, who in October was setting out for extended travel in West Africa, he wrote these words in a letter wishing him God-speed:

"You are much more likely to come back alive than I am to be alive to welcome you. Yet I _hope_ that the less likely survival _may_ be, and of the other I feel pretty sure."

Knowing what he did of his own health, knowing the loyalty of his constituents, who had within a few months returned him by a majority of over two thousand, he might well have consented, as his friends wished, to fight the new election by deputy. It was not his way. Haggard and physically oppressed, he spent a fortnight in that bitter December going the round of meetings, addressing his supporters as best his bodily weakness allowed that strong will and fine courage to have their way. The result was foregone: his majority was triumphant; but the exertion killed him. None the less, he came out of the fray jubilant; his side had won, the victory had been decisive. In Paris, where he went with Mr. Hudson, the journalists came to him for his accustomed review of the total situation. "Depuis que je suis au Parlement, je n'ai pas connu un Ministère aussi solide que le Ministère présidé par M. Asquith," was his emphatic word to M. Leudet in the _Figaro_.

The strain had in no way impaired his intellectual vitality. Those of his old friends who saw him, such as M. Reinach, had never known him more animated. To M. André Chevrillon, a newer friend by whom he had been greatly attracted, he wrote:

"I see in the _Times_ that you are writing on Russian literature and _music_. Please, then, include _Bell_ music: a saint's eve at Troitsa Sergeifski! The silver notes floating in the dusty--or the frozen--air. I've been there in September, and I've been there in December.

"Any chance of seeing you--without moving, for I'm suffering from weak heart, after two winter-contested elections in one year? I'm extraordinarily better to-day, but am apt to 'blow' in other than the Australian sense."

M. Chevrillon has written his impression of the gravity which lay behind that cheery tone.

"J'allai le voir à l'Hôtel St. James. Je n'oublierai jamais l'impression que m'a laissée cette visite. II était d'une pâleur de marbre; il m'a dit brièvement qu'il se savait en danger immédiat, que le médecin l'avait averti; et tout de suite, quittant ce sujet, il m'a parlé avec son animation, sa verve et sa précision habituelle de la situation politique en Angleterre. II y avait ce jour--là sur cette noble figure toute blême, une dignité, j'ose dire une majesté, extraordinaire; il était déjà marqué par la mort; il la regardait venir avec une tranquillité et un courage absolu; j'emportai de cette visite le douloureux sentiment que je ne le reverrais pas, et une admiration qui me restera toujours pour ce que je venais d'entrevoir de son caractère."

From Paris he insisted on moving South once more. He travelled now as an invalid; but when morning light came into the compartment where he lay, he made his way to the window and beheld again cypress and olive, sun-baked swarthy soil, little hills with rocky crests fantastically chiselled, all bathed in the dazzling sunshine of the South. Leaning his face against the window, he said: "Provence always plays up."

At Hyères he was kept in bed. But he still read the books that came to him by post, still dictated his reviews for the _Athenaeum_, and still enjoyed the reading aloud of French plays, which had become a habit of holiday time. And, above all, from his window as he lay he watched with delight unjaded the spectacle of sea and sky. "Am I not a fortunate invalid," he said, "to have the most beautiful view in the world to look at?"

Now and then his shout of laughter would be heard and the old spirit of fun would assert itself. When the journey home in January, 1911, had to be faced, he rallied for it, came to the restaurant on the train, and during the crossing sat on deck with Miss Constance Smith, who writes:

"At that time his thoughts seemed to stray from this last journey back to that which we had taken in the autumn. 'It is worth while,' he said, 'to have seen Aosta. I am glad to have done it. It is not often at my age that one can get so much pleasure out of a new thing.' I think he had a double motive in mentioning Aosta. He put it forward partly to obliterate for me the sadness of the past three weeks by raising the memory of the pleasant times that lay behind."

When he reached London he was happy to be again at home and he felt better. Those with him had no fear for the immediate future, and he himself fully expected to take his place in Parliament when it met. Friends would have induced him to consider what part of his work could be abandoned, but his answer was peremptory: "I won't be kept alive to do nothing." Confined to bed as he was, work still went on; he received and answered letters, read and annotated Blue-books. Curiously and almost dramatically, the occupations of these last days sifted themselves out in such fashion that the very latest things he handled became, in some sort, an epitome of his life's work. M. Michelidakis, President of the Cretan Executive Committee, had written to complain, on behalf of the Cretan people, that the last note of the Powers seemed to reverse their policy of slowly transferring Crete to a local government. On January 24th Sir Charles answered this appeal for his help. It was the last letter that he signed with his own hand--fit close to a lifelong championship.

Other clients were knocking at his door that same day, other voices from that strange retinue of petitioners who brought from all quarters of the world to this one man their cry for protection and redress. What they asked was no romantic action, nothing stirring or picturesque, but simply the weight of his authority exhibited on their side, and the wisdom of his long practice in public life for their guidance. He was to fix a date for introducing a deputation concerning certain grievances of the coloured people in Jamaica, and was to advise upon the best way to raise a number of minor West African questions in the new Parliament. His answer was sent from 76, Sloane Street:

_January 24th_, 1911.

"I am still lying up, but I think that I could answer any ordinary call to duty, and I am trying a small private meeting to-morrow afternoon, though I shall return to bed here.

"I will note Thursday, 2nd, at noon, on the chance of being well enough.

"The questions which personally interest me the most are those affecting the concessionary companies, and I should be glad if you would ask Wedgwood to keep very close touch with me on these. He likes me, and is quite willing to show me things; but he does too much and, like myself, is always tired, and the result is that he has to be reminded as to consultation in advance, though he does not mind this being done.

"I doubt there being much danger about the Gambia. As for the Southern Nigerian ordinances, I am not competent, and have a general impression that as a rule we do best on more general lines, though some of the concessionary companies make such 'cases' as to form exceptions."

His strength was far spent. This letter, says Mr. Hudson, writing two days later to the President of the Aborigines' Protection Society, "he asked me to sign, after wishing to sign himself."

Yet the brain was clear and the will unshaken. The "small private meeting" of which he wrote was a committee of directors of the _Gardeners' Chronicle_, and on the 25th he was preparing to rise and dress to attend this, but was persuaded to go back to bed. In bed, he was still busy reading and marking Blue-books which bore upon the case of the unorganized workers. The papers so prepared were, by his direction, set aside for the service of the Women's Trade-Union League. They were delivered next morning, but the messenger who took them carried with them the tidings of Sir Charles Dilke's death. He had slipped suddenly out of life, his heart failing, soon after four o'clock on the morning of Thursday, January 26th, 1911.

* * * * *

To the funeral service at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, on January 30th, there came from the House of Commons members of the Cabinet and of the Ministry, representatives of Liberalism and Labour, the Irish leader with several of his colleagues, while from the Unionist benches also men paid this tribute to an honoured opponent. But the Parliamentary figure of most interest was Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who carried from a sick-room to the graveside the farewell of old comrade to old comrade.

Among the congregation were men who had been official representatives of great dominions of the Empire or of foreign Governments. These came in their private capacity, but one nation as a nation was represented there. The King of the Hellenes sent his Minister in London to be his deputy, and the Greek Government ordered a wreath, the token of their sorrow and gratitude, to be laid upon the bier.

Tributes poured in from the great mass of his fellow-countrymen; from philanthropic societies; from those who, in or out of Parliament, had worked with his help and guidance. But above all there were messages from every trade union and organization of wage-earners, letters from men and from women in every kind of employ, testifying of service done, of infinitely varied knowledge, of devotion that knew no limit, and that had not gone without the one reward acceptable to the man they honoured, their responsive love and gratitude.

So closed a life across which many commentators of the moment wrote, some lightly, some in sincere regret, the word Failure. It was ill-chosen. They should have written Loss. His career had not fulfilled the promise of its opening; his abilities had never found the full scope which once seemed assured to them; he had done for his country only what his country permitted him to do. Over this it was natural, it was reasonable, to speak words of sorrow. Those who said--and there were not a few who said it--that he had accomplished more out of office than he could ever have achieved in office, paid a tribute to the greatness of his work, but they did not understand the force which had been wasted. He combined two gifts rarely found in combination--the gift of Parliamentary leadership and a profound knowledge of foreign affairs. Amongst the men of his time he stood out as essentially a House of Commons man, but he was also a European personality. In these characteristics he recalls Lord Palmerston. Whether to foreign or to domestic affairs, he brought a knowledge, a judgment, and a mastery of detail, which none of his contemporaries surpassed and few equalled; and he added to these the priceless gift of tact in dealing with men and with bodies of men. In the only Parliament which knew him as an administrator his advance was rapid and decisive: five years placed him by universal admission in the front rank; and yet the general opinion was not less clear than that of the few great ones. Beaconsfield and Bismarck singled him out by their special interest; Gladstone looked to him as probably his own ultimate successor.

Then came the day when there was taken from him for ever the opportunity of directing great affairs, and Sir Charles Dilke's career must be numbered among things that might have been. Yet was his "the failure"? "It was England's misfortune, and perhaps her fault," wrote one [Footnote: Mr. Spenser Wilkinson.] who knew him intimately and shared but few of his political opinions, "that she could thus have been deprived of the services of one of her best statesmen."

All that he could do to repair the misfortune to his country was done without stint. Dismissed from his high command by a scandal, the truth of which he persistently denied, when a life of ease was open to him he chose, in spite of obloquy, to return to the ranks. Of what he accomplished in the ranks some outline has been given; its record stands as an answer to those who think, as many are tempted to think, that work in Parliament without office is, in these days, foredoomed to futility.

Yet not in the external results of his wisdom and his labour, but in another sphere, lies his supreme achievement. The same fate which obscured the statesman's greatness revealed, what prosperity must have hidden, the full measure of the man. To have requited public contumely with public service; in the midst of humiliation to have kept his nature unspoilt, unimbittered, every faculty bright and keen; to have abated no jot of his happiness; and at the last to have passed away in serene dignity, all the voices of reproach hushed and overawed--this was not defeat, but victory; this, complete in its fulfilment, was the triumph of Sir Charles Dilke's life.