Chapter 32

As late as 1878 he was 'working hard at' a _History of the Nineteenth Century_ 'for three or four months' in Provence, 'besides managing to do some little work towards it when I was in London.' At this time he was engaged upon the History of Germany in the early part of his chosen period, and was corresponding with Professor Seeley as the highest authority on that subject.

'My history of events began with 1814. I showed that the doctrine of nationality had been made use of for their own purposes by the Kings in 1812-13, and crushed by them at congresses between 1814 and 1822, and then appealed to by the revolutionary party in 1823, and in a less degree in 1848. That doctrine of nationality was described even in our own times by Heine as a dead thing, when it was yet destined to prove, in 1859 and 1866 and 1870 and 1878, the phenomenon of the century, and nowhere to work such change as in Heine's own Germany. Heine thought that the idea of the emancipation of nationality had already in his day been replaced by the emancipation of humanity; but, whatever may be the case in the long-run, the emancipation of nationalities was destined to prove the more lasting side of the movement of 1848.'

After stating that the nineteenth century must be held to have begun in 1814, he writes:

'History to me was one and could know no commencements, yet in the development of a concerted action of the Powers I found 1814 so convenient a starting-point as to be as good as a real beginning. In the rise of the new society, the social revolution,'

he found himself less fortunate. There was no clear starting-point, and when he selected August 4th, 1789, as his,

'I felt that I chose only the moment of the springing of the plant from the soil ... and stood in some danger of neglecting the previous germination of the seed beneath the soil.'

After delivering a lecture on "Old Chelsea," in which 'I made a considerable attempt to clear up some points in the life of Sir Thomas More, for whom I have a great admiration ... I conceived ... the idea of writing a Life of More, whose life has never been well told since it was written by his son-in-law at the time; but the immense difficulty of writing any Life which would stand a comparison with the son-in-law's notes ultimately deterred me.'

It is easy to understand why the foregoing projects were dropped; but why Sir Charles never published the book on Russia which he was known to have had in preparation is not so apparent. He had paid four protracted visits to the country, travelled over a great part of it, and was intimately acquainted with Russians of the most widely differing opinions. Obviously he would have enjoyed writing the book that he had planned. He had actually fixed the date of publication, when he found that Mr. Hepworth Dixon had come, almost at the same time, to a decision to write on his subject. On August 3rd, 1869, he wrote to Mr. Dixon:

"My Dear Dixon,

"In reference to your request that in good feeling and friendship towards you I should defer the publication of my _Russia_ from February 1st, 1870 (the date fixed with Macmillan), to a later period, I have carefully thought the matter over, and have decided to do as you wish. The only condition that I make is that you will write to me by return of post saying whether, if I fix January 1st, 1871, as my day, you will date your preface not later than February 1st, 1870, and issue your first edition not more than a week after that date."

Dixon wrote back on the same day:

"My Dear Charles,

"I am more pleased at your resolution than words can say. It is more than right. It is friendly and noble."

'Mr. Dixon immediately went to Russia, where we met in the course of the autumn, and speedily published his _New Russia_, a remarkable book considering the haste with which it was prepared. After five visits to Russia, I handed over the whole of my notes to my brother, who spent two years at one time in that country, and who finished the book.' [Footnote: Only two chapters ever appeared--in magazines.]

Sir Charles's contributions to the _Athenaeum_ began while he was still at Cambridge. His article of October 22nd, 1864, [Footnote: See Chapter V. (Vol. I.)] was the first of a long series of reviews and notices, which continued unbrokenly till within a week of his death. It was natural that, as years went by, his knowledge and experience should be drawn upon for reviews of important political biographies, and of books on imperial and colonial questions or military history. But he did not confine himself entirely to such grave topics. The files of the _Athenaeum_ contain many columns from his hand dealing with the lighter matters of topography (especially in France), travel, and fiction. The fiction was mainly French, modern English novels commending themselves little to his liking, though he was among the earliest and steadiest, if also among the more discriminating, admirers of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson's _Prince Otto_ had a place with his favourite books. Another subject which attracted his pen was the local and legendary history of his beloved Provence. His intimate acquaintance with the beliefs and fancies of that region could be gathered from his slightest notice of an ephemeral book on the country, as readily as his store of political knowledge and familiarity with the events that made history in his time from an extended review of a volume of _L'Empire Libéral_ or the life of a leading contemporary in the House of Commons. In neither case could his hand be hid.

In influencing the choice of contributors to his paper, he threw his weight always on the side of the man who had complete knowledge of his subject. No brilliancy of style could make up in his eyes for lack of precision in thought or inaccuracy in statement. Next in order he appeared to value in a reviewer a judicial quality of mind, as essential to a sane and balanced criticism. "He disapproved"--to quote Mr. C. A. Cook again--"of anything fanciful in expression or any display of sentiment;" but, so long as writers kept clear of these literary pitfalls, he let them go their own road of style, with ready appreciation for any freshness or liveliness they exhibited on the journey. Reviews of French books were a special object of care, and for the _Athenaeum's_ annual survey of French literature he bestirred himself to secure the best hand available. In a letter to M. Joseph Reinach, dated July, 1888, he gives a list of the distinguished men--including MM. About, De Pressensé, and Sarrazin--who had written this survey in past years, ending with a suggestion that M. Reinach himself might perhaps be willing to undertake the task.

In his writing, as in his speaking, his object was always either to place facts before his audience, or to develop a closely reasoned argument based upon the facts. He took no trouble to cultivate literary graces in this connection; rather he seemed to distrust them, as in his speeches he distrusted and avoided appeals to the feelings of his hearers. But it would be a great mistake to infer from his own practice that he was insensible to beauty of form and style. The literature he cared for most, that which roused his enthusiasm and provoked the expression of emotion so rare with him in the later years of his life--the literature of France before the Renaissance, the poetry of Keats and Shelley, some of the lyrics of the Félibres--is of the kind in which content owes so much to beauty of form that it is impossible to conceive of the one without the other; and he certainly took quite as much delight in the sound as in the sense of his favourites. Even in those favourites he was quick to detect a flaw. His grandfather's introduction of him to the best in literature had not been wasted; and his own early reading had given him a touchstone of taste which he used freely as a standard, although it was powerless to obtain admission to his accepted company of men of letters for those who made no appeal to him individually. The Memoir shows that his self-training in literature (for the grandfather did no more than indicate the way) was carried out in youth; it was at Cambridge, while still an undergraduate, that he read Shakespeare 'for pleasure.' And this was true also of the great authors of his own time. The results of that reading remained with him through life.

The Memoir dwells little upon his literary interests, and contains few literary judgments. He himself gives the reason:

'They do not pretend to be critical memoirs.... I have known everyone worth knowing from 1850 to my death; but, as I knew the most distinguished of my own country in childhood or early manhood, my judgments have changed. I have either to give crude judgments from which I dissent, or later judgments which were not those of the time. I have omitted both.... I knew the great Victorian authors. Thackeray I loved: _Vanity Fair_ delighted me, and _Esmond_ was obviously a great work of art; the giant charmed me by his kindness to me as a boy. But Dickens was to me a sea-captain with a taste for melodrama, and the author of _Pickwick_. It is only in old age that I have learnt that there was real beauty and charm in _David Copperfield_. So, too, Mill I worshipped; and Carlyle, though I knew him, I despised--perhaps too much. Mat. Arnold was to me, in his day and my day, only a society trifler, whereas now ... after for years I have visited his tomb, I recognize him as a great writer of the age in which he lived.'

Here and there in the Memoir are glimpses of the world of literature with which he was often in touch. He discusses with Swinburne a much- disputed reference in Shelley's _Epipsychidion_. In 1872 Browning reads his _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_ at 76, Sloane Street. There are admiring references to the work of George Eliot, and to Mrs. Lynn Linton--'perhaps the cleverest woman I know.' When he goes to the United States, we get his warmly drawn picture of the Boston group--Emerson, Agassiz, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Asa Gray, Longfellow, Lowell, Dr. Collyer, and Dr. Hedge.

[Footnote: See Chapter VI. (Vol. I., p. 60).]

Recording Stepniak's suggestion that Bismarck, Mazzini, and Oliver Wendell Holmes were the three greatest conversationalists of our times, 'I said that, having known all three, I agreed that they were remarkable, although I myself found Mazzini a little of the bore. Disraeli was sometimes very good, although sometimes singularly silent; but there were once two Russians that I put in the first rank--Herzen and Tourgénief.'

Questions relating to one literary personality alone receive full-length treatment in the Memoir. On any point that concerned Keats Sir Charles was always keenly interested. He may be said to have inherited the Keats tradition and the Keats devotion from his grandfather, and anyone connected with Keats found easy way to his sympathy and attention. It was his intervention which finally obtained for Keats's sister, Mme. Llanos, a regular Civil List pension in 1880. When the Lindon family sold to Mr. Buxton Forman Keats's letters to Miss Brawne, Mme. Llanos wrote 'from Madrid saying how greatly she was vexed that her brother's love-letters should have been placed before the world,' and 'I had a good deal of correspondence with Lord Houghton over this matter.... [Lord Houghton] wrote:

'"My Dear Dilke,

'"Since the _Athenaeum_ fixed my place in poetical literature between Rogers and Eliza Cook, I have naturally not read that journal, but I have been shown a capital flagellation of those unfilial wine-merchants. [Footnote: Miss Brawne married Louis Lindon, a wine-merchant.] I thought I had even gone too far in my elegant extracts--with which you furnished me. I have, alas! no poetical amours to be recorded, out of which my family can make anything handsome."'

The letter ends with an invitation to lunch and 'talk Keats.'

Sir Charles notes further:

'About this time (1878) Mr. Buxton Forman announced for publication the Keats Love-Letters, which I certainly thought I had in a vague way bought for the purpose of preventing publication. They had been long in my possession, but the son of Fanny Brawne had claimed them, and I, having no written agreement, had found it necessary to give them up--although what I had bought and paid for, unless it was the right to prevent publication, I do not know.'

About this time Mr. John Morley proffered a request that Sir Charles would write a monograph on Keats for his _English Men of Letters_. Lord Houghton thought that a "new view" from Sir Charles "would have great interest"; but he decided to decline the undertaking.

The Memoir records at length the course of a correspondence with Joseph Severn, on the subject of his portraits of Keats, about which the old man's memory, in his last days at Rome, had grown very hazy. He thought that the miniature from which the engraving for Mr. Buxton Forman's edition had been made was the original presented to Fanny Brawne, whereas it was the copy made for old Mr. Dilke from that original, which itself was afterwards 'bought by my grandfather to prevent its being sold by auction.' There was also at Pyrford a copy in oils made for Mr. Moxon, which Sir Charles had obtained by exchange from Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson.

'After completing my investigations as to the portraits, I placed them on record in a letter to my old friend Scharf, the Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery, who replied: "Thanks for your interesting note, which we will duly place upon record. The portrait which we have here is posthumous. Severn painted it in 1821, and we hold a very curious letter from him describing the circumstances under which he painted it." Here, therefore, is another undoubted Severn in addition to the three which I possess. But I know myself of at least one other.'

The gift of his collection of Keats relics to Hampstead has been elsewhere recorded. In deciding on Hampstead for its resting-place, he brought it within the circle of local associations with Keats himself, and with the grandfather who had been Keats's friend. [Footnote: The Memoir records, in 1878, a visit paid with his great-uncle, William Dilke, to Wentworth Place, 'the little house at Hampstead in which for a time Mr. C. W. Dilke and his brother were Keats's next-door neighbours.']

Modern French authors interested him more than their English contemporaries. In the former case he found, perhaps, less declension from the standard of the giants of whom he had been an eager student in his early manhood, when he read "all Balzac," and recorded his admiration for the "dignity" of Mme. de Staël's _Germany_. Dumas he loved then and always, returning to him with ever new delight, and utilizing the rare periods of inaction imposed upon him at intervals by illness to read the whole of _The Three Musketeers_ series 'through again--properly.' Where other writers who held sway over the mind of France during the nineteenth century were in question, his independence of taste came into play. Sainte-Beuve he could 'make nothing of.' For Chateaubriand he felt something like contempt: 'Equally feeble as a maker and a writer of history ... the inventor of a drawing-room Christianity without Christ;' but he recognized the high quality to be found in the early writings of Sénancour. In later days the revival of a Stendhal cult filled him with wondering amusement. To the best work of Renan his affections were always faithful: _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_ was among his favourite volumes. Anatole France gave him exquisite pleasure, and it is hard to say whether he most enjoyed the wit, the irony, or the style of that great writer. He had his favourites, too, among the minor gods, and was always ready to introduce a new-comer to the charms of _François de Barbizanges_ or the fun of Alfred Capus.

In French poetry his taste was eclectic. His feeling for Charles d'Orléans and his contemporaries barely stopped on this side idolatry; but the classics of the seventeenth century had no message for him, and Victor Hugo as a poet left him, for the most part, unmoved. Indeed, he asserted that all French verse between Ronsard and Verlaine was purely rhetorical, and without genuine poetic quality. But in some modern poets, he thought, the true spirit of French poetry had revived. Early he proclaimed the genius of Charles Guérin, whose claim to high place in his country's literature remained unrecognized till after his death; early, too, he hailed a new poetic star in François Porché. The star seemed to him later to wane in brilliancy, but the disappointment with which he read the poems of M. Porché's second period never weakened his admiring recollection of the splendour of the poet's Russian verses and the searching pathos of _Solitude au Loin_.

His familiarity with French literature, his hearty affection for it, his understanding of the national spirit by which it is informed and quickened, constituted one of the strongest ties which bound him in sympathy to his French friends. The literary forms which have had so much attraction for the best French minds both before and after 1789-- the chronicle and the memoir--were precisely those to which his unfailing interest in human nature led him by choice. Paradin and Froissart were companions of whom he never grew tired; and it would be difficult to decide whether he found more absorbing matter of entertainment in Sully or Mme. de Dino.

But if he read these authors for delight, he read them also as a serious student. On this point the testimony of one of the most learned men in contemporary France is clear. M. Salomon Reinach writes: [Footnote: In a letter addressed to the editor, and written in English.]

"Talking with Sir Charles Dilke about Renaissance and modern history, I soon perceived that he had taken the trouble of going to the sources, and that he had read and knew many things of importance which a man of letters, and even a scholar, are apt to ignore. It was Sir Charles, to give only one instance, who revealed to me the value of Guillaume Paradin's _Histoire de Notre Temps_ and _Chronique de Savoie_, which he admired to such a degree that he put the now forgotten author (the name of whom is not in the British Encyclopaedia) on the same level as Guicciardini and the great historians of antiquity. I would like to know how he discovered Paradin, and if copies of his rare works were in his library. When I happened to get hold of Major Frye's manuscript, afterwards published by me (thanks to Sir Charles Dilke's recommendation) at Heinemann's, he was the first to appreciate its interest, and gave me much information about abbreviated names and other allusions which occur in that diary. He chanced to dine with me the very evening when I first had brought the manuscript to my house, and he remained till past one in the morning, picturesquely seated on the edge of a table, reading passages aloud and commenting upon them. He also knew many secret and unrecorded facts about recent French history; some of them have been given by him in unsigned articles of the _Athenaeum_, in reviews of books relating to the Franco-German War. I hope he may have left some more detailed notes on that subject. I would have had the greatest pleasure in corresponding with him, and regret I did not do so; but his handwriting was as mysterious as his mind was clear, and I soon found that I could not make it out."