The Life of the Rt Hon Sir Charles W. Dilke, vol 1 | Page 4

the river banks. So in the Forest of Dean, that
constituency which he loved well and which well deserved his love, his
greatest pleasure was to set himself as guide to all its pleasant places,
rehearsing the name of each blue hill on the far horizon, tracing the
windings and meeting of the rivers, loving all best, I think, when the
ground was like a sea of bluebells and anemones in the early year. He
watched eagerly each season for the first signs of spring, and when he

was very ill he told me that it must ever be a joy untouched by
advancing years. But indeed he had in him the heart of the spring. I
think it was largely this simple love of nature which kept him always
strong and sweet even after the deep blow of his wife's death in 1904.
Wherever he was, life took on warmth and colour. Travel with him was
a revelation, trodden and hackneyed though the road might be. In his
vivid narrative the past lived again. Once more troops fought and
manoeuvred as we passed through stretches of peaceful country which
were the battlefields of France; Provence broke on us out of a mist of
legendary lore, the enchantment deepening as we reached the
little-traversed highlands near the coast--those Mountains of the Moors
where in past days, connu comme le loup blanc among the people, he
had wandered on foot with his old Provençal servant before motors and
light railways were.
His care for the Athenaeum, inspired by the more than filial love he
bore his grandfather, its earlier proprietor, led to continual reading and
reviewing, and he would note with interest those few Parliamentarians
who, keeping themselves fresh for their work of routine by some touch
with the world of Literature, thereby, as he phrased it, "saved their
souls."
Of the events which cut his public life asunder it is sufficient to say
here that those nearest him never believed in the truth of the charges
brought, finding it almost inconceivable that they should have been
made; while the letters and records in my hands bear testimony to that
great outer circle of friends, known and unknown, who have expressed
by spoken or by written word, in public and in private, their share in
that absolute belief in him which was a cardinal fact of our work and
life.
The fortitude which gave to his country, after the crash of 1886,
twenty- five years of tireless work, was inspired, for those who knew
him best, by that consciousness of rectitude which holds a man above
the clamour of tongues, and finds its reward in the fulfilment of his
life's purpose.
"To have an end, a purpose, an object pursued through all vicissitudes
of fortune, through heart's anguish and shame, through humiliation and
disaster and defeat--that is the great distinction, the supreme
justification of a life." So wrote his wife in her preface for The Shrine

of Death.
The service of his country was the purpose of his life. Nor was that life
justified alone by his unswerving pursuit of its great aim; it was
justified also in its fulfilment, for his service was entirely fruitful-- he
wrested success from failure, gain from loss.
It has been said that in 1886 the nation lost one who would have been
among its greatest administrators. Yet when we look back on all that
was inspired and done by him, on the thousand avenues of usefulness
into which his boundless energy was directed, there is no waste, only
magnificent achievement.
An independent critic both by pen and speech inside and outside the
House of Commons, the consolidator of whatever Radical forces that
chamber held, the representative of labour before the Labour Party was,
he stood for all the forces of progress, and when his great figure passed
into the silence his place was left unfilled.
One writing for an African journal the record of his funeral, dreamed
that as the strains of the anthem poured their blessings on "him that
hath endured," there rose behind the crowd which gathered round him
dead a greater band of mourners. "A vast unseen concourse of
oppressed mankind were there, coming to do homage to one who had
ever found time, amidst his manifold activities, to plead their cause
with wisdom, unfailing knowledge, and with keen sympathy of heart."
I commit his memory to the people whom he loved and served.
G. M. T.

CONTENTS OF VOL. 1
I. EARLY LIFE
II. EDUCATION
III. CAMBRIDGE
IV. CAMBRIDGE (_continued_)
V. LAST TERMS AT THE UNIVERSITY
VI. "GREATER BRITAIN"
VII. ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT
VIII. THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870--THE FRANCO-GERMAN
WAR
IX. THE BLACK SEA TREATY--THE COMMUNE
X. THE CIVIL LIST

XI. PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE
XII. RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT--DEATH OF LADY