That interest in things of the mind which he could hardly have failed to inherit had made of him a dilettante rather than a scholar; but later he became very active in promoting those ideals which appealed to his taste. He had a shrewd business eye, and showed it in founding the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ and the _Agricultural Gazette_, both paying properties. He had, moreover, a talent for organization, and a zeal in getting things done, acknowledged in many letters from persons of authority in their recognition of those services to the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 which were rewarded by his baronetcy. An interesting National Exhibition of 'Art Manufactures' had already been held by the Society of Arts, on whose Council Wentworth Dilke was an active worker, at the time when he, with two other members of the Council and the secretary, Mr. Scott Russell, met the Prince Consort on June 30th, 1849, and decided to renew the venture on a scale which should include foreign nations. When the executive committee of four (to whom were added a secretary and a representative of the contractors) was named in January, 1850, the work practically fell on three persons--Sir William Reid communicating with the public departments, Mr. Henry Cole settling questions of space and arrangement, [Footnote: Mr. Cole, afterwards Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B., was, says the Memoir, 'commonly known as King Cole,' and was afterwards secretary to the South Kensington School of Design.] and Wentworth Dilke 'having charge of the correspondence and general superintendence,' and attending 'every meeting of the executive except the first.' Wentworth Dilke worked hard for this and for other objects. But his public activities had to be fitted in with a great deal of shooting and other sport at Alice Holt, the small house in Hampshire, with adjacent preserves, which he rented, and which became the family's country home. In 1840 he married, and, after the birth of Charles Wentworth Dilke, the subject of this Memoir, on September 4th, 1843, all the grandfather's thought centred on the child. His daughter-in-law became, from then till her death, his chief correspondent, and the master of the house was 'completely overshadowed' in the family group. That group was so large as to be almost patriarchal. Wentworth Dilke, when he married, and established himself at 76, Sloane Street, took under his roof his wife's mother, Mrs. Chatfield, her grandmother, Mrs. Duncombe, and also her unmarried cousin, Miss Folkard. All these ladies lived out their lives there, Mrs. Chatfield and Miss Folkard surviving till Charles Dilke had become a Minister of State.