Up to 1850 old Mr. Dilke and his wife lived at their house in Lower Grosvenor Place, which was a second home for their grandson Charles. But in 1850 the wife died, and Mr. Dilke 'spent sixteen months in wandering through the remoter parts of Scotland, and along the north and west coast of Ireland, but corresponded ceaselessly with his daughter-in-law, to whom he was much attached.' During a great part of this time he was accompanied by his grandson. Mrs. Wentworth Dilke, after giving birth in 1850 to her second child, Ashton Dilke, had 'fallen into a deep decline'; and Charles Dilke, at the age of seven, was handed over to his grandfather's charge, partly to solace the old widower's loneliness, partly to relieve the strain on his mother. The peculiar relation between grandfather, mother, and son, stands out clearly from the letter which that mother wrote shortly before her death in September, 1853, to be delivered to the boy Charles. After some tender exhortation, she added: "But moral discipline your grandfather will teach you. What I wish particularly to impress on you is the _necessity_ of worshipping God." And at the end: "My own boy, there is another thing still to name, for none can say whether this letter may be required soon, or whether I may have the delight of seeing my children grow up, but this last and cherished subject is my little Ashton. When he is old enough, dear, to understand, let him read this letter, and by his mother's blessing teach him to think and feel that all that I have said applies equally to him. Set him a good example in your own conduct, and be always affectionate brothers." Of the father, not a word--and for care of the younger boy, the dying woman's hope is in his brother. It will be shown how studiously the ten- year-old boy, on whom his mother so leant, fulfilled that charge. But he himself felt, in later life, that scant justice had been done to the man who was 'overshadowed' in his home, and wrote in 1890: 'My father loved my grandfather deeply, but my grandfather was greatly disappointed in him, and always a little hard towards him: my father suffered through life under a constant sense of his inferiority. He suffered also later from the fact that while his elder son was the grandfather's and not the father's boy, his younger son was as completely under my influence in most matters, as I was under the influence of my grandfather.'