Mr. Chamberlain wrote of his deep regret and sympathy that the one Ministerialist seat which he had earnestly hoped would be kept should have gone. He pointed out that the falling off in this case was less than in other London polls; but the reactionary period would continue while Mr. Gladstone was in politics. If he retired, Mr. Chamberlain thought the party would recover in a year or two. There is a warm letter from Mr. Joseph Cowen of Newcastle, who wrote: 'Chelsea has been going Tory for some time past, and only you would have kept it Liberal at the last election.... If you had not been one of the bravest men that ever lived, you would have been driven away long ago. I admire your courage and sincerely sympathize with your misfortunes.... I always believed you would achieve the highest position in English statesmanship, and I don't despair of your doing so still.' For a final word in this chapter of discouragement may be given a letter from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who wrote from a detached position, having been prevented by illness from standing both in 1885 and 1886: 'What a delightful leader of a party is the G.O.M.! It is an interesting subject of speculation, though, thank God, it is one of speculation only, what might happen to this country if, like the old Red Indian in Hawthorne's novel, he lived to be 300 years old.... My own opinions about setting up a Parliament in Dublin are quite unchanged, but I look on the G.O.M. as the great obstacle to any satisfactory settlement. I see nothing but pandemonium ahead of us.' The question was whether the future Assembly in Dublin was to be called a 'Legislature' or a 'Parliament.' Sir Charles, as a Gladstonian Liberal politician, was involved in the misfortune of his party. But in the first weeks of July he hoped that justice in the court of law might soon relieve his personal misfortunes. That anticipation was rudely falsified. Within a fortnight after he had lost the seat which had been won and held by him triumphantly in four General Elections, the second trial of his case was over, and had followed the course which has been already described. CHAPTER XLVII LADY DILKE--76, SLOANE STREET Sir Charles Dilke's marriage in 1885 extended rather than modified his sphere of work. Lady Dilke, the Emilia Strong who was studying drawing in 1859 at South Kensington, [Footnote: See Chapter 11. (Vol. 1., p. 17).] had submitted herself in these long intervening years to such scholarly training and discipline as gave her weight and authority on the subjects which she handled.