The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2Gwynn, Stephen Lucius
History
The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir, 1843-1911; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 19th century
greater with every year? It seems admitted that he was a great man.
Well, if there is anything in the intimate, not undiscerning
impression of nearly eighteen years, he was a good man, or goodness
is an empty name.'
Another account of his talk and ways comes from Mr. Spenser Wilkinson:
'I moved to London in 1892, and from that time on found the intimacy
with Dilke one of the delights of life. We used always to meet,
either for breakfast or lunch, at Dilke's house in Sloane Street, or
for lunch at the Prince's Restaurant in Piccadilly, or at 2.30 in
the lobby of the House of Commons. I was also frequently a guest at
the dinner-parties either at Sloane Street on Wednesdays, when Lady
Dilke was alive, or at the House of Commons. Then there were small
house-parties on Saturday and Sunday at Dockett Eddy, near
Shepperton on the Thames, where Sir Charles had built two cottages,
and where a guest was expected to do exactly what he pleased from
the time when he was punted across the river on arrival until he
left the punt on departing. In winter I used to bicycle over to the
cottage at Pyrford, where Dilke and his wife were always to be found
alone and where I spent many a charming afternoon.
'Every man takes a certain tinge from the medium in which he is, and
is therefore different in different company and different
surroundings. I knew three Dilkes. First there was the statesman,
the man of infinite information which he was ever working to
increase. When you went to see him it was on some particular
subject; he wanted precise information, and knew exactly what he
wanted. With him my business was always finished in five minutes,
after which I used to feel that I should be wasting his time if I
stayed. This Dilke, in this particular form of intercourse, was by
far the ablest man I ever met.
'Then came Dilke the host, the Dilke of general conversation. Here
again he towered above his fellows. The man who had been everywhere
and knew everybody--for there seemed to be no public man of great
importance in any country with whom Dilke was not acquainted and
with whom he had not corresponded--a man who was almost always in
high spirits and full of fun, had an inexhaustible fund of
delightful conversation, about which the only drawback was that, in
order to appreciate it, you had to be uncommonly well informed
yourself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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