The Life of the Rt Hon Sir Charles W. Dilke, vol 1 | Page 8

love you."
It was a singular letter for a man of thirty-seven to write--singular in its
self-effacement before the rising generation, singular, too, in the
intensity of its forecast. Yet, after all, a measure of disappointment was
to be his return for that first venture. The son to whom so great a cargo

of hopes had been committed was a vigorous lad, backed when he was
fifteen 'to swim or shoot or throw against any boy of his age in
England,' and he developed these and kindred energies, accepting
culture only in so far as it ministered to his fine natural faculty for
enjoyment. He acquired a knowledge of Italian and of operatic music at
Florence; but when afterwards at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was, to
his father's despair, very idle, and during his early years in London 'was
principally known to his friends for never missing a night at the Opera.'
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.
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