The Life of the Rt Hon Sir Charles W. Dilke, vol 1 | Page 9

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.'
Yet in a sense the relation between old Mr. Dilke and the son whom he
unconsciously slighted was strangely intimate and confiding. For in
1853 the elder man gave up his own house in Lower Grosvenor Place,
made over all his money to his son, and came to live under the son's
roof in Sloane Street for the remainder of his life. His confidence in the
patriarchal principle justified itself. 'My father,' writes Sir Charles, 'for
eleven years consulted his father--dependent on him for bread--in every
act of his life.'
To the world at large, Wentworth Dilke was a vastly more important
person than the old antiquary and scholar. After his services in
organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, he declined a knighthood and
rewards in money; but he accepted from the French Government a gift
of Sèvres china; from the King of Saxony, the Collar of the Order of
Albertus Animosus; from the King of Sweden and from the Prince
Consort, medals; and from Queen Victoria, a bracelet for his wife.

These remained among the treasures of 76, Sloane Street. But he
acquired something far more important in the establishment of friendly
relations with persons of mark and influence all over the Continent; for
these relations were destined to be developed by Charles Dilke, then a
pretty-mannered boy, who was taken everywhere, and saw, for instance,
in 1851, the Duke of Wellington walk through the Exhibition buildings
on a day when more than a hundred thousand people were present. He
could remember how the Duke's 'shrivelled little form' and 'white
ducks' 'disappeared in the throng which almost crushed him to death'
before the police could effect his rescue.
Wentworth Dilke's association in the Prince Consort's most cherished
schemes had brought him on a footing of friendship with the Royal
Family; and on July 25th, 1851, his wife wrote that the Queen had
come over and talked to her in the Exhibition ground. Long afterwards,
when the pretty- mannered boy had grown into a Radical, who avowed
his theoretical preference for republican institutions, Queen Victoria
said that "she remembered having stroked his head, and supposed she
had stroked it the wrong way."
[Illustration: Sir Charles as a child from the miniature by Fanny
Corbin.]

CHAPTER II
EDUCATION
The earliest memory that Sir Charles Dilke could date was 'of April
10th, 1848, when the Chartist meeting led to military preparations,
during which I' (a boy in his fifth year) 'saw the Duke of Wellington
riding through the street, attended by his staff, but all in plain clothes.'
In 1850 'No Popery chalked on the walls attracted my attention, but
failed to excite my interest'; he was not of an age to be troubled by the
appointment of Dr. Wiseman to be Archbishop of Westminster. In 1851
he was taken to a meeting to hear Kossuth.

From this year--1851--date the earliest letters preserved in the series of
thirty-four boxes which contain the sortings of his vast correspondence.
There is a childish scrap to his grandfather, and a long letter from the
grandfather to him written from Dublin, which lovingly conjures up a
picture of the interior at Sloane Street, with 'Cousin' (Miss Folkard)
stirring the fire, 'Charley-boy' settling down his head on his mother's
lap, and 'grandmamma' (his mother's mother, Mrs. Chatfield) sitting in
the chimney-corner.
For the year 1852 there are no letters to the boy; it was the time of his
mother's failing health, and he was journeying with his grandfather all
over England, 'reading Shakespeare, and studying church architecture,
especially Norman.' It was a delightful way