Dilke (40 page)

Q.: Very well, I will not ask. What happened when he brought her into the room?

A.: He wanted me to talk to her, and I would not. She stayed only a few minutes, and I burst out crying, and asked Sir Charles to send her away, because I could not bear having her there, and he sent her away, and
told me I should never see her again as I did not want to see her.

.     .     .     .     .

Q.: When did you see her again?

A.: I saw her again in the spring of 1884, when I came back to London . . . he brought her into the room one day when I was there, and she remained, I think, a minute or two, and I asked him to send her away, and he sent her away.

Q.: Did you ever see her again?

A.: Yes, I saw her, I think, about a week or a fortnight after.

Q.: Again at Sir Charles Dilke's house?

A.: Yes, in the same way; he told me I was very silly not to like her, and not to let her stop; he was rather vexed about it, and so to please him I let her stop longer, and she was in the room, I think, about ten minutes or so with Sir Charles Dilke and me, and then when Sir Charles Dilke left she helped me to dress.

Q.: One moment, please, were you all three in bed together?

A.: Yes.

Mrs. Crawford added that she had a little conversation with Fanny, but that she did not discover her surname or the fact that Sarah was her sister. She was next asked to look at a photograph and say whether she recognised it. She replied: “It is Fanny.”

During the session of 1884, apart from Fanny, the pattern of visits continued, although they were perhaps less frequent. Mrs. Crawford said that as late as that summer she had affection for Dilke, but in the autumn, largely as a result of Mrs. Rogerson's advice, she implied, she broke off the intimacy. She had been very friendly with Mrs. Rogerson during that summer, but she now believed her to have written the “Métropole” anonymous letter. She based her belief partly on the handwriting and partly on the fact that Mrs. Rogerson, to whose house she and Forster had gone to tea on the same
day, was the only person who knew of their Métropole luncheon. So far as the last anonymous letter—the one which precipitated her confession—was concerned, she would not like to give any opinion about its authorship. But when she saw it she thought it looked by the form of the envelope to be an anonymous letter, and she decided to end her dissimulation and tell her husband “the real truth.” She had been very miserable with her husband, with whom she had never been in love and whom she had married because she had been unhappy at home. She had told Mrs. Rogerson a little time before the confession that she could not much longer go on living with him.

Towards the end of Matthews' examination one or two loose ends were gathered together. Mrs. Crawford said that she had never been unfaithful to her husband before her first visit to Warren Street. She told how Dilke had visited her at her sister's house on the Tuesday after her confession, and had tried to get her to withdraw her statements, threatening that he would otherwise make public her relations with other men, and ruin herself and her family; but she did not suggest that he had tried to bribe her. Finally she described how she was able to identify the Warren Street house so many years after she had forgotten the number. In November, 1885, she accompanied Mrs. Ashton Dilke on a shopping expedition to Maple's in Tottenham Court Road. While there she decided to try to find the house She succeeded, recognising it from the outside, and went back to her sister with the address written down.

Sir Walter Phillimore then began his cross-examination. It was much less aggressive and effective than Matthews' cross-examination of Dilke had been. Phillimore was frequently doubtful about his facts, which meant that he often realised neither the strength of his own case nor the weakness of Mrs. Crawford's. Sometimes he appeared to be cross-examining without point and merely leading Mrs. Crawford through a repetition of the statements she had already made in reply to Matthews. At other times he would pursue a poor point with greater enthusiasm than he would show for a good
one.
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As a result her cross-examination occupies a much less central position in the case than does that of Dilke. It was probably less important in its effect upon the court than her examination by Matthews.

Phillimore attempted to make three main points. The first was to bring out the adulterous nature of Mrs. Crawford's relations with Forster, and perhaps with others as well. About Forster he put the direct question to her, and, after an attempt to avoid it, she admitted the position for the first time:

Q.: Have you not had guilty relations with Captain Forster?

A.: My Lord, must I answer that question?

The President: If the question is pressed you must answer it.

Sir W. Phillimore: Yes, my Lord, I must press it.

A.: Yes, I have.

Q.: When did these relations begin?

A.: In 1884.

She also admitted that at Easter, 1885, she had gone to Dublin to see Forster, telling her husband that she was staying with Mrs. Rogerson.

So far as her relations with other men were concerned the principal evidence against her was that of her diary. The space for February 23rd, 1882, contained the initials “C.W.D.” faintly pencilled in her own handwriting close against the line. Matthews had drawn attention to this in his examination. Phillimore drew attention to similar entries. For May 25th, 1882, “F.W.” was written in this way, and for November 20th of the same year there was “R.C.P.” For June 4th, 1884, there was “H.F.” Mrs. Crawford was asked who were designated by these initials and replied that “F.W.” was Mr. Frederick Warner, “R.C.P.” Mr. Robert Priestley (who
had subsequently become her brother-in-law), and “H.F.” Captain Henry Forster. Phillimore continued:

Q.: Now I ask you whether those three initials, May 25th, 1882, “F.W.,” November 20th, “R.C.P.” and June 4th “H.F.” are not meant as records of committing adultery with these three people?

A.: No, certainly not.

Q.: None of them?

A.: No, none of them.

Q.: Or of appointments made with them?

A.: I do not remember what they refer to, but they must refer to their coming to the house, probably to tea.

Q.: Is that the way that you recorded visits of people coming to tea?

A.: Yes, apparently so.

Q.: You may have an opportunity of showing that. Can you turn now, or at any time, to any entries in your diary of people coming to tea, put in this manner?

A.: I do not remember any. I have sometimes put people down by their initials.

Phillimore then allowed her to leave this immediate point, and turned to asking her about the first anonymous letter which her husband had received and which referred to her flirting with medical students at St. George's Hospital, where she was visiting a sick relative. She fixed the date of this letter as March, 1882, but denied the allegations both in general and in reference to Warner and Priestley; the latter, she said, had never been a student at St. George's.

Phillimore's second main point was the implausibility of Mrs. Crawford's story on what may perhaps be called psychological rather than circumstantial grounds. He asked her whether she resented Dilke's having made love to her at Bailey's Hotel, and she replied that she did. She was asked whether she had told her husband and whether there had been any communication between her and Dilke in the five months which followed this incident. She replied “No” to both these questions, and Phillimore continued, referring to
Dilke's visit to her, at Sydney Place, on her return to London:

Q.: You expected him to come. Did you try to stop him coming, or take any precautions to prevent his coming?

A.: No.

Q.: And when he did come, was it on that very first occasion that he came to you that he and you made this arrangement that you should go to Warren Street?

A.: Yes.

Q.: Did you understand you were to go to Warren Street to be seduced by him?

A.: Yes, I did, when he explained.

Q.: And you say that on this occasion you made the arrangement to meet him in Warren Street knowing the object?

A.: Yes.

Q.: Without further interview with him or further pressing on his behalf?

A.: I did not see him any other time.
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Phillimore also pressed Mrs. Crawford on the accusations she had scattered around about other people being Dilke's mistresses and about her relations with these others:

Q.: Have you said that he told you that Mrs. Rogerson was his mistress?

A.: Yes, that Sir Charles Dilke asked me to make a friend of Mrs. Rogerson. He told me Mrs. Rogerson was his mistress.

Q.: He told you that?

A.: Yes, he told me so himself.

Q.: Was his mistress, or had been his mistress, or what?

A.: He implied to me that she was still.

Q.: That she was still his mistress—you really mean to say that?

A.: Yes, positively. He asked me if I should like to meet
Mrs. Rogerson at his house. I said no, I would rather not.

Q.: Let me see, he told you Fanny was his mistress; he told you about your mother, and he told you about Mrs. Rogerson, and did he tell you about Sarah—that Sarah had been his mistress?

A.: Yes.

Q.: All those four?

A.: Yes.

Q.: And Sarah, who had been his mistress, was dressing you on every occasion when you went to his house, and bringing you tea and letting you out on those occasions when you slept there?

A.: Yes.

Q.: And Mrs. Rogerson, who was his mistress, was meeting you, and you were making statements to her?

A.: Mrs. Rogerson always denied it to me. Of course I was bound to believe Mrs. Rogerson.

.     .     .     .

Q.: Did you send for Mrs. Rogerson when you were ill and ask her to come and see you?

A.: Yes, I did, because Sir Charles had asked me to make friends with her several times.

Q.: At that time you had not had Mrs. Rogerson's denial that she was Sir Charles Dilke's mistress?

A.: No.

Q.: So being ill, were you in low spirits?

A.: No, not particularly, I was dull of course, I was ill and could not go out, and my sisters were out of town, so of course I was dull.

Q.: Being ill and dull you sent for somebody whom Sir Charles Dilke told you was another of his mistresses to come and see you?

A.: He told me that Mrs. Rogerson wanted to make friends with me and asked me to make friends with her.”

Mrs. Crawford also informed the court of her understanding that, in the spring of 1885, Dilke had asked Mrs. Rogerson
to marry him, but that Mrs. Rogerson had refused. She further said that, until recently, it had not occurred to her that Mrs. Rogerson had written any of the anonymous letters. She had believed them to be all “contrivances” of her mother—Mrs. Smith.

Phillimore's third main point—and certainly his most important one—was to try to suggest reasons why Mrs. Crawford might have invented the story against Dilke. He got her to admit that she was Forster's mistress; that she was very much in love with him during the summer of 1885; that her husband had become suspicious to the extent of himself watching her movements as closely as he could and employing a detective to do what he could not do; that Forster had in consequence left London and been able to communicate with her only by sending letters to the Kensington Post Office addressed to Mrs. Green; that Forster and Dilke had quarrelled, as had been stated in previous evidence; that she and Forster were as a result very angry with Dilke; and that, after making her confession, she specifically asked her husband not to put Forster's name in as a co-respondent.

Phillimore also suggested that if, as she said, she had broken off a two-and-a-half-year intimacy with Dilke in August, 1884, it was very odd that, two months later, she should on her own initiative have taken lodgings for the autumn session at 61, Sloane Street, only fifteen doors from his house. She replied that she had done this because her husband had wished to be near the Lord Advocate, who lived in Cadogan Place, but it was not clear why this consideration had not applied in former years; the implication which Phillimore attempted to bring out was that she wished to be in a position closely to observe Dilke's house while she was concocting her story.

To complete the picture Phillimore put it to her that the last anonymous letter was phrased in what she knew would be the form most likely to provoke her husband—because it suggested that he would not dare to take action against Dilke, being too concerned for his own political prospects—and that she herself had written it. She admitted the former, but resolutely denied the latter. Phillimore also put it to her that
when she made her confession she hoped to marry Forster. This, too, she denied. “No, there never had been talk of marriage,” she said, “as Captain Forster was engaged at that time to be married to Miss Smith Barry; he told me, and I knew all along that he was engaged to her. . . .”

There were two other small points which emerged in the cross-examination and which should, perhaps, be mentioned. The first concerned the discrepancy between Crawford's original statement about the two nights she had spent away from home and her own evidence. She was able to explain her husband's evidence by saying that he had been confused at the time she made her confession, but there was the further point that Anne Jamieson, her maid, had sworn at the first trial to her being away on two consecutive nights in February, 1883. When Phillimore put this to her she made the startling reply: “I suppose that is what she was told to say,” but Phillimore, even more surprisingly, did not follow up the point and ask by whom Anne Jamieson was told, or why she was told. The second small point related to a visit which Mrs. Crawford had paid to Edinburgh in December, 1885, in an unsuccessful attempt to see her husband. “I only want to help you, and I can do nothing unless you see me,” she had written to him. Matthews assumed throughout that she had given her husband no help in his divorce proceedings, and took this as a clear refutation of the “plot against Dilke” theory.