DILKE, Rev Sir Charles John Wentworth DILKE 6th Bt 1937-2022
Richard R
colinp
The Reverend Sir Charles Dilke, 6th Bt, who has died aged 85, gave 61 years of his life to the London Oratory, 56 of those as priest and six years from 1981 to 1987 as Provost or superior.
A Wykehamist, Father Charles exuded an air of other-worldliness that sometimes caused him to be underestimated, but it belied a curiosity about human nature and a degree of inner steel, even obstinacy. These qualities were demonstrated when as chairman of governors in the 1980s he played a central role in averting a disaster involving the Oratory secondary school, founded in 1863 by the Fathers of the Oratory.
The threat came from the bureaucrats of the Westminster Archdiocese education service and the Archbishop, Cardinal Basil Hume, who proposed doing away with the school’s outstanding sixth form and absorbing it into a central college. That the school succeeded in resisting the misguided scheme was in no small part due to Father Charles’s understated presence during negotiations, and the private conversations he enjoyed with the headmaster John McIntosh, who found him the most supportive chairman of governors in his 30 years as head....
[Fr] Charles also served as chaplain to the school, and he was once addressing the Newman Society when a pupil made a cheeky reference to the explosive sex scandal that brought down his Victorian ancestor, the second baronet, also called Charles Dilke. Dilke was a statesman tipped as a successor to Gladstone, but his reputation was shattered after his sexual appetites were exposed when he was cited as co-respondent in a divorce. “He taught me every French vice,” one housemaid reported.
Was it true, the Oratory sixth-former asked Father Charles, that his ancestor was “an adulterer”?
“No, he wasn’t,” the reply came back. “He was a multiple adulterer!”
The second baronet’s downfall in 1886, just as he was about to reach the height of power and influence, came about because of the testimony of a 23-year-old MP’s wife called Virginia Crawford. By a curious twist, 60 years later Mrs Crawford would feature directly in Father Charles’s life.
Virginia Crawford never spoke publicly about the case afterwards, but she regularised her life and, under instruction from Cardinal Manning (a friend of Dilke’s), became a Catholic. She survived until 1948, dying aged 85 after decades given to good works and her spiritual life. As “Auntie Nia” she became a friend of Father Charles’s family, and his mother told him that Auntie Nia had dandled him as a baby on her knee.
Charles John Wentworth Dilke was born in London on February 21 1937, son of Sir John Dilke, 5th Bt, and his wife Sheila, whose father Sir William Seeds was Ambassador to the Soviet Union. A brother, Timothy, was born 18 months later.
The baronetcy had been created in 1862, by the personal act of Queen Victoria, for (Charles) Wentworth Dilke, who had organised the Great Exhibition of 1851. His father, also Charles Wentworth Dilke, born in 1789, was editor-proprietor of the Athenaeum literary magazine and a close friend of the poet Keats.
The second baronet gradually rebuilt his reputation, pursued Left-wing causes, and died in 1911.
After the third baronet died without issue the title passed to his cousin, Father Charles’s grandfather, Fisher Wentworth Dilke, then in 1944 to Charles’s father John, who worked for the Foreign Office before the war and was at various times on the staff of The Times foreign desk and the BBC’s External Service. In the postwar years he took to farming.
Father Charles inherited the title when his father died in 1998. He went through the formal process to confirm it with quizzical amusement, saying to a friend: “If it’s there for the taking…” and commenting on his “complicated and splendid” coat of arms....
His brother, Timothy, a rheumatologist, born in 1938, succeeds in the baronetcy.
Charles Dilke, born February 21 1937, died November 14 2022
Richard R
The Rev Sir Charles Dilke Bt obituary
Tall and aristocratic priest with a booming voice, contrarian views on Rome and religion and an imperviousness to public opinion
…“Generally, I think it is better when aristocrats run things, but we went off the gold standard here some time ago,” he told an oratorian who held no title, when he was elected provost. Dilke’s views often unsettled the unwary. “I’m a Corbynista,” he announced at the 2019 general election.
A radical streak was in his blood. His ancestor the 2nd baronet had been a rabid anti-monarchist, and was also touted by Disraeli as a possible prime minister for the Liberal Party. In 1882, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke entered Gladstone’s cabinet as president of the Local Government Board. His star waned four years later when he was cited as co-respondent in a spectacular divorce case. He denied being the lover of Virginia Crawford, the 22-year-old wife of a Scottish liberal lawyer. Lurid claims surfaced, nonetheless, of a ménage à trois with a housemaid. Judged innocent, Dilke asked the Queen’s proctor to reopen the case to clear his name, only to then confess in the courtroom to an affair with Crawford’s mother.
Father Charles, the 6th baronet, handled queries about the scandalous 2nd baronet with habitual aplomb. Questioned by a sixth-former at the Oratory School about whether his ancestor had been an adulterer, he calmly replied: “No he wasn’t. He was a multiple adulterer!”
Charles John Wentworth Dilke was born in London in 1937, the elder son of Sir John Dilke, 5th Bt, and Sheila Seeds, of Anglo-Irish stock and whose father, William, was ambassador to the Soviet Union. Charles’s brother, Timothy, who is a retired rheumatologist, inherits the baronetcy…
.. After his father’s death in 1998, Dilke inherited the title that Queen Victoria had created for Charles Wentworth Dilke, an organiser of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Father Charles delighted in his “splendid, rather complicated coat of arms”…
… Dilke’s decline began after he broke his hip tripping over a Turkish rug during a community celebration for All Soul’s Day. An aversion to physiotherapy impeded his recovery.
On Christmas Day 2022, the absence of Dilke’s sotto voce mutterings during the monarch’s speech was mourned by his brethren.
The Rev Sir Charles Dilke Bt, Cong Orat, was born on February 21, 1937. He died on November 14, 2022, aged 85
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-reverend-sir-charles-dilke-bt-obituary-b69b8r2tn
John Horton
Sent: 09 February 2023 10:29 AM
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Richard R
colinp
John Horton
Sent: 09 February 2023 12:55 PM
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