The Dilke Puzzle

A play, The Right Honorable Gentleman, which has run over a year in London and is currently running in New York, and a new book, Victorian Scandal, by Roy Jenkins (Chilmark, $7.95), both concern the Dilke divorce case which arose in the English Courts in 1885, staggered the course of English politics, and has caused reverberations ever since.

The case was tried twice. In the first trial Mr. Crawford MP demanded a divorce from his wife Virginia, nee Smith, naming as her guilty paramour Sir Charles Dilke. Dilke was dismissed from the case with costs in his favor, but by a true British compromise Mr. Crawford was awarded his divorce from his wife. This was a puzzle to the public then and really ever since. Dilke, on advice of his counsel (who included the future Chief Justice Russell), had not entered the witness box.

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Sir Shane Leslie

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A play, The Right Honorable Gentleman, which has run over a year in London and is currently running in New York, and a new book, Victorian Scandal, by Roy Jenkins (Chilmark, $7.95), both concern the Dilke divorce case which arose in the English Courts in 1885, staggered the course of English politics, and has caused reverberations ever since.

The case was tried twice. In the first trial Mr. Crawford MP demanded a divorce from his wife Virginia, nee Smith, naming as her guilty paramour Sir Charles Dilke. Dilke was dismissed from the case with costs in his favor, but by a true British compromise Mr. Crawford was awarded his divorce from his wife. This was a puzzle to the public then and really ever since. Dilke, on advice of his counsel (who included the future Chief Justice Russell), had not entered the witness box.