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