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 Sevres 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