Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 19

July 18th, 1901.

I have just had such a cheerful quarter-of-an-hour--a packet of YOUR letters to Mr. G. Think--! I've read them all!--and they bring the writer back to me with queer and tender vividness. Such a change from Bishops!!! Why do you never address me as "Very dear and honoured Sir"? I'm not quite eighty-five yet, but I soon shall be.

Ever yours, JOHN MORLEY.

I have heard people say that the Gladstone family never allowed him to read a newspaper with anything hostile to himself in it; all this is the greatest rubbish; no one interfered with his reading. The same silly things were said about the great men of that day as of this and will continue to be said; and the same silly geese will believe them. I never observed that Gladstone was more easily flattered than other men. He WAS more flattered and by more people, because he was a bigger man and lived a longer life; but he was remarkably free from vanity of any kind. He would always laugh at a good thing, if you chose the right moment in which to tell it to him; but there were moods in which he was not inclined to be amused.

Once, when he and I were talking of Jane Welsh Carlyle, I told him that a friend of Carlyle's, an old man whom I met at Balliol, had told me that one of his favourite stories was of an Irishman who, when asked where he was driving his pig to, said:

"Cark. ..." (Cork.)

"But," said his interlocutor, "your head is turned to Mullingar ... !"

To which the man replied:

"Whist! He'll hear ye!"

This delighted Mr. Gladstone. I also told him one of Jowett's favourite stories, of how George IV. went down to Portsmouth for some big function and met a famous admiral of the day. He clapped him on the back and said in a loud voice:

"Well, my dear Admiral, I hear you are the greatest blackguard in Portsmouth!"

At which the Admiral drew himself up, saluted the King and said:

"I hope, Sir, YOU have not come down to take away my reputation."

I find in an old diary an account of a drive I had with Gladstone after my sister Laura died. This is what I wrote:

"On Sat.u.r.day, 29th May, 1886, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone came to pay us a visit at 40 Grosvenor Square. Papa had been arranging the drawing-room preparatory to their arrival and was in high spirits. I was afraid he might resent my wish to take Mr.

Gladstone up to my room after lunch and talk to him alone.

However, Aunty p.u.s.s.y--as we called Mrs. Gladstone--with a great deal of winking, led papa away and said to mamma:

"'William and Margot are going to have a little talk!'

"I had not met or seen Mr. Gladstone since Laura's death.

"When he had climbed up to my boudoir, he walked to the window and admired the trees in the square, deploring their uselessness and asking whether the street lamp--which crossed the square path in the line of our eyes--was a child.

"I asked him if he would approve of the square railings being taken away and the gla.s.s and trees made into a place with seats, such as you see in foreign towns, not merely for the convenience of sitting down, but for the happiness of invalids and idlers who court the shade or the sun. This met with his approval, but he said with some truth that the only people who could do this--or prevent it--were 'the resident aristocracy.'

"He asked if Laura had often spoken of death. I said yes and that she had written about it in a way that was neither morbid nor terrible. I showed him some prayers she had scribbled in a book, against worldliness and high spirits. He listened with reverence and interest. I don't think I ever saw his face wear the expression that Millais painted in our picture as distinctly as when, closing the book, he said to me:

"'It requires very little faith to believe that so rare a creature as your sister Laura is blessed and with G.o.d.'

"Aunty p.u.s.s.y came into the room and the conversation turned to Laurence Oliphant's objection to visiting the graves of those we love. They disagreed with this and he said:

"'I think, on the contrary, one should encourage oneself to find consolation in the few tangible memories that one can claim; it should not lessen faith in their spirits; and there is surely a silent lesson to be learnt from the tombstone.'

"Papa and mamma came in and we all went down to tea. Mr. G., feeling relieved by the change of scene and topic, began to talk and said he regretted all his life having missed the opportunity of knowing Sir Walter Scott, Dr. Arnold and Lord Melbourne. He told us a favourite story of his. He said:

"'An a.s.sociation of ladies wrote and asked me to send them a few words on that unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. In the penury of my knowledge and the confusion arising from the conflicting estimates of poor Mary, I thought I would write to Bishop Stubbs. All he replied was, "Mary is looking up."'

"After this I drove him back to Downing Street in my phaeton, round the Park and down Knights bridge. I told him I found it difficult to judge of people's brains if they were very slow.

"MR. GLADSTONE: "I wish, then, that you had had the privilege of knowing Mr. Cobden; he was at once the slowest and quite one of the cleverest men I ever met. Personally I find it far easier to judge of brains than character; perhaps it is because in my line of life motives are very hard to fathom, and constant a.s.sociation with intelligence and cultivation leads to a fair toleration and criticism of all sorts and conditions of men.'

"He talked of Bright and Chamberlain and Lord Dalhousie,[Footnote: The late Earl of Dalhousie.] who, he said, was one of the best and most conscientious men he had ever known. He told me that, during the time he had been Prime Minister, he had been personally asked for every great office in the State, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and this not by maniacs but by highly respectable men, sometimes even his friends. He said that Goschen's critical power was sound and subtle, but that he spoilt his speeches by a touch of bitterness. Mr. Parnell, he said, was a man of genius, born to great things. He had power, decision and reserve; he saw things as they were and had confidence in himself.

(Ten days after this drive, Mr. Gladstone made his last great speech on Irish Home Rule.)

"I made him smile by telling him how Lord Kimberley told me that, one day in Dublin, when he was Viceroy, he had received a letter which began:

"'My Lord, To-morrow we intend to kill you at the corner of Kildare Street; but we would like you to know there is nothing personal in it!'

"He talked all the way down Piccadilly about the Irish character, its wit, charm, grace and intelligence. I nearly landed my phaeton into an omnibus in my anxiety to point out the ingrat.i.tude and want of purpose of the Irish; but he said that in the n.o.blest of races the spirit of self-defence had bred mean vices and that generation after generation were born in Ireland with their blood discoloured by hatred of the English Governments.

"'Tories have no hope, no faith,' he continued, 'and the best of them have cla.s.s-interest and the spirit of antiquity, but the last has been forgotten, and only cla.s.s-interest remains. Disraeli was a great Tory. It grieves me to see people believing in Randolph Churchill as his successor, for he has none of the genius, patience or insight which Dizzy had in no small degree.'

"Mr. Gladstone told me that he was giving a dinner to the Liberal party that night, and he added:

"'If Hartington is in a good humour, I intend to say to him, "Don't move a vote of want of confidence in me after dinner, or you will very likely carry it."'

"'He laughed at this, and told me some days after that Lord Hartington had been delighted with the idea.

"He strongly advised me to read a little book by one Miss Tollet, called Country Conversations, which had been privately printed, and deplored the vast amount of poor literature that was circulated, 'when an admirable little volume like this cannot be got by the most ardent admirers now the auth.o.r.ess is dead.'" (In parenthesis, I often wish I had been able to tell Mr. Gladstone that Jowett left me this little book and his Shakespeare in his will.)

"We drove through the Green Park and I pulled up on the Horse Guards Parade at the garden-gate of 10 Downing Street. He got out of the phaeton, unlocked the gate and, turning round, stood with his hat off and his grey hair blowing about his forehead, holding a dark, homespun cape close round his shoulders. He said with great grace that he had enjoyed his drive immensely, that he hoped it would occur again and that I had a way of saying things and a tone of voice that would always remind him of my sister Laura. His dear old face looked furrowed with care and the outline of it was sharp as a profile. I said good-bye to him and drove away; perhaps it was the light of the setting sun, or the wind, or perhaps something else, but my eyes were full of tears."

My husband, in discussing with me Gladstone's sense of humour, told me the following story:

"During the Committee Stage of the Home Rule Bill in the session of 1893, I was one evening in a very thin House, seated by the side of Mr. Gladstone on the Treasury Bench, of which we were the sole occupants. His eyes were half-closed, and he seemed to be absorbed in following the course of a dreary discussion on the supremacy of Parliament. Suddenly he turned to me with an air of great animation and said, in his most solemn tones, 'Have you ever considered who is the ugliest man in the party opposite?

"MR. ASQUITH: 'Certainly; it is without doubt X' (naming a famous Anglo-Indian statesman).

"MR. GLADSTONE: 'You are wrong. X is no doubt an ugly fellow, but a much uglier is Y' (naming a Queen's Counsel of those days).

"MR. ASQUITH: 'Why should you give him the preference?'

"MR. GLADSTONE: 'Apply a very simple test. Imagine them both magnified on a colossal scale. X's ugliness would then begin to look dignified and even impressive, while the more you enlarged Y the meaner he would become.'"

I have known seven Prime Ministers--Gladstone, Salisbury, Rosebery, Campbell-Bannerman, Arthur Balfour, Asquith and Lloyd George--every one of them as different from the others as possible. I asked Arthur Balfour once if there was much difference between him and his uncle. I said:

"Lord Salisbury does not care fanatically about culture or literature. He may like Jane Austen, Scott or Sainte-Beuve, for all I know, BUT HE IS NOT A SCHOLAR; he does not care for Plato, Homer, Virgil or any of the great cla.s.sics. He has a wonderful sense of humour and is a beautiful writer, of fine style; but I should say he is above everything a man of science and a Churchman. All this can be said equally well of you."

To which he replied:

"There is a difference. My uncle is a Tory... and I am a Liberal."

I delighted in the late Lord Salisbury, both in his speaking and in his conversation. I had a kind of feeling that he could always score off me with such grace, good humour and wit that I would never discover it. He asked me once what my husband thought of his son Hugh's speaking, to which I answered:

"I will not tell you, because you don't know anything about my husband and would not value his opinion. You know nothing about our House of Commons either, Lord Salisbury; only the other day you said in public that you had never even seen Parnell."