Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 32

JOWETT (guardedly): "Oh, indeed! I will take you to see her and then you can ask her about all this."

MARGOT: "I should love that! But perhaps she would not care for me."

JOWETT: "I do not think she will care for you, but would you mind that?"

MARGOT: "Oh, not at all! I am quite unfemnine in those ways. When people leave the room, I don't say to myself, "I wonder if they like me," but, "I wonder if I like them."

This made an impression on the Master, or I should not have remembered it. Some weeks after this he took me to see Florence Nightingale in her house in South Street. Groups of hospital nurses were waiting outside in the hall to see her. When we went in I noted her fine, handsome, well-bred face. She was lying on a sofa, with a white shawl round her shoulders and, after shaking hands with her, the Master and I sat down. She pointed to the beautiful Richmond print of Sidney Herbert, hanging above her mantelpiece, and said to me:

"I am interested to meet you, as I hear George Pembroke, the son of my old and dear friend, is devoted to you. Will you tell me what he is like?"

I described Lord Pembroke, while Jowett sat in stony silence till we left the house.

One day, a few months after this visit, I was driving in the vicinity of Oxford with the Master and I said to him:

"You never speak of your relations to me and you never tell me whether you were in love when you were young; I have told you so much about myself!"

JOWETT: "Have you ever heard that I was in love with any one?"

I did not like to tell him that, since our visit to Florence Nightingale, I had heard that he had wanted to marry her, so I said:

"Yes, I have been told you were in love once."

JOWETT: "Only once?"

MARGOT: "Yes."

Complete silence fell upon us after this: I broke it at last by saying:

"What was your lady-love like, dear Master?"

JOWETT: "Violent ... very violent."

After this disconcerting description, we drove back to Balliol.

Mrs. Humphry Ward's novel "Robert Elsmere" had just been published and was dedicated to my sister Laura and Thomas Hill Green, Jowett's rival in Oxford. This is what the Master wrote to me about it:

Nov. 28, 1888.

DEAR MISS TENNANT,

I have just finished examining for the Balliol Scholarships: a great inst.i.tution of which you may possibly have heard. To what shall I liken it? It is not unlike a man casting into the sea a great dragnet, and when it is full of fish, pulling it up again and taking out fishes, good, bad and indifferent, and throwing the bad and indifferent back again into the sea. Among the good fish there have been Archbishop Tait, Dean Stanley, A. H. Clough, Mr.

Arnold, Lord Coleridge, Lord Justice Bowen, Mr. Ilbert, &c., &c., &c. The inst.i.tution was founded about sixty years ago.

I have been dining alone rather dismally, and now I shall imagine that I receive a visit from a young lady about twenty-three years of age, who enlivens me by her prattle. Is it her or her angel?

But I believe that she is an angel, pale, volatile and like Laodamia in Wordsworth, ready to disappear at a moment's notice. I could write a description of her, but am not sure that I could do her justice.

I wish that I could say anything to comfort you, my dear Margot, or even to make you laugh. But no one can comfort another. The memory of a beautiful character is "a joy for ever," especially of one who was bound to you in ties of perfect amity. I saw what your sister [Footnote: Mrs. Gordon Duff.] was from two short conversations which I had with her, and from the manner in which she was spoken of at Davos.

I send you the book [Footnote: Plato's Republic] which I spoke of, though I hardly know whether it is an appropriate present; at any rate I do not expect you to read it. It has taken me the last year to revise and, in parts, rewrite it. The great interest of it is that it belongs to a different age of the human mind, in which there is so much like and also unlike ourselves. Many of our commonplaces and common words are being thought out for the first time by Plato. Add to this that in the original this book is the most perfect work of art in the world. I wonder whether it will have any meaning or interest for you.

You asked me once whether I desired to make a Sister of Charity of you. Certainly not (although there are worse occupations); nor do I desire to make anything. But your talking about plans of life does lead me to think of what would be best and happiest for you.

I do not object to the hunting and going to Florence and Rome, but should there not be some higher end to which these are the steps?

I think that you might happily fill up a great portion of your life with literature (I am convinced that you have considerable talent and might become eminent) and a small portion with works of benevolence, just to keep us in love and charity with our poor neighbours; and the rest I do not grudge to society and hunting.

Do you think that I am a hard taskmaster? Not very, I think. More especially as you will not be led away by my good advice. You see that I cannot bear to think of you hunting and ballet-dancing when you are "fair, fat and forty-five." Do prepare yourself for that awful age.

I went to see Mrs. H. Ward the other day: she insists on doing battle with the reviewer in the Quarterly, and is thinking of another novel, of which the subject will be the free-thinking of honest working-men in Paris and elsewhere. People say that in "Robert Elsmere" Rose is intended for you, Catherine for your sister Laura, the Squire for Mark Pattison, the Provost for me, etc., and Mr. Grey for Professor Green. All the portraits are about equally unlike the originals.

Good-bye, you have been sitting with me for nearly an hour, and now, like Laodamia or Protesilaus, you disappear. I have been the better for your company. One serious word: May G.o.d bless you and help you in this and every other great hurt of life.

Ever yours,

B. JOWETT.

I will publish all his letters to me together, as, however delightful letters may be, I find they bore me when they are scattered all through an autobiography.

March 11th, 1889.

MY DEAR MARGARET,

As you say, friendships grow dull if two persons do not care to write to one another. I was beginning to think that you resented my censorious criticisms on your youthful life and happiness.

Can youth be serious without ceasing to be youth? I think it may.

The desire to promote the happiness of others rather than your own may be always "breaking in." As my poor sister (of whom I will talk to you some day) would say: "When others are happy, then I am happy." She used to commend the religion of Sydney Smith--"Never to let a day pa.s.s without doing a kindness to some body"--and I think that you understand something about this; or you would not be so popular and beloved.

You ask me what persons I have seen lately: I doubt whether they would interest you. Mr. Welldon, the Headmaster of Harrow, a very honest and able man with a long life before him, and if he is not too honest and open, not unlikely to be an Archbishop of Canterbury. Mr. J. M. Wilson, Headmaster of Clifton College--a very kind, genial and able man--there is a great deal of him and in him--not a man of good judgment, but very devoted--a first-rate man in his way. Then I have seen a good deal of Lord Rosebery-- very able, shy, sensitive, ambitious, the last two qualities rather at war with each other--very likely a future Prime Minister. I like Lady Rosebery too--very sensible and high- principled, not at all inclined to give up her Judaism to please the rest of the world. They are rather overloaded with wealth and fine houses: they are both very kind. I also like Lady Leconfield [Footnote: Lady Leconfield was a sister of Lord Rosebery's and one of my dearest friends.], whom I saw at Mentone. Then I paid a visit to Tennyson, who has had a lingering illness of six months, perhaps fatal, as he is eighty years of age. It was pleasing to see how he takes it, very patient and without fear of death, unlike his former state of mind. Though he is so sensitive, he seemed to me to bear his illness like a great man. He has a volume of poems waiting to come out--some of them as good as he ever wrote. Was there ever an octogenarian poet before?

Doctor Johnson used to say that he never in his life had eaten as much fruit as he desired. I think I never talked to you as much as I desired. You once told me that you would show me your novel.

[Footnote: I began two, but they were not at all clever and have long since disappeared.] Is it a reality or a myth? I should be interested to see it if you like to send me that or any other writing of yours.

"Robert Elsmere," as the auth.o.r.ess tells me, has sold 60,000 in England and 400,000 in America! It has considerable merit, but its success is really due to its saying what everybody is thinking. I am astonished at her knowing so much about German theology--she is a real scholar and takes up things of the right sort. I do not believe that Mrs. Ward ever said "she had pulverised Christianity." These things are invented about people by the orthodox, i. e., the infidel world, in the hope that they will do them harm. What do you think of being "laughed to death"? It would be like being tickled to death.

Good-bye,

Ever yours truly,

B. JOWETT.

BALLIOL COLLEGE, May 22nd, 1891.

MY DEAR MARGARET,

It was very good of you to write me such a nice note. I hope you are better. I rather believe in people being able to cure themselves of many illnesses if they are tolerably prudent and have a great spirit.

I liked your two friends who visited me last Sunday, and shall hope to make them friends of mine. Asquith is a capital fellow, and has abilities which may rise to the highest things in the law and politics. He is also very pleasant socially. I like your lady friend. She has both "Sense and Sensibility," and is free from "Pride and Prejudice." She told me that she had been brought up by an Evangelical grandmother, and is none the worse for it.

I begin to think bed is a very nice place, and I see a great deal of it, not altogether from laziness, but because it is the only way in which I am able to work.

I have just read the life of Newman, who was a strange character.