Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 47

When the matron had shut the door, the woman sprang up and, hanging it with her back, remained with arms akimbo and her legs apart, looking at me in defiance. I thought to myself, as I watched her resolute face and strong, young figure, that, if she wanted to prevent me getting out of that room alive, she could easily do so.

THE WOMAN: "You heard what I said, that you would never have as much influence with your husband as you have now, so just listen.

He's all-powerful and, if he looks into my case, he will see that I am innocent and ought to be let out. The last Home Secretary was not married and never took any interest in us poor women."

Hearing the matron tapping at the door and feeling rather anxious to get out, I said:

"I give you my word of honour that I will make my husband read up all your case. The matron will give me your name and details, but I must go now."

THE WOMAN (with a sinister look): "Oh, no, you don't! You stay here till I give you the details: what does a woman like that care for a woman like me?" (throwing her thumb over her shoulder towards the matron behind the door). "What does she know about life?"

MARGOT: "You must let me open the door and get a pencil and paper."

THE WOMAN: "The old lady will do it for you while I give you the details of my case. You have only got to give her your orders.

Does she know who you are?"

MARGOT: "No; and you must not tell her, please. If you will trust me with your secret, I will trust you with mine; but you must let me out first if I am to help you."

With a lofty wave of my hand, but without taking one step forward, I made her move away from the door, which I opened with a feeling of relief. The matron was in the pa.s.sage and, while she was fetching a pencil, the woman, standing in the doorway of her cell, told me in lowered tones how cruelly unlucky she had been in life; what worthless, careless girls had pa.s.sed through her hands; and how they had died from no fault of hers, but through their own ignorance. She ended by saying:

"There is no grat.i.tude in this world ..."

When the matron came back, she was much shocked at seeing me kiss the convict.

I said, "Good-bye," and never saw her again.

My husband looked carefully into her case, but found that she was a professional abortionist of the most hopeless type.

CHAPTER VIII

MARGOT'S FIRST BABY AND ITS LOSS--DANGEROUS ILLNESS--LETTER FROM QUEEN VICTORIA--SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT'S PLEASANTRIES--ASQUITH MINISTRY FALLS--VISIT FROM d.u.c.h.eSS D'AOSTA

Sir John Williams [Footnote: Sir John Williams, of Aberystwyth, Wales.] was my doctor and would have been a remarkable man in any country, but in Wales he was unique. He was a man of heart without hysteria and both loyal and truthful.

On the 18th of May, 1895, my sisters Charlotte and Lucy were sitting with me in my bedroom. I will quote from my diary the account of my first confinement and how I got to know him:

"I began to feel ill. My Gamp, an angular-faced, admirable old woman called Jerusha Taylor--'out of the Book of Kings'--was bustling about preparing for the doctor. Henry was holding my hands and I was sobbing in an arm-chair, feeling the panic of pain and fear which no one can realise who has not had a baby.

"When Williams arrived, I felt as if salvation must be near; my whole soul and every beat of my heart went out in dumb appeal to him, and his tenderness on that occasion bred in me a love and grat.i.tude which never faded, but was intensified by all I saw of him afterwards. He seemed to think a narcotic would calm my nerves, but the sleeping-draught might have been water for all the effect it had upon me, so he gave me chloroform. The room grew dark; grey poppies appeared to be nodding at me--and I gasped:

"'Oh, doctor, DEAR doctor, stay with me to-night, just THIS one night, and I will stay with you whenever you like!'

"But Williams was too anxious, my nurse told me, to hear a word I said.

"At four o'clock in the morning, Henry went to fetch the anaesthetist and in his absence Williams took me out of chloroform. Then I seemed to have a glimpse of a different world: if PAIN is evil, then it was h.e.l.l; if not, I expect I got nearer Heaven than I have ever been before . ...

"I saw Dr. Bailey at the foot of the bed, with a bag in his hand, and Charty's outline against the lamp; then my head was placed on the pillow and a black thing came between me and the light and closed over my mouth, a slight beating of carpets sounded in my brain and I knew no more . ...

"When I came to consciousness about twelve the next morning, I saw Charty looking at me and I said to her in a strange voice:

"'I can't have any more pain, it's no use.'

"CHARTY: 'No, no, darling, you won't have any more.' (SILENCE.)

"MARGOT: 'But you don't mean it's all over?'

"CHARTY (soothingly): 'Go to sleep, dearest.'

"I was so dazed by chloroform that I could hardly speak. Later on the nurse told me that the doctor had had to sacrifice my baby and that I ought to be grateful for being spared, as I had had a very dangerous confinement.

"When Sir John Williams came to see me, he looked white and tired and, finding my temperature was normal, he said fervently:

"'Thank you, Mrs. Asquith.'

"I was too weak and uncomfortable to realise all that had happened; and what I suffered from the smallest noise I can hardly describe. I would watch nurse slowly approaching and burst into a perspiration when her cotton dress crinkled against the chintz of my bed. I shivered with fear when the blinds were drawn up or the shutters unfastened; and any one moving up or down stairs, placing a tumbler on the marble wash-hand-stand or reading a newspaper would bring tears into my eyes."

In connection with what I have quoted out of my diary here it is not inappropriate to add that I lost my babies in three out of my five confinements. These poignant and secret griefs have no place on the high-road of life; but, just as Henry and I will stand sometimes side by side near those little graves unseen by strangers, so he and I in un.o.bserved moments will touch with one heart an unforgotten sorrow.

Out of the many letters which I received, this from our intimate and affectionate friend, Lord Haldane, was the one I liked best:

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I cannot easily tell you how much touched I was in the few minutes I spent talking to you this afternoon, by what I saw and what you told me. I left with the sense of witnessing triumph in failure and life come through death. The strength that is given at such times arises not from ignoring loss, or persuading oneself that the thing is not that IS; but from the resolute setting of the face to the East and the taking of one step onwards. It is the quality we touch--it may be but for a moment--not the quant.i.ty we have, that counts. "All I could never be, all that was lost in me is yet there--in His hand who planned the perfect whole." That was what Browning saw vividly when he wrote his Rabbi Ben Ezra. You have lost a great joy. But in the deepening and strengthening the love you two have for each other you have gained what is rarer and better; it is well worth the pain and grief--the grief you have borne in common--and you will rise stronger and freer.

We all of us are parting from youth, and the horizon is narrowing, but I do not feel any loss that is not compensated by gain, and I do not think that you do either. Anything that detaches one, that makes one turn from the past and look simply at what one has to do, brings with it new strength and new intensity of interest. I have no fear for you when I see what is absolutely and unmistakably good and n.o.ble obliterating every other thought as I saw it this afternoon. I went away with strengthened faith in what human nature was capable of.

May all that is highest and best lie before you both.

Your affec. friend,

R. B. HALDANE.

I was gradually recovering my health when on May the 21st, 1895, after an agonising night, Sir John Williams and Henry came into my bedroom between five and six in the morning and I was told that I should have to lie on my back till August, as I was suffering from phlebitis; but I was too unhappy and disappointed to mind. It was then that my doctor, Sir John Williams, became my friend as well as my nurse, and his n.o.bility of character made him a powerful influence in my life.

To return to my diary:

"Queen Victoria took a great interest in my confinement, and wrote Henry a charming letter. She sent messengers constantly to ask after me and I answered her myself once, in pencil, when Henry was at the Home Office.

"I was convalescing one day, lying as usual on my bed, my mind a blank, when Sir William Harcourt's card was sent up to me and my door was darkened by his huge form.

I had seen most of my political and other friends while I was convalescing: Mr. Gladstone, Lord Haldane, Mr. Birrell, Lord Spencer, Lord Rosebery, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Morley, Arthur Balfour, Sir Alfred Lyall and Admiral Maxse; and I was delighted to see Sir William Harcourt. When he came into my room, he observed my hunting-crops hanging on the wall from a rack, and said:

"I am glad to see those whips! Asquith will be able to beat you if you play fast and loose with him. That little tight mouth of his convinces me he has the capacity to do it.

"After my nurse had left the room, he expressed surprise that I should have an ugly woman near me, however good she might be, and told me that his son, Bobby, had been in love with his nurse and wrote to her for several years. He added, in his best Hanoverian vein: