Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 5

One day, about the time of which I am writing, I was thirteen; I took a letter out of the pocket of what I thought was my skirt and read it; it was from Laura to my eldest sister Posie and, though I do not remember it all, one sentence was burnt into me:

"Does it not seem extraordinary that Margot should be teaching a Sunday cla.s.s?"

I wondered why any one should think it extraordinary! I went upstairs and cried in a small black cupboard, where I generally disappeared when life seemed too much for me.

The Sunday cla.s.s I taught need have disturbed no one, for I regret to relate that, after a striking lesson on the birth of Christ, when I asked my pupils who the Virgin was, one of the most promising said:

"Queen Victoria!"

The idea had evidently gone abroad that I was a frivolous character; this hurt and surprised me. Naughtiness and frivolity are different, and I was always deeply in earnest.

Laura was more gentle than I was; and her goodness resolved itself into greater activity.

She and I belonged to a reading-cla.s.s. I read more than she did and at greater speed, but we were all readers and profited by a climate which kept us indoors and a fine library. The cla.s.s obliged us to read an hour a day, which could not be called excessive, but the real test was doing the same thing at the same time. I would have preferred three or four hours' reading on wet days and none on fine, But not so our Edinburgh tutor.

Laura started the Girls' Friendly Society in the village, which was at that time famous for its drunkenness and immorality. We drove ourselves to the meetings in a high two-wheeled dog-cart behind a fast trotter, coming back late in pitch darkness along icy roads. These drives to Innerleithen and our moonlight talks are among my most precious recollections.

At the meetings--after reading aloud to the girls while they sewed and knitted--Laura would address them. She gave a sort of lesson, moral, social and religious, and they all adored her. More remarkable at her age than speaking to mill-girls were her Sunday cla.s.ses at Glen, in the housekeeper's room. I do not know one girl now of any age--Laura was only sixteen--who could talk on religious subjects with profit to the butler, housekeeper and maids, or to any grown-up people, on a Sunday afternoon.

Compared with what the young men have written and published during this war, Laura's literary promise was not great; both her prose and her poetry were less remarkable than her conversation.

She was not so good a judge of character as I was and took many a goose for a swan, but, in consequence of this, she made people of both s.e.xes--and even all ages--twice as good, clever and delightful as they would otherwise have been.

I have never succeeded in making any one the least different from what they are and, in my efforts to do so, have lost every female friend that I have ever had (with the exception of four). This was the true difference between us. I have never influenced anybody but my own two children, Elizabeth and Anthony, but Laura had such an amazing effect upon men and women that for years after she died they told me that she had both changed and made their lives. This is a tremendous saying. When I die, people may turn up and try to make the world believe that I have influenced them and women may come forward whom I adored and who have quarrelled with me and pretend that they always loved me, but I wish to put it on record that they did not, or, if they did, their love is not my kind of love and I have no use for it.

The fact is that I am not touchy or impenitent myself and forget that others may be and I tell people the truth about themselves, while Laura made them feel it. I do not think I should mind hearing from any one the naked truth about myself; and on the few occasions when it has happened to me, I have not been in the least offended. My chief complaint is that so few love one enough, as one grows older, to say what they really think; nevertheless I have often wished that I had been born with Laura's skill and tact in dealing with men and women. In her short life she influenced more people than I have done in over twice as many years. I have never influenced people even enough to make them change their stockings! And I have never succeeded in persuading any young persons under my charge--except my own two children--to say that they were wrong or sorry, nor at this time of life do I expect to do so.

There was another difference between Laura and me: she felt sad when she refused the men who proposed to her; I pitied no man who loved me. I told Laura that both her lovers and mine had a very good chance of getting over it, as they invariably declared themselves too soon. We were neither of us au fond very susceptible. It was the custom of the house that men should be in love with us, but I can truly say that we gave quite as much as we received.

I said to Rowley Leigh [Footnote: The Hon. Rowland Leigh, of Stoneleigh Abbey.]--a friend of my brother Eddy's and one of the first gentlemen that ever came to Glen--when he begged me to go for a walk with him:

"Certainly, if you won't ask me to marry you."

To which he replied:

"I never thought of it!"

"That's all right!" said I, putting my arm confidingly and gratefully through his.

He told me afterwards that he had been making up his mind and changing it for days as to how he should propose.

Sir David Tennant, a former Speaker at Cape Town and the most distant of cousins, came to stay at Glen with his son, a young man of twenty. After a few days, the young man took me into one of the conservatories and asked me to marry him. I pointed out that I hardly knew him by sight, and that "he was running hares." He took it extremely well and, much elated, I returned to the house to tell Laura. I found her in tears; she told me Sir David Tennant had asked her to marry him and she had been obliged to refuse. I cheered her up by pointing out that it would have been awkward had we both accepted, for, while remaining my sister, she would have become my mother-in-law and my husband's stepmother.

We were not popular in Peeblesshire, partly because we had no county connection, but chiefly because we were Liberals. My father had turned out the sitting Tory, Sir Graham Montgomery, of Stobo, and was member for the two counties Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire.

As Sir Graham had represented the counties for thirty years, this was resented by the Montgomery family, who proceeded to cut us.

Laura was much worried over this, but I was amused. I said the love of the Maxwell Stuarts, Maxwell Scotts, Wolfe Murrays and Sir Thomas--now Lord--Carmichael was quite enough for me and that if she liked she could twist Sir Graham Montgomery round her little finger; as a matter of fact, neither Sir Graham nor his sons disliked us. I met Basil Montgomery at Traquair House many years after my papa's election, where we were entertained by Herbert Maxwell--the owner of one of the most romantic houses in Scotland, and our most courteous and affectionate neighbour. Not knowing who he was, I was indignant when he told me he thought Peeblesshire was dull; I said where we lived it was far from dull and asked him if he knew many people in the county. To which he answered:

"Chiefly the Stobo lot."

At this I showed him the most lively sympathy and invited him to come to Glen. In consequence of this visit he told me years afterwards his fortune had been made. My father took a fancy to him and at my request employed him on the Stock Exchange.

Laura and I shared the night nursery together till she married; and, in spite of mixed proposals, we were devoted friends. We read late in bed, sometimes till three in the morning, and said our prayers out loud to each other every night. We were discussing imagination one night and were comparing Hawthorne, De Quincey, Poe and others, in consequence of a dispute arising out of one of our pencil-games; and we argued till the housemaid came in with the hot water at eight in the morning.

I will digress here to explain our after-dinner games. There were several, but the best were what Laura and I invented: one was called "Styles," another "Clumps"--better known as "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral"--a third, "Epigrams" and the most dangerous of all "Character Sketches." We were given no time-limit, but sat feverishly silent in different corners of the room, writing as hard as we could. When it was agreed that we had all written enough, the ma.n.u.scripts were given to our umpire, who read them out loud. Votes were then taken as to the authorship, which led to first-rate general conversation on books, people and manner of writing. We have many interesting umpires, beginning with Bret Harte and Laurence Oliphant and going on to Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, George Wyndham, Lionel Tennyson, [Footnote: Brother of the present Lord Tennyson.] Harry Cust and Doll Liddell: all good writers themselves.

Some of our guests preferred making caricatures to competing in the more ambitious line of literature. I made a drawing of the Dowager Countess of Aylesbury, better known as "Lady A."; Colonel Saunderson--a famous Orangeman--did a sketch of Gladstone for me; while Alma Tadema gave me one of Queen Victoria, done in four lines.

These games were good for our tempers and a fine training; any loose vanity, jealousy, or over-compet.i.tiveness were certain to be shown up; and those who took the b.u.t.tons off the foils in the duel of argument--of which I have seen a good deal in my life--were instantly found out. We played all our games with much greater precision and care than they are played now and from practice became extremely good at them. I never saw a playing-card at Glen till after I married, though--when we were obliged to dine downstairs to prevent the company being thirteen at dinner--I vaguely remember a back view of my grandpapa at the card-table playing whist.

Laura was a year and a half older than I was and came out in 1881, while I was in Dresden. The first party that she and I went to together was a political crush given by Sir William and Lady Harcourt. I was introduced to Spencer Lyttleton and shortly after this Laura met his brother Alfred.

One day, as she and I were leaving St. Paul's Cathedral, she pointed out a young man to me and said:

"Go and ask Alfred Lyttelton to come to Glen any time this autumn," which I promptly did.

The advent of Alfred into our family coincided with that of several new men, the Charterises, Balfours, George Curzon, George Wyndham, Harry Cust, the Crawleys, Jack Pease, "Harry" Paulton, Lord Houghton, Mark Napier, Doll Liddell and others. High hopes had been entertained by my father that some of these young men might marry us, but after the reception we gave to Lord Lymington --who, to do him justice, never proposed to any of us except in the paternal imagination--his nerve was shattered and we were left to ourselves.

Some weeks before Alfred's arrival, Laura had been much disturbed by hearing that we were considered "fast"; she told me that receiving men at midnight in our bedroom shocked people and that we ought, perhaps, to give it up. I listened closely to what she had to say, and at the end remarked that it appeared to me to be quite absurd. G.o.dfrey Webb agreed with me and said that people who were easily shocked were like women who sell stale pastry in cathedral towns; and he advised us to take no notice whatever of what any one said. We hardly knew the meaning of the word "fast"

and, as my mother went to bed punctually at eleven, it was unthinkable that men and women friends should not be allowed to join us. Our bedroom had been converted by me out of the night- nursery into a sitting-room. The shutters were removed and book- shelves put in their place, an idea afterwards copied by my friends. The Morris carpet and chintzes I had discovered for myself and chosen in London; and my walls were ornamented with curious objects, varying from caricatures and crucifixes to prints of prize-fights, fox-hunts, Virgins and Wagner. In one of the turrets I hung my clothes; in the other I put an altar on which I kept my books of prayer and a skull which was given to me by the shepherd's son and which is on my bookshelf now; we wore charming dressing-jackets and sat up in bed with coloured cushions behind our backs, while the brothers and their friends sat on the floor or in comfortable chairs round the room. On these occasions the gas was turned low, a brilliant fire made up and either a guest or one of us would read by the light of a single candle, tell ghost- stories or discuss current affairs: politics, people and books.

Not only the young, but the old men came to our gatherings. I remember Jowett reading out aloud to us Thomas Hill Green's lay sermons; and when he had finished I asked him how much he had loved Green, to which he replied:

"I did not love him at all."

That these midnight meetings should shock any one appeared fantastic; and as most people in the house agreed with me, they were continued.

It was not this alone that disturbed Laura; she wanted to marry a serious, manly fellow, but as she was a great flirt, other types of a more brilliant kind obscured this vision and she had become profoundly undecided over her own love-affairs; they had worked so much upon her nerves that when Mr. Lyttelton came to Glen she was in bed with acute neuralgia and unable to see him.

My father welcomed Alfred warmly, for, apart from his charming personality, he was Gladstone's nephew and had been brought up in the Liberal creed.

On the evening of his arrival, we all went out after dinner. There had been a terrific gale which had destroyed half a wood on a hill in front of the library windows and we wanted to see the roots of the trees blown up by dynamite. It was a moonlight night, but the moon is always brighter in novels than in life and it was pitch dark. Alfred and I, walking arm in arm, talked gaily to each other as we stumbled over the broken brushwood by the side of the Quair burn. As we approached the wood a white birch lay across the water at a slanting angle and I could not resist leaving Alfred's side to walk across it. It was, however, too slippery for me and I fell. Alfred plunged into the burn and scrambled me out. I landed on my feet and, except for sopping stockings, no harm was done.

Our party had scattered in the dark and, as it was past midnight, we walked back to the house alone. When we returned, we found everybody had gone to their rooms and Alfred suggested carrying me up to bed. As I weighed under eight stone, he lifted me up like a toy and deposited me on my bed. Kneeling down, he kissed my hand and said good night to me.

Two days after this my brother Eddy and I travelled North for the Highland meeting. Laura, who had been gradually recovering, was well enough to leave her room that day; and I need hardly say that this had the immediate effect of prolonging Alfred's visit.

On my return to Glen ten days later she told me she had made up her mind to marry Alfred Lyttleton.

After what Mrs. Lyttelton has written of her husband, there is little to add, but I must say one word of my brother-in-law as he appeared to me in those early days.

Alfred Lyttelton was a vital, splendid young man of fervent nature, even more spoilt than we were. He was as cool and as fundamentally unsusceptible as he was responsive and emotional.

Every one adored him; he combined the prowess at games of a Greek athlete with moral right-mindedness of a high order. He was neither a gambler nor an artist. He respected discipline, but loathed asceticism.

What interested me most in him was not his mind--which lacked elasticity--but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the will of G.o.d and his perfect freedom from cant. His mentality was brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny and serene in games. There are people who thought Alfred was a man of strong physical pa.s.sions, wrestling with temptation till he had achieved complete self-mastery, but nothing was farther from the truth. In him you found combined an ardent nature, a cool temperament and a peppery intellectual temper. Alfred would have been justified in taking out a patent in himself as an Englishman, warranted like a dye never to lose colour. To him most foreigners were frogs. In Edward Lyttelton's admirable monograph of his brother, you will read that one day, when Alfred was in the train, sucking an orange, "a small, grubby Italian, leaning on his walking-stick, smoking a cheroot at the station," was looked upon, not only by Alfred but by his biographer, as an "irresistible challenge to fling the juicy, but substantial, fragment full at the unsuspecting foreigner's cheek." At this we are told that "Alfred collapsed into n.o.ble convulsions of laughter." I quote this incident, as it ill.u.s.trates the difference between the Tennant and the Lyttelton sense of humour. Their laughter was a tornado or convulsion to which they succ.u.mbed; and even the Hagley ragging, though, according to Edward Lyttelton's book, it was only done with napkins, sounds formidable enough.

Laura and Alfred enjoyed many things together--books, music and going to church--but they did not laugh at the same things. I remember her once saying to me in a dejected voice:

"Wouldn't you have thought that, laughing as loud as the Lytteltons do, they would have loved Lear? Alfred says none of them think him a bit funny and was quite testy when I said his was the only family in the world that didn't."

It was his manliness, spirituality and freedom from pettiness that attracted Alfred to Laura; he also had infinite charm. It might have been said of him what the Dowager Lady Grey wrote of her husband to Henry when thanking him for his sympathy: