Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 18

"The Queen is dying."

If the three of us had combined to try to write this and had poked about all night, we could not have done it.

I have had many interesting personal experiences of untraceable communication and telepathy and I think that people who set themselves against all this side of life are excessively stupid; but I do not connect them with religion any more than with Marconi and I shall always look upon it as a misfortune that people can be found sufficiently material to be consoled by the rubbish they listen to in the dark at expensive seances.

At one time, under the influence of Mr. Percy Wyndham, Frederic Myers and Edmund Gurney (the last-named a dear friend with whom I corresponded for some months before he committed suicide), Laura and I went through a period of "spooks." There was no more delightful companion than Mr. Percy Wyndham; he adored us and, though himself a firm believer in the spirit world, he did not resent it if others disagreed with him. We attended every kind of seance and took the matter up quite seriously.

Then, as now, everything was conducted in the dark. The famous medium of that day was a Russian Jewess, Madame Blavatsky by name.

We were asked to meet her at tea, in the dining-room of a private house in Brook Street, a non-professional affair, merely a little gathering to hear her views upon G.o.d. On our arrival I had a good look at her heavy, white face, as deeply pitted with smallpox as a solitaire board, and I wondered if she hailed from Moscow or Margate. She was tightly surrounded by strenuous and palpitating ladies and all the blinds were up. Seeing no vacant seat near her, I sat down upon a low, stuffed chair in the window. After making a substantial tea, she was seen to give a sobbing and convulsive shudder, which caused the greatest excitement; the company closed up round her in a circle of sympathy and concern. When pressed to say why her bust had heaved and eyelids flickered, she replied:

"A murderer has pa.s.sed below our windows." The awe-struck ladies questioned her reverently but ardently as to how she knew and what she felt. Had she visualised him? Would she recognise the guilty one if she saw him and, after recognising him, feel it on her conscience if she did not give him up to the law? One lady proposed that we should all go round to the nearest police-station and added that a case of this kind, if proved, would do more to dispell doubts on spirits than all the successful raps, taps, turns and tables. Being the only person in the window at the time, I strained my eyes up and down Brook Street to see the murderer, but there was not a creature in sight.

Madame Blavatsky turned out to be an audacious swindler.

To return to Chatsworth: our host, the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, was a man whose like we shall never see again; he stood by himself and could have come from no country in the world but England. He had the figure and appearance of an artisan, with the brevity of a peasant, the courtesy of a king and the noisy sense of humour of a Falstaff. He gave a great, wheezy guffaw at all the right things, and was possessed of endless wisdom. He was perfectly disengaged from himself, fearlessly truthful and without pettiness of any kind.

Bryan, the American politician, who came over here and heard all our big guns speak--Rosebery, Chamberlain, Asquith, etc.--when asked what he thought, said that a Chamberlain was not unknown to them in America, and that they could produce a Rosebery or an Asquith, but that a Hartington no man could find. His speaking was the finest example of pile-driving the world had ever seen.

After the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and his wife were the great social, semi-political figures of my youth. One day they came to pay us a visit in Cavendish Square, having heard that our top storey had been destroyed by fire. They walked round the scorched walls of the drawing-room, with the blue sky overhead, and stopped in front of a picture of a race-horse, given to me on my wedding day by my habit-maker, Alexander Scott (a Scotchman who at my suggestion had made the first patent safety riding-skirt).

The Duke said:

"I am sorry that your Zoffany and Longhi were burnt, but I myself would far rather have the Herring." [Footnote: A portrait by J. F.

Herring, sen., of Rockingham, winner of the St. Leger Stakes, 1833, ridden by Sam Darling.]

The d.u.c.h.ess laughed at this and asked me if my baby had suffered from shock, adding:

"I should be sorry if my little friend, Elizabeth, has had a fright."

I told her that luckily she was out of London at the time of the fire. When the d.u.c.h.ess got back to Devons.h.i.+re House, she sent Elizabeth two tall red wax candles, with a note in which she said:

"When you brought your little girl here, she wanted the big red candles in my boudoir and I gave them to her; they must have melted in the fire, so I send her these new ones."

I was walking alone on the high road at Chatsworth one afternoon in winter, while the d.u.c.h.ess was indoors playing cards, when I saw the family barouche, a vast vehicle which swung and swayed on C- springs, stuck in the middle of a ploughed field, the horses plunging about in unsuccessful efforts to drag the wheels out of the mud. The coachman was accompanied by a page, under life size.

Observing their dilemma, I said:

"Hullo, you're in a nice fix! What induced you to go into that field?"

The coachman, who knew me well, explained that they had met a hea.r.s.e in the narrow part of the road and, as her Grace's orders were that no carriage was to pa.s.s a funeral if it could be avoided, he had turned into the field, where the mud was so deep and heavy that they were stuck. It took me some time to get a.s.sistance; but, after I had unfastened the bearing-reins and mobilised the yokels, the coachman, carriage and I returned safely to the house.

Death was the only thing of which I ever saw the d.u.c.h.ess afraid and, when I referred to the carriage incident and chaffed her about it, she said:

"My dear child, do you mean to tell me you would not mind dying?

What do you feel about it?"

I answered her, in all sincerity, that I would mind more than anything in the world, but not because I was afraid, and that hea.r.s.es did not affect me in the least.

She asked me what I was most interested in after hunting and I said politics. I told her I had always prophesied I would marry a Prime Minister and live in high political circles. This amused her and we had many discussions about politics and people. She was interested in my youth and upbringing and made me tell her about it.

As I have said before, we were not popular in Peebless.h.i.+re. My papa and his vital family disturbed the country conventions; and all Liberals were looked upon as aliens by the Scottish aristocracy of those days. At election times the mill-hands of both s.e.xes were locked up for fear of rows, but in spite of this the locks were broken and the rows were perpetual. When my father turned out the sitting Tory, Sir Graham Montgomery, in 1880, there were high jinks in Peebles. I pinned the Liberal colours, with the deftness of a pick-pocket, to the coat-tails of several of the unsuspecting Tory landlords, who had come from great distances to vote. This delighted the electors, most of whom were feather- st.i.tching up and down the High Street, more familiar with drink than jokes.

The first politicians of note that came to stay with us when I was a girl were Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke. Just as, later on, my friends (the Souls) discussed which would go farthest, George Curzon, George Wyndham or Harry Cust, so in those days people were asking the same question about Chamberlain and Dilke. To my mind it wanted no witch to predict that Chamberlain would beat not only Dilke but other men; and Gladstone made a profound mistake in not making him a Secretary of State in his Government of 1885.

Mr. Chamberlain never deceived himself, which is more than could be said of some of the famous politicians of that day. He also possessed a rare measure of intellectual control. Self-mastery was his idiosyncrasy; it was particularly noticeable in his speaking; he encouraged in himself such scrupulous economy of gesture, movement and colour that, after hearing him many times, I came to the definite conclusion that Chamberlain's opponents were snowed under by his acc.u.mulated moderation. Whatever Dilke's native impulses were, no one could say that he controlled them. Besides a defective sense of humour, he was fundamentally commonplace and had no key to his mind, which makes every one ultimately dull. My father, being an ardent Radical, with a pa.s.sion for any one that Gladstone patronised, had made elaborate preparations for Dilke's reception; when he arrived at Glen he was given a warm welcome; and we all sat down to tea. After hearing him talk uninterruptedly for hours and watching his stuffy face and slow, protruding eyes, I said to Laura:

"He may be a very clever man, but he has not a ray of humour and hardly any sensibility. If he were a horse, I would certainly not buy him!"

With which she entirely agreed.

On the second night of his visit, our distinguished guest met Laura in the pa.s.sage on her way to bed; he said to her:

"If you will kiss me, I will give you a signed photograph of myself."

To which she answered:

"It is awfully good of you, Sir Charles, but I would rather not, for what on earth should I do with the photograph?"

Mr. Gladstone was the dominating politician of the day, and excited more adoration and hatred than any one.

After my first visit to Hawarden, he sent me the following poem, which he had written the night before I left:

MARGOT

When Parliament ceases and comes the recess, And we seek in the country rest after distress, As a rule upon visitors place an embargo, But make an exception in favour of Margot.

For she brings such a treasure of movement and life, Fun, spirit and stir, to folk weary with strife.

Though young and though fair, who can hold such a cargo Of all the good qualities going as Margot?

Up hill and down dale,'tis a capital name To blossom in friends.h.i.+p, to sparkle in fame; There's but one objection can light upon Margot, Its likeness in rhyming, not meaning, to argot.

Never mind, never mind, we will give it the slip, 'Tis not argot, the language, but Argo, the s.h.i.+p; And by sea or by land, I will swear you may far go Before you can hit on a double for Margot.

W. E. G. December 17th, 1889.

I received this at Glen by the second post on the day of my arrival, too soon for me to imagine my host had written it, so I wrote to our dear old friend, G.o.dfrey Webb--always under suspicion of playing jokes upon us--to say that he had overdone it this time, as Gladstone had too good a hand-writing for him to caricature convincingly. When I found that I was wrong, I wrote to my poet:

Dec. 19th, 1889. VERY DEAR AND HONOURED MR. GLADSTONE,

At first I thought your poem must have been a joke, written by some one who knew of my feelings for you and my visit to Hawarden; but, when I saw the signature and the post-mark, I was convinced it could be but from you. It has had the intoxicating effect of turning my head with pleasure; if I began I should never cease thanking you. Getting four rhymes to my name emphasizes your uncommon genius, I think! And Argo the s.h.i.+p is quite a new idea and a charming one. I love the third verse; that Margot is a capital name to blossom in friends.h.i.+p and sparkle in fame. You must allow me to say that you are ever such a dear. It is impossible to believe that you will be eighty to-morrow, but I like to think of it, for it gives most people an opportunity of seeing how life should be lived without being spent.

There is no blessing, beauty or achievement that I do not wish you.

In truth and sincerity, Yours,

MARGOT TENNANT

A propos of this, twelve years later I received the following letter from Lord Morley:

THE RED HOUSE, HAWARDEN, CHESTER,