Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 27

He was a young man of nature endowed with even greater beauty than his sister, Lady Glenconner, but with less of her literary talent.

Although his name will always be a.s.sociated with the Irish Land Act, he was more interested in literature than politics, and, with a little self-discipline, might have been eminent in both.

Mr. Harry Cust is the last of the Souls that I intend writing about and was in some ways the rarest end the most brilliant of them all. Some one who knew him well wrote truly of him after he died:

"He tossed off the cup of life without fear of it containing any poison, but like many wilful men he was deficient in will-power."

The first time I ever saw Harry Cust was in Grosvenor Square, where he had come to see my sister Laura. A few weeks later I found her making a sachet, which was an unusual occupation for her, and she told me it was for "Mr. Cust," who was going to Australia for his health.

He remained abroad for over a year and, on the night of the Jubilee, 1887, he walked into our house where we were having supper. He had just returned from Australia, and was terribly upset to hear that Laura was dead.

Harry Cust had an untiring enthusiasm for life. At Eton he had been captain of the school and he was a scholar of Trinity. He had as fine a memory as Professor Churton Collins or my husband and an unplumbed sea of knowledge, quoting with equal ease both poetry and prose. He edited the Pall Mall Gazette brilliantly for several years. With his youth, brains and looks, he might have done anything in life; but he was fatally self-indulgent and success with my s.e.x damaged his public career. He was a fastidious critic and a faithful friend, fearless, reckless and unforgettable.

He wrote one poem, which appeared anonymously in the Oxford Book of English Verse:

Not unto us, O Lord, Not unto us the rapture of the day, The peace of night, or love's divine surprise, High heart, high speech, high deeds 'mid honouring eyes; For at Thy word All these are taken away.

Not unto us, O Lord: To us Thou givest the scorn, the scourge, the scar, The ache of life, the loneliness of death, The insufferable sufficiency of breath; And with Thy sword Thou piercest very far.

Not unto us, O Lord: Nay, Lord, but unto her be all things given-- My light and life and earth and sky be blasted-- But let not all that wealth of love be wasted: Let h.e.l.l afford The pavement of her Heaven!

I print also a letter in verse sent to me on October 20th, 1887:

I came in to-night, made as woful as worry can, Heart like a turnip and head like a hurricane, When lo! on my dull eyes there suddenly leaped a Bright flash of your writing, du Herzensgeliebte; And I found that the life I was thinking so leavable Had still something in it made living conceivable; And that, spite of the sores and the bores and the flaws in it, My own life's the better for small bits of yours in it; And it's only to tell you just that that I write to you, And just for the pleasure of saying good night to you: For I've nothing to tell you and nothing to talk about, Save that I eat and I sleep and I walk about.

Since three days past does the indolent I bury Myself in the British Museum Lib'ary, Trying in writing to get in my hand a bit, And reading Dutch books that I don't understand a bit: But to-day Lady Charty and sweet Mrs. Lucy em- Broidered the dusk of the British Museum, And made me so happy by talking and laughing on That I loved them more than the frieze of the Parthenon.

But I'm sleepy I know and don't know if I silly ain't; Dined to-night with your sisters, where Tommy was brilliant; And, while I the rest of the company deafened, I Dallied awhile with your auntlet of seventy, While one, Mr. Winsloe, a volume before him, Regarded us all with a moody decorum.

No, I can't keep awake, and so, bowing and blessing you, And seeing and loving (while slowly undressing) you, Take your small hand and kiss, with a drowsed benediction, it Knowing, as you, I'm your ever affectionate

HARRY C. C.

I had another friend, James Kenneth Stephen, too pagan, wayward and lonely to be available for the Souls, but a man of genius. One afternoon he came to see me in Grosvenor Square and, being told by the footman that I was riding in the Row, he asked for tea and, while waiting for me wrote the following parody of Kipling and left it on my writing-table with his card:

P.S. THE MAN WHO WROTE IT.

We all called him The Man who Wrote It. And we called It what the man wrote, or IT for short--all of us that is, except The Girl who Read It. She never called anything "It." She wasn't that sort of girl, but she read It, which was a pity from the point of view of The Man who Wrote It.

The man is dead now.

Dropped down a cud out beyond Karachi, and was brought home more like broken meat in a basket. But that's another story.

The girl read It, and told It, and forgot all about It, and in a week It was all over the station. I heard it from Old Bill Buffles at the club while we were smoking between a peg and a hot weather dawn.

J. K. S.

I was delighted with this. Another time he wrote a parody of Myers' "St. Paul" for me. I will only quote one verse out of the eight:

Lo! what the deuce I'm always saying "Lo!" for G.o.d is aware and leaves me uninformed.

Lo! there is nothing left for me to go for, Lo! there is naught inadequately formed.

He ended by signing his name and writing:

Souvenez-vous si les vers que je trace Fussent parfois (je l'avoue!) l'argot, Si vous trouvez un peu trop d'audace On ose tout quand on se dit "Margot."

My dear friend J.K.S. was responsible for the aspiration frequently quoted:

When the Rudyards cease from Kipling And the Haggards ride no more.

Although I can hardly claim Symonds as a Soul, he was so much interested in me and my friends that I must write a short account of him.

I was nursing my sister, Pauline Gordon Duff, when I first met John Addington Symonds, in 1885, at Davos.

I climbed up to Am Hof[Footnote: J. A. Symonds's country house.]

one afternoon with a letter of introduction, which was taken to the family while I was shown into a wooden room full of charming things. As no one came near me, I presumed every one was out, so I settled down peacefully among the books, prepared to wait. In a little time I heard a shuffle of slippered feet and some one pausing at the open door.

"Has he gone?" was the querulous question that came from behind the screen.

And in a moment the thin, curious face of John Addington Symonds was peering at me round the corner.

There was nothing for it but to answer:

"No I am afraid she is still here!"

Being the most courteous of men, he smiled and took my hand; and we went up to his library together.

Symonds and I became very great friends.

After putting my sister to bed at 9.30, I climbed every night by starlight up to Am Hof, where we talked and read out loud till one and often two in the morning. I learnt more in those winter nights at Davos than I had ever learnt in my life. We read The Republic and all the Plato dialogues together; Swift, Voltaire, Browning, Walt Whitman, Edgar Poe and Symonds' own Renaissance, besides pa.s.sages from every author and poet, which he would turn up feverishly to ill.u.s.trate what he wanted me to understand.

I shall always think Lord Morley [Footnote: Viscount Morley of Blackburn.] the best talker I ever heard and after him I would say Symonds, Birrell and Bergson. George Meredith was too much of a prima donna and was very deaf and uninterruptable when I knew him, but he was amazingly good even then. Alfred Austin was a friend of his and had just been made Poet Laureate by Lord Salisbury, when my beloved friend Admiral Maxse took me down to the country to see Meredith for the first time. Feeling more than usually stupid, I said to him:

"Well Mr. Meredith, I wonder what your friend Alfred Austin thinks of his appointment?"

Shaking his beautiful head he replied:

"It is very hard to say what a bantam is thinking when it is crowing."

Symonds' conversation is described in Stevenson's essay on Talks and Talkers, but no one could ever really give the fancy, the epigram, the swiftness and earnestness with which he not only expressed himself but engaged you in conversation. This and his affection combined to make him an enchanting companion.

The Swiss postmen and woodmen constantly joined us at midnight and drank Italian wines out of beautiful gla.s.s which our host had brought from Venice; and they were our only interruptions when Mrs. Symonds and the handsome girls went to bed. I have many memories of seeing our peasant friends off from Symonds' front door, and standing by his side in the dark, listening to the crack of their whips and their yodels yelled far down the snow roads into the starry skies.

When I first left him and returned to England, Mrs. Symonds told me he sat up all night, filling a blank book with his own poems and translations, which he posted to me in the early morning. We corresponded till he died; and I have kept every letter that he ever wrote to me.

He was the first person who besought me to write. If only he were alive now, I would show him this ma.n.u.script and, if any one could make any thing of it by counsel, sympathy and encouragement; my autobiography might become famous.

"You have l'oreille juste" he would say, "and I value your literary judgment."

I will here insert some of his letters, beginning with the one he sent down to our villa at Davos a propos of the essays over which Lady Londonderry and I had our little breeze:

I am at work upon a volume of essays in art and criticism, puzzling to my brain and not easy to write. I think I shall ask you to read them.