Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 34

I shall look forward to your coming to see me, if I am seriously ill--"Be with me when my light is low." But I don't think that this illness which I at present have is serious enough to make any of my friends anxious, and it would be rather awkward for my friends to come and take leave of me if I recovered, which I mean to do, for what I think a good reason--because I STILL have a good deal to do.

B. JOWETT.

My beloved friend died in 1893.

The year before his death he had the dangerous illness to which he alludes in the above letter. Every one thought he would die. He dictated farewell letters to all his friends by his secretary and housekeeper, Miss Knight. On receiveing mine from him at Glen, I was so much annoyed at its tone that I wired:

Jowett Balliol College Oxford.

I refuse to accept this as your farewell letter to me you have been listening to some silly woman and believing what she says.

Love. MARGOT.

This telegram had a magical effect: he got steadily better and wrote me a wonderful letter. I remember the reason that I was vexed was because he believed a report that I had knocked up against a foreign potentate in Rotten Row for a bet, which was not only untrue but ridiculous, and I was getting a little impatient of the cattishness and credulity of the West-end of London.

My week-ends at Balliol were different to my other visits. The Master took infinite trouble over them. Once on my arrival he asked me which of one or two men I would like to sit next to at dinner. I said I should prefer Mr. Huxley or Lord Bowen, to which he replied:

"I would like you to have on your other side, either to-night or to-morrow, my friend Lord Selborne:" [Footnote: The late Earl of Selborne.]

MARGOT (with surprise): "Since when is he your friend? I was under the impression you disliked him."

JOWETT: "Your impression was right, but even the youngest of us are sometimes wrong, as Dr. Thompson said, and I look upon Lord Selborne now as a friend. I hope I said nothing against him."

MARGOT: "Oh dear no! You only said he was fond of hymns and had no sense of humour."

JOWETT (snappishly): "If that is so, Margaret, I made an extremely foolish remark. I will put you between Lord Bowen and Sir Alfred Lyall. Was it not strange that you should have said of Lyall to Huxley that he reminded you of a faded Crusader and that you suspected him of wearing a coat of mail under his broadcloth, to which you will remember Huxley remarked, 'You mean a coating of female, without which no man is saved!' Your sister, Lady Ribblesdale, said the very same thing to me about him."

This interested me, as Charty and I had not spoken to each other of Sir Alfred Lyall, who was a new acquaintance of ours.

MARGOT: "I am sure, Master, you did not give her the same answer as Mr. Huxley gave me; you don't think well of my s.e.x, do you?"

JOWETT: "You are not the person to reproach me, Margaret: only the other week I reproved you for saying women were often dull, sometimes dangerous and always dishonourable. I might have added they were rarely reasonable and always courageous. Would you agree to this?"

MARGOT: "Yes."

I sat between Sir Alfred Lyall and Lord Bowen that night at dinner. There was more bouquet than body about Sir Alfred and, to parody Gibbon, Lord Bowen's mind was not clouded by enthusiasm; but two more delightful men never existed. After dinner, Huxley came across the room to me and said that the Master had confessed he had done him out of sitting next to me, so would I talk to him?

We sat down together and our conversation opened on religion.

There was not much juste milieu about Huxley. He began by saying G.o.d was only there because people believed in Him, and that the fastidious incognito, "I am that I am," was His idea of humour, etc., etc. He ended by saying he did not believe any man of action had ever been inspired by religion. I thought I would call in Lord Bowen, who was standing aimlessly in the middle of the room, to my a.s.sistance. He instantly responded and drew a chair up to us. I said to him:

"Mr. Huxley challenges me to produce any man of action who has been directly inspired by religion."

BOWEN (WITH A SLEEK SMILE): "Between us we should be able to answer him, Miss Tennant, I think. Who is your man?"

Every idea seemed to scatter out of my brain. I suggested at random:

"Gordon."

I might have been reading his thoughts, for it so happened that Huxley adored General Gordon.

HUXLEY: "Ah! There you rather have me!"

He had obviously had enough of me, for, changing the position of his chair, as if to engage Bowen in a tete-a-tete, he said:

"My dear Bowen, Gordon was the most remarkable man I ever met. I know him well; he was sincere and disinterested, quite incapable of saying anything he did not think. You will hardly believe me, but one day he said in tones of pa.s.sionate conviction that, if he were to walk round the corner of the street and have his brains shot out, he would only be transferred to a wider sphere of government."

BOWEN: "Would the absence of brains have been of any help to him?"

After this, our mutual good humour was restored and I only had time for a word with Mrs. Green before the evening was ruined by Jowett taking us across the quad to hear moderate music in the hideous Balliol hall. Of all the Master's women friends, I infinitely preferred Mrs. T. H. Green, John Addington Symonds'

sister. She is among the rare women who have all the qualities which in moments of disillusion I deny to them.

I spent my last week-end at Balliol when Jowett's health appeared to have completely recovered. On the Monday morning, after his guests had gone, I went as usual into his study to talk to him. My wire on receiving his death-bed letter had amused but distressed him; and on my arrival he pressed me to tell him what it was he had written that had offended me. I told him I was not offended, only hurt. He asked me what the difference was. I wish I could have given him the answer that my daughter Elizabeth gave Lord Grey [Footnote: Viscount Grey of Fallodon.] when he asked her the same question, walking in the garden at Fallodon on the occasion of her first countryhouse visit:

"The one touches your vanity and the other your heart."

I do not know what I said, but I told him I was quite unoffended and without touchiness, but that his letter had all the faults of a schoolmaster and a cleric in it and not the love of a friend. He listened to me with his usual patience and sweetness and expressed his regret.

On the Monday morning of which I am writing, and on which we had our last conversation, I had made up my mind that, as I had spoilt many good conversations by talking too much myself, I would hold my tongue and let the Master for once make the first move. I had not had much experience of his cla.s.sical and devastating silences and had often defended him from the charge; but it was time to see what happened if I talked less.

When we got into the room and he had shut the door, I absently selected the only comfortable chair and we sat down next to each other. A long and quelling silence followed the lighting of my cigarette. Feeling rather at a loose end, I thought out a few stage directions--"here business with handkerchief, etc."--and adjusted the buckles on my shoes. I looked at some photographs and fingered a paper-knife and odds and ends on the table near me. The oppressive silence continued. I strolled to the book-shelves and, under cover of a copy of "Country Conversations," peeped at the Master. He appeared to be quite unaware of my existence.

"Nothing doing," said I to myself, putting back the book.

Something had switched him off as if he had been the electric light.

At last, breaking the silence with considerable impatience, I said:

"Really, Master, there is very little excuse for your silence!

Surely you have something to say to me, something to tell me; you have had an experience since we talked to each other that I have never had: you have been near Death."

JOWETT (not in any way put out): "I felt no rapture, no bliss."

(Suddenly looking at me and taking my hand.) "My dear child, you must believe in G.o.d in spite of what the clergy say."

CHAPTER III

FAST AND FURIOUS HUNTING IN LEICESTERs.h.i.+RE--COUNTRY HOUSE PARTY AND A NEW ADMIRER--FRIENDs.h.i.+P WITH LORD AND LADY MANNERS

My friends.h.i.+p with Lord and Lady Manners, [Footnote: Avon Tyrrell, Christchurch, Hants. Lady Manners was a Miss Fane.] of Avon Tyrrell, probably made more difference to the course of my life than anything that had happened in it.

Riding was what I knew and cared most about; and I dreamt of High Leicesters.h.i.+re. I had hunted in Ches.h.i.+re, where you killed three foxes a day and found yourself either clattering among cottages and clothes-lines, or blocked by carriages and crowds; I knew the stiff plough and fine horses of Yorks.h.i.+re and the rotten gra.s.s in the Bicester; I had struggled over the large fences and small enclosures of the Grafton and been a heroine in the select fields and large becks with the Burton; and the Beaufort had seen the dawn of my fox-hunting; but Melton was a name which brought the Hon. Crasher before me and opened a vista on my future of all that was fast, furious and fas.h.i.+onable.

When I was told that I was going to sit next to the Master of the Quorn at dinner, my excitement knew no bounds.

Gordon Cunard--whose brother Bache owned the famous hounds in Market Harborough--had insisted on my joining him at a country- house party given for a ball. On getting the invitation I had refused, as I hardly knew our hostess--the pretty Mrs. Farnham-- but after receiving a spirited telegram from my new admirer--one of the best men to hounds in Leicesters.h.i.+re--I changed my mind. In consequence of this decision a double event took place. I fell in love with Peter Flower--a brother of the late Lord Battersea--and formed an attachment with a couple whose devotion and goodness to me for more than twenty years encouraged and embellished my glorious youth.