Margot Asquith, an Autobiography Part 4

HE: "How do you know? Surely you could manage to get hold of a servant or some one who would take me round. Do you know any of them?"

I asked him if he meant the family or the servants.

"The family," he said.

MARGOT: "I know them very well, but I don't know you."

"I am an artist," said the stranger; "my name is Peter Graham. Who are you?"

"I am an artist too!" I said. "My name is Margot Tennant. I suppose you thought I was the gardener's daughter, did you?"

He gave a circulating smile, finis.h.i.+ng on my turban, and said:

"To tell you the honest truth, I had no idea what you were!"

My earliest sorrow was when I was stealing peaches in the conservatory and my little dog was caught in a trap set for rats.

He was badly hurt before I could squeeze under the gla.s.s slides to save him. I was betrayed by my screams for help and caught in the peach-house by the gardener. I was punished and put to bed, as the large peaches were to have been shown in Edinburgh and I had eaten five.

We had a dancing-cla.s.s at the minister's and an arithmetic-cla.s.s in our schoolroom. I was as good at the Manse as I was bad at my sums; and poor Mr. Menzies, the Traquair schoolmaster, had eventually to beg my mother to withdraw me from the cla.s.s, as I kept them all back. To my delight I was withdrawn; and from that day to this I have never added a single row of figures.

I showed a remarkable proficiency in dancing and could lift both my feet to the level of my eyebrows with disconcerting ease. Mrs.

Wallace, the minister's wife, was shocked and said:

"Look at Margot with her Frenchified airs!"

I pondered often and long over this, the first remark about myself that I can ever remember. Some one said to me:

"Does your hair curl naturally?"

To which I replied:

"I don't know, but I will ask."

I was unaware of myself and had not the slightest idea what "curling naturally" meant.

We had two best dresses: one made in London, which we only wore on great occasions; the other made by my nurse, in which we went down to dessert. These dresses gave me my first impression of civilised life. Just as the Speaker, before clearing the House, spies strangers, so, when I saw my black velvet skirt and pink Garibaldi put out on the bed, I knew that something was up! The nursery confection was of white alpaca, piped with pink, and did not inspire the same excitement and confidence.

We saw little of our mother in our youth and I asked Laura one day if she thought she said her prayers; I would not have remembered this had it not been that Laura was profoundly shocked. The question was quite uncalled for and had no ulterior motive, but I never remembered my mother or any one else talking to us about the Bible or hearing us our prayers. Nevertheless we were all deeply religious, by which no one need infer that we were good. There was one service a week, held on Sundays, in Traquair Kirk, which every one went to; and the shepherds' dogs kept close to their masters'

plaids, hung over the high box-pews, all the way down the aisle. I have heard many fine sermons in Scotland, but our minister was not a good preacher; and we were often dissolved in laughter, sitting in the square family pew in the gallery. My father closed his eyes tightly all through the sermon, leaning his head on his hand.

The Scottish Sabbath still held its own in my youth; and when I heard that Ribblesdale and Charty played lawn tennis on Sunday after they were married, I felt very unhappy. We had a few Sabbath amus.e.m.e.nts, but they were not as entertaining as those described in Miss Fowler's book, in which the men who were heathens went into one corner of the room and the women who were Christians into the other and, at the beating of a gong, conversion was accomplished by a close embrace. Our Scottish Sabbaths were very different, and I thought them more than dreary. Although I love church music and architecture and can listen to almost any sermon at any time and even read sermons to myself, going to church in the country remains a sacrifice to me. The painful custom in the Church of England of reading indistinctly and in an a.s.sumed voice has alienated simple people in every parish; and the average preaching is painful. In my country you can still hear a good sermon. When staying with Lord Haldane's mother--the most beautiful, humorous and saintly of old ladies--I heard an excellent sermon at Auchterarder on this very subject, the dullness of Sundays. The minister said that, however brightly the sun shone on stained gla.s.s windows, no one could guess what they were really like from the outside; it was from the inside only that you should judge of them.

Another time I heard a man end his sermon by saying:

"And now, my friends, do your duty and don't look upon the world with eyes jaundiced by religion."

My mother hardly ever mentioned religion to us and, when the subject was brought up by other people, she confined her remarks to saying in a weary voice and with a resigned sigh that G.o.d's ways were mysterious. She had suffered many sorrows and, in estimating her lack of temperament, I do not think I made enough allowance for them. No true woman ever gets over the loss of a child; and her three eldest had died before I was born.

I was the most vital of the family and what the nurses described as a "venturesome child." Our coachman's wife called me "a little Turk." Self-willed, excessively pa.s.sionate, painfully truthful, bold as well as fearless and always against convention, I was, no doubt, extremely difficult to bring up.

My mother was not lucky with her governesses--we had two at a time, and of every nationality, French, German, Swiss, Italian and Greek--but, whether through my fault or our governesses', I never succeeded in making one of them really love me. Mary Morison, [Foot note: Miss Morison, a cousin of Mr. William Archer's.] who kept a high school for young ladies in Innerleithen, was the first person who influenced me and my sister Laura. She is alive now and a woman of rare intellect and character. She was fonder of Laura than of me, but so were most people.

Here I would like to say something about my sister and Alfred Lyttelton, whom she married in 1885.

A great deal of nonsense has been written and talked about Laura.

There are two printed accounts of her that are true: one has been written by the present Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, in generous and tender pa.s.sages in the life of her husband, and the other by A. G.

C. Liddell; but even these do not quite give the brilliant, witty Laura of my heart. I will quote what my dear friend, Doll Liddell, wrote of her in his Notes from the Life of an Ordinary Mortal:

My acquaintance with Miss Tennant, which led to a close intimacy with herself, and afterwards with her family, was an event of such importance in my life that I feel I ought to attempt some description of her. This is not an easy task, as a more indescribable person never existed, for no one could form a correct idea of what she was like who had not had opportunities of feeling her personal charm. Her looks were certainly not striking at first sight, though to most persons who had known her some weeks she would often seem almost beautiful. To describe her features would give no idea of the brightness and vivacity of her expression, or of that mixture of innocence and mischief, as of a half-child, half-Kelpie, which distinguished her. Her figure was very small but well made, and she was always prettily and daintily dressed. If the outward woman is difficult to describe, what can be said of her character?

To begin with her lighter side, she had reduced fascination to a fine art in a style entirely her own. I have never known her meet any man, and hardly any woman, whom she could not subjugate in a few days. It is as difficult to give any idea of her methods as to describe a dance when the music is unheard. Perhaps one may say that her special characteristic was the way in which she combined the gaiety of a child with the tact and aplomb of a grown woman.

... Her victims, after their period of enchantment, generally became her devoted friends.

This trifling was, however, only the ripple on the surface. In the deeper parts of her nature was a fund of earnestness and a sympathy which enabled her to throw herself into the lives of other people in a quite unusual way, and was one of the great secrets of the general affection she inspired. It was not, however, as is sometimes the case with such feelings, merely emotional, but impelled her to many kindnesses and to constant, though perhaps somewhat impulsive, efforts to help her fellows of all sorts and conditions.

On her mental side she certainly gave the impression, from the originality of her letters and sayings, and her appreciation of what was best in literature, that her gifts were of a high order.

In addition, she had a subtle humour and readiness, which made her repartees often delightful and produced phrases and fancies of characteristic daintiness. But there was something more than all this, an extra dose of life, which caused a kind of electricity to flash about her wherever she went, lighting up all with whom she came in contact. I am aware that this description will seem exaggerated, and will be put down to the writer having dwelt in her "Aeaean isle" but I think that if it should meet the eyes of any who knew her in her short life, they will understand what it attempts to convey.

This is good, but his poem is even better; and there is a prophetic touch in the line, "Shadowed with something of the future years."

A face upturned towards the midnight sky, Pale in the glimmer of the pale starlight, And all around the black and boundless night, And voices of the winds which bode and cry.

A childish face, but grave with curves that lie Ready to breathe in laughter or in tears, Shadowed with something of the future years That makes one sorrowful, I know not why.

O still, small face, like a white petal torn From a wild rose by autumn winds and flung On some dark stream the hurrying waves among: By what strange fates and whither art thou borne?

Laura had many poems written to her from many lovers. My daughter Elizabeth Bibesco's G.o.dfather, G.o.dfrey Webb--a conspicuous member of the Souls, not long since dead--wrote this of her:

"HALF CHILD, HALF WOMAN."

Tennyson's description of Laura in 1883:

"Half child, half woman"--wholly to be loved By either name she found an easy way Into my heart, whose sentinels all proved Unfaithful to their trust, the luckless day She entered there. "Prudence and reason both!

Did you not question her? How was it pray She so persuaded you?" "Nor sleep nor sloth,"

They cried, "o'ercame us then, a CHILD at play Went smiling past us, and then turning round Too late your heart to save, a woman's face we found."

Laura was not a plaster saint; she was a generous, clamative, combative little creature of genius, full of humour, imagination, temperament and impulse.

Some one reading this memoir will perhaps say:

"I wonder what Laura and Margot were really like, what the differences and what the resemblances between them were."

The men who could answer this question best would be Lord Gladstone, Arthur Balfour, Lord Midleton, Sir Rennell Rodd, or Lord Curzon (of Kedleston). I can only say what I think the differences and resemblances were.

Strictly speaking, I was better-looking than Laura, but she had rarer and more beautiful eyes. Brains are such a small part of people that I cannot judge of them as between her and me; and, at the age of twenty-three, when she died, few of us are at the height of our powers, but Laura made and left a deeper impression on the world in her short life than any one that I have ever known. What she really had to a greater degree than other people was true spirituality, a feeling of intimacy with the other world and a sense of the love and wisdom of G.o.d and His plan of life.

Her mind was informed by true religion; and her heart was fixed.

This did not prevent her from being a very great flirt. The first time that a man came to Glen and liked me better than Laura, she was immensely surprised--not more so than I was--and had it not been for the pa.s.sionate love which we cherished for each other, there must inevitably have been much jealousy between us.

On several occasions the same man proposed to both of us, and we had to find out from each other what our intentions were.

I only remember being hurt by Laura on one occasion and it came about in this way. We were always dressed alike, and as we were the same size; "M" and "L" had to be written in our clothes as we grew older.