My husband was Home Secretary when we married, and took a serious interest in our prison system, which he found far from satisfactory. He thought that it would be a good thing, before we were known by sight, to pay a surprise visit to the convict— prisons and that, if I could see the women convicts and he could see the men privately, he would be able to examine the conditions under which they served their sentences better than if we were to go officially.
I was expecting my baby in about three months when we made this expedition.
Wormwood Scrubs was the promising, almost Dickens-like name of one of our convict-prisons and, at that time, took in both men and women.
The governor scrutinised Henry's fine writing on our permits; he received us dryly, but without suspicion; and we divided off, having settled to meet at the front door after an hour and a half's inspection.
The matron who accompanied me was a powerful, intelligent-looking woman of hard countenance and short speech. I put a few stupid questions to her about the prison: how many convicts they had, if the food was good, etc.
She asked me if I would care to see Mrs. Maybrick, an American criminal, who had been charged with murder, but sentenced for manslaughter. This woman had poisoned her husband with mild insistence by arsenic, but, as he was taking this for his health at the time of his death, the evidence was conflicting as to where he stopped and she began. She had the reputation of being a lady and beautiful; and petitions for her reprieve were sent to us signed by every kind of person from the United States. I told the matron I would see her and was shown into her cell, where I found her sitting on a stool against a bleak desk, at which she was reading. I noted her fine eyes and common mouth and, apologising, said:
"I hope you will not mind a stranger coming to enquire how you are getting on," adding, "Have you any complaints to make of the prison?"
The matron had left me and, the doors being thick, I felt pretty sure she could not hear what we were saying.
MRS. MAYBRICK (SHRUGGING HER SHOULDERS): "The butter here is abominable and we are only given two books—THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS and the Bible—and what do you say to our looking-glasses?" (POINTING TO A LITTLE GLASS, FOUR INCHES BIG, IN A DEEP THICK FRAME HANGING ON A PEG). "Do you know why it is so small?"
MARGOT: "No."
MRS. MAYBRICK: "Because the women who want to kill themselves can't get their heels in to break the glass; if they could they would cut their throats. The men don't have looking-glasses at all."
MARGOT: "Do you think they would like to have them?"
MRS. MAYBRICK (SHRUGGING HER SHOULDERS AGAIN AND FINGERING HER BLUE COTTON BLOUSE): "I don't suppose they care! I'm sure no one could wish to see themselves with cropped hair and in these hideous clothes."
MARGOT: "I think that I could get you every kind of book, if you like reading, and will tell me what you want."
MRS. MAYBRICK (with a sudden laugh and looking at me with a contemptuous expression which made my heart ache): "Oh, no, you couldn't! Never mind me! But you might tell them about the butter."
I did not find Mrs. Maybrick sympathique and shortly after this rejoined the matron. It was the first time I had seen a prison and my heart and mind were moved as we went from cell to cell nodding to the grey occupants.
"Have you any very bad cases?" I asked. "I mean any woman who is difficult and unhappy?"
MATRON: "Yes, there is one woman here who has been sitting on the floor for the last three days and, except a little water, I don't think she has swallowed a mouthful of food since she came in. She is a violent person and uses foul language. I do not think you had better see her."
MARGOT: "Thank you, I am not at all afraid. Please take me to her cell."
MATRON (still reluctant and eyeing my figure): "She may not speak to you, but if she does it might give you a shock. Do you think you are wise to go in your present condition?"
MARGOT: "Oh, that's all right, thanks! I am not easily shocked."
When we came to the cell, I took the precaution of telling the matron she could leave me, as after this visit I should have to join my husband and I could find my way to the front hall by myself. She opened the door in silence and let me in.
Crouching on the stone floor, in an animal attitude, I saw a woman. She did not look up when I went in nor turn when I shut the door. Her eyebrows almost joined above a square-tipped nose; and her eyes, shaded by long black lashes, were fixed upon the ground. Her hair grew well, out of a beautiful forehead, and the red curve of her mouth gave expression to a wax-like face. I had never seen a more striking-looking creature.
After my usual apology and a gentle recitative of why I had come, she turned what little I could see of her face away from me and whatever I suggested after that was greeted with impenetrable silence.
At last I said to her:
"It is so difficult for me to stand and talk while you are sitting on the ground. Won't you get up?"
No answer. At this—being an active woman—I sat down beside her on the stone floor and took her hand in both of mine. She did not withdraw it, but lifted her lashes to look at me. I noted the sullen, exhausted expression in her grey eyes; my heart beat at the beauty of her face.
"Why don't you speak to me?" I said. "I might, for all you know, be able to do a great deal for you."
This was greeted by a faint gleam and a prolonged shake of the head.
MARGOT: "You look very young. What is it you did, that brought you into this prison,"
My question seemed to surprise her and after a moment's silence she said:
"Don't you know why I am sentenced?"
MARGOT: "No; and you need not tell me if you don't want to. How long are you here for?"
THE WOMAN (in a penetrating voice): "Life!"
MARGOT: "That's impossible; no one is punished for life unless they commit murder; and even then the sentence is always shortened."
THE WOMAN: "Shortened in time for what? For your death and burial? Perhaps you don't know how kind they are to us here! No one is allowed to die in prison! But by the time your health is gone, your hair white and your friends are dead, your family do not need you and all that can be done for you is done by charity. You die and your eyes are closed by your landlady."
MARGOT: "Tell me what you did."
THE WOMAN: "Only what all you fashionable women do every day …"
MARGOT: "What?"
THE WOMAN: "I helped those who were in trouble to get rid of their babies."
MARGOT: "Did you take money for it?"
THE WOMAN: "Sometimes I did it for nothing."
MARGOT: "What sort of women did you help?"
THE WOMAN: "Oh, quite poor women!"
MARGOT: "When you charged them, how much money did you ask for?"
THE WOMAN: "Four or five pounds and often less."
MARGOT: "Was your husband a respectable man and did he know anything about it?"
THE WOMAN: "My husband was highly respected. He was a stone-mason, and well to do, and knew nothing at all till I was arrested. … He thought I made money sewing."
MARGOT: "Poor man, how tragic!"
After this rather stupid ejaculation of mine, she relapsed into a frozen silence and I got up off the ground and asked her if she liked books. No answer. If the food was good? No answer. If her bed was clean and comfortable? But all my questions were in vain. At last she broke the silence by saying:
"You said just now that you might be able to help me. There is only one thing in the world that I want, and you could not help to get it . … No one can help me …"
MARGOT: "Tell me what you want. How can I or any one else help you while you sit on the ground, neither speaking nor eating? Get up and I will listen to you; otherwise I shall go away."
After this she got up stiffly and lifted her arms in a stretch above her head, showing the outline of her fine bust. I said to her:
"I would like to help you."
THE WOMAN: "I want to see one person and only one. I think of nothing else and wonder night and day how it could be managed."
MARGOT: "Tell me who it is, this one person, that you think of and want so much to see."
THE WOMAN: "I want to see Mrs. Asquith."
MARGOT (dumb with surprise): "Why?"
THE WOMAN: "Because she is only just married and will never again have as much influence over her husband as she has now; and I am told she is kind …"
MARGOT (moving towards her): "I am Mrs. Asquith."
At this the woman gave a sort of howl and, shivering, with her teeth set, flung herself at my feet and clasped my ankles with an iron clutch. I should have fallen, but, loosening her hold with great rapidity, she stood up and, facing me, held me by my shoulders. The door opened and the matron appeared, at which the woman sprang at her with a tornado of oaths, using strange words that I had never heard before. I tried to silence her, but in vain, so I told the matron that she might go and find out if my husband was ready for me. She did not move and seemed put out by my request.
"I really think," she said, "that you are extremely foolish risking anything with this woman.'
THE WOMAN (in a penetrating voice): "You clear out and go to hell with you! This person is a Christian, and you are not! You are a— ——!"
I put my hand over her mouth and said I would leave her for ever if she did not stop swearing. She sat down. I turned to the matron and said:
"You need not fear for me, thank you; we prefer being left alone."
When the matron had shut the door, the woman sprang up and, hanging it with her back, remained with arms akimbo and her legs apart, looking at me in defiance. I thought to myself, as I watched her resolute face and strong, young figure, that, if she wanted to prevent me getting out of that room alive, she could easily do so.
THE WOMAN: "You heard what I said, that you would never have as much influence with your husband as you have now, so just listen. He's all-powerful and, if he looks into my case, he will see that I am innocent and ought to be let out. The last Home Secretary was not married and never took any interest in us poor women."
Hearing the matron tapping at the door and feeling rather anxious to get out, I said:
"I give you my word of honour that I will make my husband read up all your case. The matron will give me your name and details, but I must go now."
THE WOMAN (with a sinister look): "Oh, no, you don't! You stay here till I give you the details: what does a woman like that care for a woman like me?" (throwing her thumb over her shoulder towards the matron behind the door). "What does she know about life?"
MARGOT: "You must let me open the door and get a pencil and paper."
THE WOMAN: "The old lady will do it for you while I give you the details of my case. You have only got to give her your orders. Does she know who you are?"
MARGOT: "No; and you must not tell her, please. If you will trust me with your secret, I will trust you with mine; but you must let me out first if I am to help you."
With a lofty wave of my hand, but without taking one step forward, I made her move away from the door, which I opened with a feeling of relief. The matron was in the passage and, while she was fetching a pencil, the woman, standing in the doorway of her cell, told me in lowered tones how cruelly unlucky she had been in life; what worthless, careless girls had passed through her hands; and how they had died from no fault of hers, but through their own ignorance. She ended by saying:
"There is no gratitude in this world …"
When the matron came back, she was much shocked at seeing me kiss the convict.
I said, "Good-bye," and never saw her again.
My husband looked carefully into her case, but found that she was a professional abortionist of the most hopeless type.
Sir John Williams [Footnote: Sir John Williams, of Aberystwyth, Wales.] was my doctor and would have been a remarkable man in any country, but in Wales he was unique. He was a man of heart without hysteria and both loyal and truthful.
On the 18th of May, 1895, my sisters Charlotte and Lucy were sitting with me in my bedroom. I will quote from my diary the account of my first confinement and how I got to know him:
"I began to feel ill. My Gamp, an angular-faced, admirable old woman called Jerusha Taylor—'out of the Book of Kings'—was bustling about preparing for the doctor. Henry was holding my hands and I was sobbing in an arm-chair, feeling the panic of pain and fear which no one can realise who has not had a baby.
"When Williams arrived, I felt as if salvation must be near; my whole soul and every beat of my heart went out in dumb appeal to him, and his tenderness on that occasion bred in me a love and gratitude which never faded, but was intensified by all I saw of him afterwards. He seemed to think a narcotic would calm my nerves, but the sleeping-draught might have been water for all the effect it had upon me, so he gave me chloroform. The room grew dark; grey poppies appeared to be nodding at me—and I gasped:
"'Oh, doctor, DEAR doctor, stay with me to-night, just THIS one night, and I will stay with you whenever you like!'
"But Williams was too anxious, my nurse told me, to hear a word I said.
"At four o'clock in the morning, Henry went to fetch the anaesthetist and in his absence Williams took me out of chloroform. Then I seemed to have a glimpse of a different world: if PAIN is evil, then it was HELL; if not, I expect I got nearer Heaven than I have ever been before . …
"I saw Dr. Bailey at the foot of the bed, with a bag in his hand, and Charty's outline against the lamp; then my head was placed on the pillow and a black thing came between me and the light and closed over my mouth, a slight beating of carpets sounded in my brain and I knew no more . …
"When I came to consciousness about twelve the next morning, I sawCharty looking at me and I said to her in a strange voice:
"'I can't have any more pain, it's no use.'
"CHARTY: 'No, no, darling, you won't have any more.' (SILENCE.)
"MARGOT: 'But you don't mean it's all over?'
"CHARTY (soothingly): 'Go to sleep, dearest.'
"I was so dazed by chloroform that I could hardly speak. Later on the nurse told me that the doctor had had to sacrifice my baby and that I ought to be grateful for being spared, as I had had a very dangerous confinement.
"When Sir John Williams came to see me, he looked white and tired and, finding my temperature was normal, he said fervently:
"'Thank you, Mrs. Asquith.'
"I was too weak and uncomfortable to realise all that had happened; and what I suffered from the smallest noise I can hardly describe. I would watch nurse slowly approaching and burst into a perspiration when her cotton dress crinkled against the chintz of my bed. I shivered with fear when the blinds were drawn up or the shutters unfastened; and any one moving up or down stairs, placing a tumbler on the marble wash-hand-stand or reading a newspaper would bring tears into my eyes."
In connection with what I have quoted out of my diary here it is not inappropriate to add that I lost my babies in three out of my five confinements. These poignant and secret griefs have no place on the high-road of life; but, just as Henry and I will stand sometimes side by side near those little graves unseen by strangers, so he and I in unobserved moments will touch with one heart an unforgotten sorrow.
Out of the many letters which I received, this from our intimate and affectionate friend, Lord Haldane, was the one I liked best:
I cannot easily tell you how much touched I was in the few minutes I spent talking to you this afternoon, by what I saw and what you told me. I left with the sense of witnessing triumph in failure and life come through death. The strength that is given at such times arises not from ignoring loss, or persuading oneself that the thing is not that IS; but from the resolute setting of the face to the East and the taking of one step onwards. It is the quality we touch—it may be but for a moment—not the quantity we have, that counts. "All I could never be, all that was lost in me is yet there—in His hand who planned the perfect whole." That was what Browning saw vividly when he wrote his Rabbi Ben Ezra. You have lost a great joy. But in the deepening and strengthening the love you two have for each other you have gained what is rarer and better; it is well worth the pain and grief—the grief you have borne in common—and you will rise stronger and freer.
We all of us are parting from youth, and the horizon is narrowing, but I do not feel any loss that is not compensated by gain, and I do not think that you do either. Anything that detaches one, that makes one turn from the past and look simply at what one has to do, brings with it new strength and new intensity of interest. I have no fear for you when I see what is absolutely and unmistakably good and noble obliterating every other thought as I saw it this afternoon. I went away with strengthened faith in what human nature was capable of.
May all that is highest and best lie before you both.
Your affec. friend,
I was gradually recovering my health when on May the 21st, 1895, after an agonising night, Sir John Williams and Henry came into my bedroom between five and six in the morning and I was told that I should have to lie on my back till August, as I was suffering from phlebitis; but I was too unhappy and disappointed to mind. It was then that my doctor, Sir John Williams, became my friend as well as my nurse, and his nobility of character made him a powerful influence in my life.
To return to my diary:
"Queen Victoria took a great interest in my confinement, and wrote Henry a charming letter. She sent messengers constantly to ask after me and I answered her myself once, in pencil, when Henry was at the Home Office.
"I was convalescing one day, lying as usual on my bed, my mind a blank, when Sir William Harcourt's card was sent up to me and my door was darkened by his huge form.
I had seen most of my political and other friends while I was convalescing: Mr. Gladstone, Lord Haldane, Mr. Birrell, Lord Spencer, Lord Rosebery, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Morley, Arthur Balfour, Sir Alfred Lyall and Admiral Maxse; and I was delighted to see Sir William Harcourt. When he came into my room, he observed my hunting-crops hanging on the wall from a rack, and said:
"I am glad to see those whips! Asquith will be able to beat you if you play fast and loose with him. That little tight mouth of his convinces me he has the capacity to do it.
"After my nurse had left the room, he expressed surprise that I should have an ugly woman near me, however good she might be, and told me that his son, Bobby, had been in love with his nurse and wrote to her for several years. He added, in his best Hanoverian vein:
"'I encourage my boys all I can in this line; it promises well for their future.'"
"After some talk, Mr. John Morley's card was brought up and, seeing Sir William look rather subdued, I told the servant to ask him to wait in my boudoir for a few minutes and assured my guest that I was in no hurry for him to go; but Harcourt began to fidget about and after a little he insisted on John Morley coming up. We had a good talk a trots, starting by abusing men who minded other people's opinion or what the newspapers said of them. Knowing, as I did, that both of them were highly sensitive to the Press, I encouraged the conversation.
"JOHN MORLEY: 'I can only say I agree with what Joe once said to me, "I would rather the newspapers were for than against me."'
"SIR WILLIAM: 'My dear chap, you would surely not rather have the DAILY CHRONICLE on your side. Why, bless my soul, our party has had more harm done it through the DAILY CHRONICLE than anything else!'
"MARGOT: Do you think so? I think its screams, though pitched a little high, are effective!'
"JOHN MORLEY: 'Oh, you like Massingham, of course, because your husband is one of his heroes.'
"SIR WILLIAM: 'Well, all I can say is he always abuses me and I am glad of it.'
"JOHN MORLEY: 'He abuses me, too, though not, perhaps, quite so often as you!'
"MARGOT: 'I would like him to praise me. I think his descriptions of the House of Commons debates are not only true and brilliant but fine literature; there is both style and edge in his writing and I rather like that bitter-almond flavour! How strangely the paper changed over to Lord Rosebery, didn't it?'
"Feeling this was ticklish ground, as Harcourt thought that he and not Rosebery should have been Prime Minister, I turned the talk on to Goschen.
"SIR WILLIAM: 'It is sad to see the way Goschen has lost his hold in the country; he has not been at all well treated by his colleagues.'
"This seemed to me to be also rather risky, so I said boldly that I thought Goschen had done wonders in the House and country, considering he had a poor voice and was naturally cautious. I told them I loved him personally and that Jowett at whose house I first met him shared my feeling in valuing his friendship. After this he took his departure, promising to bring me roses from Malwood.
"John Morley—the most fastidious and fascinating of men—stayed on with me and suggested quite seriously that, when we went out of office (which might happen any day), he and I should write a novel together. He said that, if I would write the plot and do the female characters, he would manage the men and politics.
I asked if he wanted the old Wilkie Collins idea of a plot with a hundred threads drawn into one woof, or did he prefer modern nothingness, a shred of a story attached to unending analysis and the infinitely little commented upon with elaborate and pretentious humour. He scorned the latter.
I asked him if he did not want to go permanently away from politics to literature and discussed all his wonderful books and writings. I chaffed him about the way he had spoken of me before our marriage, in spite of the charming letter he had written, how it had been repeated to me that he had said my light-hearted indiscretions would ruin Henry's career; and I asked him what I had done since to merit his renewed confidence.
"He did not deny having criticised me, for although 'Honest John' —the name by which he went among the Radicals—was singularly ill- chosen, I never heard of Morley telling a lie. He was quite impenitent and I admired his courage.
"After an engrossing conversation, every moment of which I loved, he said good-bye to me and I leant back against the pillow and gazed at the pattern on the wall.
"Henry came into my room shortly after this and told me theGovernment had been beaten by seven in a vote of censure passed onCampbell-Bannerman in Supply, in connection with small armsammunition. I looked at him wonderingly and said:
"'Are you sad, darling, that we are out?'
"To which he replied:
"'Only for one reason. I wish I had completed my prison reforms. I have, however, appointed the best committee ever seen, who will go on with my work. Ruggles-Brise, the head of it, is a splendid little fellow!'
"At that moment he received a note to say he was wanted in the House of Commons immediately, as Lord Rosebery had been sent for by the Queen. This excited us much and, before he could finish telling me what had happened, he went straight down to Westminster . … John Morley had missed this fateful division, as he was sitting with me, and Harcourt had only just arrived at the House in time to vote.
"Henry returned at 1 a.m. and came to say good night to me: he generally said his prayers by my bedside. He told me that St. John Brodrick's motion to reduce C. B.'s salary by L100 had turned the Government out; that Rosebery had resigned and gone straight down to Windsor; that Campbell-Bannerman was indignant and hurt; that few of our men were in the House; and that Akers Douglas, the Tory Whip, could not believe his eyes when he handed the figures to Tom Ellis, our chief Whip, who returned them to him in silence.
"The next morning St. John Brodrick came to see me, full of excitement and sympathy. He was anxious to know if we minded his being instrumental in our downfall; but I am so fond of him that, of course, I told him that I did not mind, as a week sooner or later makes no difference and St. John's division was only one out of many indications in the House and the country that our time was up. Henry came back from the Cabinet in the middle of our talk and shook his fist in fun at 'our enemy.' He was tired, but good- humoured as ever.
"At 3:30 Princess Helene d'Orleans came to see me and told me of her engagement to the Due d'Aosta. She looked tall, black and distinguished. She spoke of Prince Eddy to me with great frankness. I told her I had sometimes wondered at her devotion to one less clever than herself. At this her eyes filled with tears and she explained to me how much she had been in love and the sweetness and nobility of his character. I had reason to know the truth of what she said when one day Queen Alexandra, after talking to me in moving terms of her dead son, wrote in my Prayer Book:
"Man looketh upon the countenance, but God upon the heart.
"Helene adores the Princess of Wales [Footnote: Queen Alexandra.] but not the Prince! [Footnote: King Edward VII.] and says the latter's rudeness to her brother, the Duc d'Orleans, is terrible. I said nothing, as I am devoted to the Prince and think her brother deserves any ill-treatment he gets. I asked her if she was afraid of the future: a new country and the prospect of babies, etc. She answered that d'Aosta was so genuinely devoted that it would make everything easy for her.
"'What would you do if he were unfaithful to you?' I asked.
"PRINCESS HELENE: 'Oh! I told Emanuel. … I said, "You see? I leave you … If you are not true to me, I instantly leave you," and I should do so at once.'
"She begged me never to forget her, but always to pray for her.
"'I love you,' she said, 'as every one else does'; and with a warm embrace she left the room.
"She came of a handsome family: Blowitz's famous description,'de loin on dirait un Prussien, de pres un imbecile,' was made of a near relation of the Duchesse d'Aosta."
With the fall of the Government my diary of that year ceases to have the smallest interest.
I will finish with a character-sketch of myself copied out of my diary, written nine weeks before the birth of my fifth and last baby in 1906, and like everything else that I have quoted never intended for the public eye:
"I am not pretty, and I do not know anything about my expression, although I observe it is this that is particularly dwelt upon if one is sufficiently plain; but I hope, when you feel as kindly towards your fellow-creatures as I do, that some of that warmth may modify an otherwise bright and rather knifey CONTOUR.
"My figure has remained as it was: slight, well-balanced and active. Being socially courageous and not at all shy, I think I can come into a room as well as many people of more appearance and prestige. I do not propose to treat myself like Mr. Bernard Shaw in this account. I shall neither excuse myself from praise, nor shield myself from blame, but put down the figures as accurately as I can and leave others to add them up.
"I think I have imagination, born not of fancy, but of feeling; a conception of the beautiful, not merely in poetry, music, art and nature, but in human beings. I have insight into human nature, derived not only from a courageous experience, but also from imagination; and I have a clear though distant vision, down dark, long and often divergent avenues, of the ordered meaning of God. I take this opportunity of saying my religion is a vibrating reality never away from me; and this is all I shall write upon the subject.
"It is difficult to describe what one means by imagination, but I think it is more than inventiveness, or fancy. I remember discussing the question with John Addington Symonds and, to give him a hasty illustration of what I meant, I said I thought naming a Highland regiment 'The Black Watch' showed a HIGH degree of imagination. He was pleased with this; and as a personal testimonial I may add that both he and Jowett told me that no one could be as good a judge of character as I was who was without imagination. In an early love-letter to me, Henry wrote:
"Imaginative insight you have more than any one I have ever met!
"I think I am deficient in one form of imagination; and Henry will agree with this. I have a great longing to help those I love: this leads me to intrepid personal criticism; and I do not always know what hurts my friends' feelings. I do not think I should mind anything that I have said to others being said to me, but one never can tell; I have a good, sound digestion and personally prefer knowing the truth; I have taken adverse criticism pretty well all my life and had a lot of it; but by some gap I have not succeeded in making my friends take it well. I am not vain or touchy; it takes a lot to offend me; but when I am hurt the scar remains. I feel differently about people who have hurt me; my confidence has been shaken; I hope I am not ungenerous, but I fear I am not really forgiving. Worldly people say that explanations are a mistake; but having it out is the only chance any one can ever have of retaining my love; and those who have neither the courage, candour nor humbleness to say they are wrong are not worth loving. I am not afraid of suffering too much in life, but much more afraid of feeling too little; and quarrels make me profoundly unhappy. One of my complaints against the shortness of life is that there is not time enough to feel pity and love for enough people. I am infinitely compassionate and moved to my foundations by the misfortunes of other people.
"As I said in my 1888 character-sketch, truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue, but I cannot discriminate between truths that need and those that need not be told. Want of courage is what makes so many people lie. It would be difficult for me to say exactly what I am afraid of. Physically and socially not much; morally, I am afraid of a good many things: reprimanding servants, bargaining in shops; or to turn to more serious matters, the loss of my health, the children's or Henry's. Against these last possibilities I pray in every recess of my thoughts.
"With becoming modesty I have said that I am imaginative, loving and brave! What then are my faults?
"I am fundamentally nervous, impatient, irritable and restless. These may sound slight shortcomings, but they go to the foundation of my nature, crippling my activity, lessening my influence and preventing my achieving anything remarkable. I wear myself out in a hundred unnecessary ways, regretting the trifles I have not done, arranging and re-arranging what I have got to do and what every one else is going to do, till I can hardly eat or sleep. To be in one position for long at a time, or sit through bad plays, to listen to moderate music or moderate conversation is a positive punishment to me. I am energetic and industrious, but I am a little too quick; I am DRIVEN along by my temperament till I tire myself and every one else.
"I did not marry till I was thirty. This luckily gave me time to read; and I collected nearly a thousand books of my own before I married. If I had had real application—as all the Asquiths have— I should by now be a well-educated woman; but this I never had. I am not at all dull, and never stale, but I don't seem to be able to grind at uncongenial things. I have a good memory for books and conversations, but bad for poetry and dates; wonderful for faces and pitiful for names.
"Physically I have done pretty well for myself. I ride better than most people and have spent or wasted more time on it than any woman of intellect ought to. I have broken both collar-bones, all my ribs and my knee-cap; dislocated my jaw, fractured my skull, gashed my nose and had five concussions of the brain; but—though my horses are to be sold next week [Footnote: My horses were sold at Tattersalls, June 11th, 1906.]—I have not lost my nerve. I dance, drive and skate well; I don't skate very well, but I dance really well. I have a talent for drawing and am intensely musical, playing the piano with a touch of the real thing, but have neglected both these accomplishments. I may say here in self- defence that marriage and five babies, five step-children and a husband in high politics have all contributed to this neglect, but the root of the matter lies deeper: I am restless.
"After riding, what I have enjoyed doing most in my life is writing. I have written a great deal, but do not fancy publishing my exercises. I have always kept a diary and commonplace books and for many years I wrote criticisms of everything I read. It is rather difficult for me to say what I think of my own writing. Arthur Balfour once said that I was the best letter-writer he knew; Henry tells me I write well; and Symonds said I had l'oreille juste; but writing of the kind that I like reading I cannot do: it is a long apprenticeship. Possibly, if I had had this apprenticeship forced upon me by circumstances, I should have done it better than anything else. I am a careful critic of all I read and I do not take my opinions of books from other people; I have not got 'a lending-library mind' as Henry well described that of a friend of ours. I do not take my opinions upon anything from other people; from this point of view—not a very high one—I might be called original.
"When I read Arthur Balfour's books and essays, I realised before I had heard them discussed what a beautiful style he wrote. Raymond, whose intellectual taste is as fine as his father's, wrote in a paper for his All Souls Fellowship that Arthur had the finest style of any living writer; and Raymond and Henry often justify my literary verdicts.
"From my earliest age I have been a collector: not of anything particularly valuable, but of letters, old photographs of the family, famous people and odds and ends. I do not lose things. Our cigarette ash-trays are plates from my dolls' dinner-service; I have got china, books, whips, knives, match-boxes and clocks given me since I was a small child. I have kept our early copy-books, with all the family signatures in them, and many trifling landmarks of nursery life. I am painfully punctual, tidy and methodical, detesting indecision, change of plans and the egotism that they involve. I am a little stern and severe except with children: for these I have endless elasticity and patience. Many of my faults are physical. If I could have chosen my own life— more in the hills and less in the traffic—I should have slept better and might have been less overwrought and disturbable. But after all I may improve, for I am on a man-of-war, as a friend once said to me, which is better than being on a pirate-ship and is a profession in itself.
"Well, I have finished; I have tried to relate of my manners, morals, talents, defects, temptations, and appearance as faithfully as I can; and I think there is nothing more to be said. If I had to confess and expose one opinon of myself which might differentiate me a little from other people, I should say it was my power of love coupled with my power of criticism, but what I lack most is what Henry possesses above all men: equanimity, moderation, self-control and the authority that comes from a perfect sense of proportion. I can only pray that I am not too old or too stationary to acquire these.
"P.S. This is my second attempt to write about myself and I am not at all sure that my old character-sketch of 1888 is not the better of the two—it is more external—but, after all, what can one say of one's inner self that corresponds with what one really is or what one's friends think one is? Just now I am within a few weeks of my baby's birth and am tempted to take a gloomy view. I am inclined to sum up my life in this way:
"'An unfettered childhood and triumphant youth; a lot of love- making and a little abuse; a little fame and more abuse; a real man and great happiness; the love of children and seventh heaven; an early death and a crowded memorial service.'
"But perhaps I shall not die, but live to write another volume of this diary and a better description of an improved self."