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Title: Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II

Author: Margot Asquith

Release Date: August,2003 [Etext# 4321]
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The Project Gutenberg Etext of Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II
by Margot Asquith
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MARGOT ASQUITH

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

TWO VOLUMES IN ONE





I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY HUSBAND

What? Have you not received powers, to the limits of which you
will bear all that befalls? Have you not received magnanimity?
Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?--
EPICTETUS





PREFACE


When I began this book I feared that its merit would depend upon
how faithfully I could record my own impressions of people and
events: when I had finished it I was certain of it. Had it been
any other kind of book the judgment of those nearest me would have
been invaluable, but, being what it is, it had to be entirely my
own; since whoever writes as he speaks must take the whole
responsibility, and to ask "Do you think I may say this?" or
"write that?" is to shift a little of that responsibility on to
someone else. This I could not bear to do, above all in the case
of my husband, who sees these recollections for the first time
now. My only literary asset is natural directness, and that
faculty would have been paralysed if I thought anything that I
have written here would implicate him. I would rather have made a
hundred blunders of style or discretion than seem, even to myself,
let alone the world at large, to have done that.

Unlike many memoirists, the list of people I have to thank in this
preface is short: Lord Crewe and Mr. Texeira de Mattos--who alone
saw my MS. before its completion--for their careful criticisms
which in no way committed them to approving of all that I have
written; Mr. Desmond MacCarthy, for valuable suggestions; and my
typist, Miss Lea, for her silence and quickness.

There are not many then of whom I can truly say, "Without their
approval and encouragement this book would never have been
written"--but those who really love me will forgive me and know
that what I owe them is deeper than thanks.





CONTENTS OF BOOK ONE


CHAPTER I

THE TENNANT FAMILY--MARGOT, ONE OF TWELVE CHILDREN--HOME LIFE IN
GLEN, SCOTLAND--FATHER A SELF-CENTRED BUSINESS-MAN; HIS VANITIES;
HIS PRIDE IN HIS CHILDREN--NEWS OF HIS DEATH--HANDSOME LORD
RIBBLESDALE VISITS GLEN--MOTHER DELICATE; HER LOVE OF ECONOMY;
CONFIDENCES--TENNANT GIRLS' LOVE AFFAIRS

CHAPTER II

GLEN AMONG THE MOORS--MARGOT'S ADVENTURE WITH A TRAMP--THE
SHEPHERD BOY--MEMORIES AND ESCAPADES--LAURA AND MARGOT; PROPOSALS
OF MARRIAGE--NEW MEN FRIENDS--LAURA ENGAGED; PROPOSAL IN THE
DUSK--MARGOT'S ACCIDENT IN HUNTING FIELD--LAURA'S PREMONITION OF
DEATH IN CHILDBIRTH--LAURA'S WILL

CHAPTER III

SLUMMING IN LONDON; ADVENTURE IN WHITECHAPEL; BRAWL IN A SALOON;
OUTINGS WITH WORKING GIRLS--MARGOT MEETS PRINCESS OF WALES--GOSSIP
OVER FRIENDSHIP WITH PRINCE OF WALES--LADY RANDOLPH CHURCHILL'S
BALL--MARGOT'S FIRST HUNT; MEETS ECCENTRIC DUKE OF BEAUFORT; FALLS
IN LOVE AT SEVENTEEN; COMMANDEERS A HORSE

CHAPTER IV

MARGOT AT A GIRLS' SCHOOL--WHO SPILT THE INK?--THE ENGINE DRIVER'S
MISTAKEN FLIRTATION--MARGOT LEAVES SCHOOL IN DISGUST--DECIDES TO
GO TO GERMANY TO STUDY CHAPTER V

A DRESDEN LODGING HOUSE--MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE WITH AN OFFICER AFTER
THE OPERA--AN ELDERLY AMERICAN ADMIRER--YELLOW ROSES, GRAF VON--
AND MOTIFS FROM WAGNER

CHAPTER VI

MARGOT RIDES HORSE INTO LONDON HOME AND SMASHES FURNITURE--SUITOR
IS FORBIDDEN THE HOUSE--ADVISES GIRL FRIEND TO ELOPE; INTERVIEW
WITH GIRL'S FATHER--TETE-A-TETE DINNER IN PARIS WITH BARON HIRSCH
--WINNING TIP FROM FRED ARCHER THE JOCKEY

CHAPTER VII

PHOENIX PARK MURDERS--REMEDIES FOR IRELAND--TELEPATHY AND
PLANCHETTE--VISIT TO BLAVATSKY--SIR CHARLES DILKE'S KISS--VISITS
TO GLADSTONE--THE LATE LORD SALISBURY'S POLITICAL PROPHECIES

CHAPTER VIII

THE BEAUTIFUL KATE VAUGHAN--COACHED BY COQUELIN IN MOLIERE--
ROSEBERY'S POPULARITY AND ELOQUENCE--CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN BON-VIVANT
AND BOULEVARDIER--BALFOUR'S MOT; HIS CHARM AND WIT; HIS TASTES AND
PREFERENCES; HIS RELIGIOUS SPECULATION





CONTENTS OF BOOK TWO


CHAPTER I

THE SOULS--LORD CURZON'S POEM AND DINNER PARTY AND WHO WERE THESE
--MARGOT'S INVENTORY OF THE GROUP--TILT WITH THE LATE LADY
LONDONDERRY--VISIT TO TENNYSON; HIS CONTEMPT FOR CRITICS; HIS
HABIT OF LIVING--J. K. S. NOT A SOUL--MARGOT'S FRIENDSHIP WITH
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS; HIS PRAISE OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

CHAPTER II

CHARACTER SKETCH OF MARGOT--PLANS TO START A MAGAZINE--MEETS
MASTER OF BALLIOL; JOWETT'S ORTHODOXY; HIS INTEREST IN AND
INFLUENCE OVER MARGOT--ROSE IN "ROBERT ELSMERE" IDENTIFIED AS
MARGOT--JOWETT'S OPINION OF NEWMAN--JOWETT ADVISES MARGOT TO
MARRY--HUXLEY'S BLASPHEMY

CHAPTER III

FAST AND FURIOUS HUNTING IN LEICESTERSHIRE--COUNTRY HOUSE PARTY
AND A NEW ADMIRER--FRIENDSHIP WITH LORD AND LADY MANNERS

CHAPTER IV

MARGOT FALLS IN LOVE AGAIN--"HAVOC" IN THE HUNTING FIELD; A FALL
AND A DUCKING--THE FAMOUS MRS. BO; UNHEEDED ADVICE FROM A RIVAL--A
LOVERS' QUARREL--PETER JUMPS IN THE WINDOW--THE AMERICAN TROTTER--
ANOTHER LOVER INTERVENES--PETER RETURNS FROM INDIA; ILLUMINATION
FROM A DARK WOMAN

CHAPTER V

THE ASQUITH FAMILY TREE--HERBERT H. ASQUITH'S MOTHER--ASQUITH'S
FIRST MARRIAGE; MEETS MARGOT TENNANT FOR FIRST TIME--TALK TILL
DAWN ON HOUSE OF COMMONS' TERRACE; OTHER MEETINGS--ENGAGEMENT A
LONDON SENSATION--MARRIAGE AN EVENT

CHAPTER VI

THE ASQUITH CHILDREN BY THE FIRST MARRIAGE--MARGOT'S STEPDAUGHTER
VIOLET--MEMORY OF THE FIRST MRS. ASQUITH--RAYMOND'S BRILLIANT
CAREER--ARTHUR'S HEROISM IN THE WAR

CHAPTER VII

VISIT TO WOMAN'S PRISON--INTERVIEW THERE WITH MRS. MAYBRICK--
SCENE IN A LIFER'S CELL; THE HUSBAND WHO NEVER KNEW THOUGHT WIFE
MADE MONEY SEWING--MARGOT'S PLEA THAT FAILED

CHAPTER VIII

MARGOT'S FIRST BABY AND ITS LOSS--DANGEROUS ILLNESS--LETTER FROM
QUEEN VICTORIA--SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT'S PLEASANTRIES--ASQUITH
MINISTRY FALLS--VISIT FROM DUCHESS D'AOSTA

CHAPTER IX

MARGOT IN 1906 SUMS UP HER LIFE; A LOT OF LOVE-MAKING, A LITTLE
FAME AND MORE ABUSE: A REAL MAN AND GREAT HAPPINESS





MARGOT ASQUITH

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY





BOOK ONE





"Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid wooed by incapacity."--Blake.





CHAPTER I


THE TENNANT FAMILY--MARGOT, ONE OF TWELVE CHILDREN--HOME LIFE IN
GLEN, SCOTLAND--FATHER A SELF-CENTRED BUSINESS-MAN; HIS VANITIES;
HIS PRIDE IN HIS CHILDREN--NEWS OF HIS DEATH--HANDSOME LORD
RIBBLESDALE VISITS GLEN--MOTHER DELICATE; HER LOVE OF ECONOMY;
CONFIDENCES--TENNANT GIRLS' LOVE AFFAIRS


I was born in the country of Hogg and Scott between the Yarrow and
the Tweed, in the year 1864.

I am one of twelve children, but I only knew eight, as the others
died when I was young. My eldest sister Pauline--or Posie, as we
called her--was born in 1855 and married on my tenth birthday one
of the best of men, Thomas Gordon Duff. [Footnote: Thomas Gordon
Duff, of Drummuir Castle, Keith.] She died of tuberculosis, the
cruel disease by which my family have all been pursued. We were
too different in age and temperament to be really intimate, but
her goodness, patience and pluck made a deep impression on me.

My second sister, Charlotte, was born in 1858 and married, when I
was thirteen, the present Lord Ribblesdale, in 1877. She was the
only member of the family--except my brother Edward Glenconner--
who was tall. My mother attributed this--and her good looks--to
her wet-nurse, Janet Mercer, a mill-girl at Innerleithen, noted
for her height and beauty. Charty--as we called her--was in some
ways the most capable of us all, but she had not Laura's genius,
Lucy's talents, nor my understanding. She had wonderful grace and
less vanity than any one that ever lived; and her social courage
was a perpetual joy. I heard her say to the late Lord Rothschild,
one night at a dinner party:

"And do you still believe the Messiah is coming, Lord Natty?"

Once when her husband went to make a political speech in the
country, she telegraphed to him:

"Mind you hit below the belt!"

She was full of nature and impulse, free, enterprising and
unconcerned. She rode as well as I did, but was not so quick to
hounds nor so conscious of what was going on all round her.

One day when the Rifle Brigade was quartered at Winchester,
Ribblesdale--who was a captain--sent Charty out hunting with old
Tubb, the famous dealer, from whom he had hired her mount. As he
could not accompany her himself, he was anxious to know how her
ladyship had got on; the old rascal-wanting to sell his horse--
raised his eyes to heaven and gasped:

"Hornamental palings! My lord!!"

It was difficult to find a better-looking couple than Charty and
Ribblesdale; I have often observed people following them in
picture-galleries; and their photographs appeared in many of the
London shop-windows.

My next sister, Lucy, [Footnote: Mrs. Graham Smith, of Easton
Grey, Malmesbury.] was the most talented and the best educated of
the family. She fell between two stools in her youth, because
Charty and Posie were of an age to be companions and Laura and I;
consequently she did not enjoy the happy childhood that we did and
was mishandled by the authorities both in the nursery and the
schoolroom. When I was thirteen she made a foolish engagement, so
that our real intimacy only began after her marriage. She was my
mother's favourite child--which none of us resented--and, although
like my father in hospitality, courage and generous giving, she
had my mother's stubborn modesty and delicacy of mind. Her fear of
hurting the feelings of others was so great that she did not tell
people what she was thinking; she was truthful but not candid. Her
drawings--both in pastel and water-colour--her portraits,
landscapes and interiors were further removed from amateur work
than Laura's piano-playing or my dancing; and, had she put her
wares into the market, as we all wanted her to do years ago, she
would have been a rich woman, but like all saints she was
uninfluenceable. I owe her too much to write about her: tormented
by pain and crippled by arthritis, she has shown a heroism and
gaiety which command the love and respect of all who meet her.

Of my other sister, Laura, I will write later.

The boys of the family were different from the girls, though they
all had charm and an excellent sense of humour. My mother said the
difference between her boys and girls came from circulation, and
would add, "The Winsloes always had cold feet"; but I think it lay
in temper and temperament. They would have been less apprehensive
and more serene if they had been brought up to some settled
profession; and they were quite clever enough to do most things
well.

My brother Jack [Footnote: The Right Hon. H. J. Tennant] was
petted and mismanaged in his youth. He had a good figure, but his
height was arrested by his being allowed, when he was a little
fellow, to walk twelve to fifteen miles a day with the shooters;
and, however tired he would be, he was taken out of bed to play
billiards after dinner. Leather footstools were placed one on the
top of the other by a proud papa and the company made to watch
this lovely little boy score big breaks; excited and exhausted, he
would go to bed long after midnight, with praises singing in his
ears.

"You are more like lions than sisters!" he said one day in the
nursery when we snubbed him.

In making him his Parliamentary Secretary, my husband gave him his
first chance; and in spite of his early training and teasing he
turned his life to good account.

In the terrible years 1914, 1915 and 1916, he was Under-Secretary
for War to the late Lord Kitchener and was finally made Secretary
for Scotland, with a seat in the Cabinet. Like every Tennant, he
had tenderness and powers of emotion and showed much affection and
generosity to his family. He was a fine sportsman with an
exceptionally good eye for games.

My brother Frank [Footnote: Francis Tennant, of Innes.] was the
artist among the boys. He had a perfect ear for music and eye for
colour and could distinguish what was beautiful in everything he
saw. He had the sweetest temper of any of us and the most
humility.

In his youth he had a horrible tutor who showed him a great deal
of cruelty; and this retarded his development. One day at Glen, I
saw this man knock Frank down. Furious and indignant, I said, "You
brute!" and hit him over the head with both my fists. After he had
boxed my ears, Laura protested, saying she would tell my father,
whereupon he toppled her over on the floor and left the room.

When I think of our violent teachers--both tutors and governesses
--and what the brothers learnt at Eton, I am surprised that we knew
as much as we did and my parents' helplessness bewilders me.

My eldest brother, Eddy, [Footnote: Lord Glenconner, of Glen,
Innerleithen.] though very different from me in temperament and
outlook, was the one with whom I got on best. We were both
devoured by impatience and punctuality and loved being alone in
the country. He hated visiting, I enjoyed it; he detested society
and I delighted in it. My mother was not strong enough to take me
to balls; and as she was sixty-three the year I came out, Eddy was
by way of chaperoning me, but I can never remember him bringing me
back from a single party. We each had our latch-keys and I went
home either by myself or with a partner.

We shared a secret and passionate love for our home, Glen, and
knew every clump of heather and every birch and burn in the place.
Herbert Gladstone told me that, one day in India, when he and Eddy
after a long day's shooting were resting in silence on the ground,
he said to him:

"What are you thinking about, Eddy?"

To which he answered:

"Oh, always the same ... Glen! ..."

In all the nine years during which he and I lived there together,
in spite of our mutual irascibility of temper and uneven spirits,
we never had a quarrel. Whether we joined each other on the moor
at the far shepherd's cottage or waited for grouse upon the hill;
whether we lunched on the Quair or fished on the Tweed, we have a
thousand common memories to keep our hearts together.

My father [Footnote: Sir Charles Tennant, 1823-1906.] was a man
whose vitality, irritability, energy and impressionability
amounted to genius.

When he died, June 2nd, 1906, I wrote this in my diary:

"I was sitting in Elizabeth's [Footnote: My daughter, Elizabeth
Bibesco.] schoolroom at Littlestone yesterday--Whit-Monday--after
hearing her recite Tartuffe at 7 p.m., when James gave me a
telegram; it was from my stepmother:

"'Your father passed away peacefully at five this afternoon.'

"I covered my face with my hands and went to find my husband. My
father had been ill for some time, but, having had a letter from
him that morning, the news gave me a shock.

"Poor little Elizabeth was terribly upset at my unhappiness; and I
was moved to the heart by her saying with tear-filled eyes and a
white face:

"'Darling mother, he had a VERY happy life and is very happy now
.. he will ALWAYS be happy.'

"This was true. ... He had been and always will be happy, because
my father's nature turned out no waste product: he had none of
that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories. He
took his own happiness with him, and was self-centred and self-
sufficing: for a sociable being, the most self-sufficing I have
ever known; I can think of no one of such vitality who was so
independent of other people; he could golf alone, play billiards
alone, walk alone, shoot alone, fish alone, do everything alone;
and yet he was dependent on both my mother and my stepmother and
on all occasions loved simple playfellows. ... Some one to carry
his clubs, or to wander round the garden with, would make him
perfectly happy. It was at these times, I think, that my father
was at his sweetest. Calm as a sky after showers, he would discuss
every topic with tenderness and interest and appeared to be
unupsettable; he had eternal youth, and was unaffected by a
financial world which had been spinning round him all day.

"The striking thing about him was his freedom from suspicion.
Thrown from his earliest days among common, shrewd men of
singularly unspiritual ideals--most of them not only on the make
but I might almost say on the pounce--he advanced on his own lines
rapidly and courageously, not at all secretively--almost
confidingly--yet he was rarely taken in.

"He knew his fellow-creatures better in the East-end than in the
West-end of London and had a talent for making men love him; he
swept them along on the impulse of his own decided intentions. He
was never too busy nor too prosperous to help the struggling and
was shocked by meanness or sharp practice, however successful.

"There were some people whom my father never understood, good,
generous and high-minded as he was: the fanatic with eyes turned
to no known order of things filled him with electric impatience;
he did not care for priests, poets or philosophers; anything like
indecision, change of plans, want of order, method or punctuality,
forgetfulness or carelessness--even hesitation of voice and
manner--drove him mad; his temperament was like a fuse which a
touch will explode, but the bomb did not kill, it hurt the
uninitiated but it consumed its own sparks. My papa had no self-
control, no possibility of learning it: it was an unknown science,
like geometry or algebra, to him; and he had very little
imagination. It was this combination--want of self-control and
want of imagination--which prevented him from being a thinker.

"He had great character, minute observation, a fine memory and all
his instincts were charged with almost superhuman vitality, but no
one could argue with him. Had the foundation of his character been
as unreasonable and unreliable as his temperament, he would have
made neither friends nor money; but he was fundamentally sound,
ultimately serene and high-minded in the truest sense of the word.
He was a man of intellect, but not an intellectual man; he did not
really know anything about the great writers or thinkers, although
he had read odds and ends. He was essentially a man of action and
a man of will; this is why I call him a man of intellect. He made
up his mind in a flash, partly from instinct and partly from will.

"He had the courage for life and the enterprise to spend his
fortune on it. He was kind and impulsively generous, but too hasty
for disease to accost or death to delay. For him they were
interruptions, not abiding sorrows.

"He knew nothing of rancour, remorse, regret; they conveyed much
the same to him as if he had been told to walk backwards and
received neither sympathy nor courtesy from him.

"He was an artist with the gift of admiration. He had a good eye
and could not buy an ugly or even moderately beautiful thing; but
he was no discoverer in art. Here I will add to make myself clear
that I am thinking of men like Frances Horner's father, old Mr.
Graham, [Footnote: Lady Horner, of Mells, Frome.] who discovered
and promoted Burne-Jones and Frederick Walker; or Lord Battersea,
who was the first to patronise Cecil Lawson; or my sister, Lucy
Graham Smith, who was a fine judge of every picture and recognised
and appreciated all schools of painting. My father's judgment was
warped by constantly comparing his own things with other people's.

"The pride of possession and proprietorship is a common and a
human one, but the real artist makes everything he admires his
own: no one can rob him of this; he sees value in unsigned
pictures and promise in unfinished ones; he not only discovers and
interprets, but almost creates beauty by the fire of his
criticisms and the inwardness of his preception. Papa was too
self-centred for this; a large side of art was hidden from him;
anything mysterious, suggestive, archaic, whether Italian, Spanish
or Dutch, frankly bored him. His feet were planted firmly on a
very healthy earth; he liked art to be a copy of nature, not of
art. The modern Burne-Jones and Morris school, with what he
considered its artificiality and affectations, he could not
endure. He did not realise that it originated in a reaction from
early-Victorianism and mid-Victorianism. He lost sight of much
that is beautiful in colour and fancy and all the drawing and
refinement of this school, by his violent prejudices. His opinions
were obsessions. Where he was original was not so much in his
pictures but in the mezzotints, silver, china and objets d'art
which he had collected for many years.

"Whatever he chose, whether it was a little owl, a dog, a nigger,
a bust, a Cupid in gold, bronze, china or enamel, it had to have
some human meaning, some recognisable expression which made it
lovable and familiar to him. He did not care for the fantastic,
the tortured or the ecclesiastical; saints, virgins, draperies and
crucifixes left him cold; but an old English chest, a stout little
chair or a healthy oriental bottle would appeal to him at once.

"No one enjoyed his own possessions more naively and
enthusiastically than my father; he would often take a candle and
walk round the pictures in his dressing-gown on his way to bed,
loitering over them with tenderness--I might almost say emotion.

"When I was alone with him, tucked up reading on a sofa, he would
send me upstairs to look at the Sir Joshuas: Lady Gertrude
Fitz-Patrick, Lady Crosbie or Miss Ridge.

"'She is quite beautiful to-night,' he would say. 'Just run up to
the drawing-room, Margot, and have a look at her.'

"It was not only his collections that he was proud of, but he was
proud of his children; we could all do things better than any one
else! Posie could sing, Lucy could draw, Laura could play, I could
ride, etc.; our praises were stuffed down newcomers' throats till
every one felt uncomfortable. I have no want of love to add to my
grief at his death, but I much regret my impatience and lack of
grace with him.

"He sometimes introduced me with emotional pride to the same man
or woman two or three times in one evening:

"'This is my little girl--very clever, etc., etc. Colonel
Kingscote says she goes harder across country than any one, etc.,
etc.'

"This exasperated me. Turning to my mother in the thick of the
guests that had gathered in our house one evening to hear a
professional singer, he said at the top of his voice while the
lady was being conducted to the piano:

"'Don't bother, my dear, I think every one would prefer to hear
Posie sing.'

"I well remember Laura and myself being admonished by him on our
returning from a party at the Cyril Flowers' in the year 1883,
where we had been considerably run by dear Papa and twice
introduced to Lord Granville. We showed such irritability going
home in the brougham that my father said:

"'It's no pleasure taking you girls out.'

"This was the only time I ever heard him cross with me.

"He always told us not to frown and to speak clearly, just as my
mother scolded us for not holding ourselves up. I can never
remember seeing him indifferent, slack or idle in his life. He was
as violent when he was dying as when he was living and quite
without self-pity.

"He hated presents, but he liked praise and was easily flattered;
he was too busy even for MUCH of that, but he could stand more
than most of us. If it is a little simple, it is also rather
generous to believe in the nicest things people can say to you;
and I think I would rather accept too much than repudiate and
refuse: it is warmer and more enriching.

"My father had not the smallest conceit or smugness, but he had a
little child-like vanity. You could not spoil him nor improve him;
he remained egotistical, sound, sunny and unreasonable; violently
impatient, not at all self-indulgent--despising the very idea of a
valet or a secretary--but absolutely self-willed; what he intended
to do, say or buy, he would do, say or buy AT ONCE.

"He was fond of a few people--Mark Napier, [Footnote: The Hon.
Mark Napier, of Ettrick.] Ribblesdale, Lord Haldane, Mr.
Heseltine, Lord Rosebery and Arthur Balfour--and felt friendly to
everybody, but he did not LOVE many people. When we were girls he
told us we ought to make worldly marriages, but in the end he let
us choose the men we loved and gave us the material help in money
which enabled us to marry them. I find exactly the opposite plan
adopted by most parents: they sacrifice their children to loveless
marriages as long as they know there is enough money for no demand
ever to be made upon themselves.

"I think I understood my father better than the others did. I
guessed his mood in a moment and in consequence could push further
and say more to him when he was in a good humour. I lived with
him, my mother and Eddy alone for nine years (after my sister
Laura married) and had a closer personal experience of him. He
liked my adventurous nature. Ribblesdale's [Footnote: Lord
Ribblesdale, of Gisburne.] courtesy and sweetness delighted him
and they were genuinely fond of each other. He said once to me of
him:

"'Tommy is one of the few people in the world that have shown me
gratitude.'"

I cannot pass my brother-in-law's name here in my diary without
some reference to the effect which he produced on us when he first
came to Glen.

He was the finest-looking man that I ever saw, except old Lord
Wemyss, [Footnote: The Earl of Wemyss and March, father of the
present Earl.] the late Lord Pembroke, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt and Lord
D'Abernon. He had been introduced to my sister Charty at a ball in
London, when he was twenty-one and she eighteen. A brother-officer
of his in the Rifle Brigade, seeing them waltzing together, asked
him if she was his sister, to which he answered:

"No, thank God!"

I was twelve when he first came to Glen as Thomas Lister: his fine
manners, perfect sense of humour and picturesque appearance
captivated every one; and, whether you agreed with him or not, he
had a perfectly original point of view and was always interested
and suggestive. He never misunderstood but thoroughly appreciated
my father. ...

Continuing from my diary:

"My papa was a character-part; and some people never understood
character-parts.

"None of his children are really like him; yet there are
resemblances which are interesting and worth noting.

"Charty on the whole resembles him most. She has his transparent
simplicity, candour, courage laid want of self-control; but she is
the least selfish woman I know and the least self-centred. She is
also more intolerant and merciless in her criticisms of other
people, and has a finer sense of humour. Papa loved things of good
report and never believed evil of any one. He had a rooted
objection to talking lightly of other people's lives; he was not
exactly reverent, but a feeling of kindly decent citizenship
prevented him from thinking or speaking slightingly of other
people.

"Lucy has Papa's artistic and generous side, but none of his self-
confidence or decisiveness; all his physical courage, but none of
his ambition.

"Eddy has his figure and deportment, his sense of justice and
emotional tenderness, but none of his vitality, impulse or hope.
Jack has his ambition and push, keenness and self-confidence; but
he is not so good-humoured in a losing game. Frank has more of his
straight tongue and appreciation of beautiful things, but none of
his brains.

"I think I had more of Papa's moral indignation and daring than
the others; and physically there were great resemblances between
us: otherwise I do not think I am like him. I have his carriage,
balance and activity--being able to dance, skip and walk on a
rope--and I have inherited his hair and sleeplessness, nerves and
impatience; but intellectually we look at things from an entirely
different point of view. I am more passionate, more spiritually
perplexed and less self-satisfied. I have none of his powers of
throwing things off. I should like to think I have a little of his
generosity, humanity and kindly toleration, some of his
fundamental uprightness and integrity, but when everything has
been said he will remain a unique man in people's memory."

Writing now, fourteen years later, I do not think that I can add
much to this.

Although he was a business man, he had a wide understanding and
considerable elasticity.

In connection with business men, the staggering figures published
in the official White Book of November last year showed that the
result of including them in the Government has been so remarkable
that my memoir would be incomplete if I did not allude to them. My
father and grandfather were brought up among City people and I am
proud of it; but it is folly to suppose that starting and
developing a great business is the same as initiating and
conducting a great policy, or running a big Government Department.

It has been and will remain a puzzle over which intellectual men
are perpetually if not permanently groping:

"How comes it that Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown made such a vast
fortune?"

The answer is not easy. Making money requires FLAIR, instinct,
insight or whatever you like to call it, but the qualities that go
to make a business man are grotesquely unlike those which make a
statesman; and, when you have pretensions to both, the result is
the present comedy and confusion.

I write as the daughter of a business man and the wife of a
politician and I know what I am talking about, but, in case Mr.
Bonar Law--a pathetic believer in the "business man"--should
honour me by reading these pages and still cling to his illusions
on the subject, I refer him to the figures published in the
Government White Book of 1919.

Intellectual men seldom make fortunes and business men are seldom
intellectual.

My father was educated in Liverpool and worked in a night school;
he was a good linguist, which he would never have been had he had
the misfortune to be educated in any of our great public schools.

I remember some one telling me how my grandfather had said that he
could not understand any man of sense bringing his son up as a
gentleman. In those days as in these, gentlemen were found and not
made, but the expression "bringing a man up as a gentleman" meant
bringing him up to be idle.

When my father gambled in the City, he took risks with his own
rather than other people's money. I heard him say to a South
African millionaire:

"You did not make your money out of mines, but out of mugs like
me, my dear fellow!"

A whole chapter might be devoted to stories about his adventures
in speculation, but I will give only one. As a young man he was
put by my grandfather into a firm in Liverpool and made L30,000 on
the French Bourse before he was twenty-four. On hearing of this,
his father wrote and apologised to the head of the firm, saying he
was willing to withdraw his son Charles if he had in any way
shocked them by risking a loss which he could never have paid. The
answer was a request that the said "son Charles" should become a
partner in the firm.

Born a little quicker, more punctual and more alive than other
people, he suffered fools not at all. He could not modify himself
in any way; he was the same man in his nursery, his school and his
office, the same man in church, club, city or suburbs.

[Footnote: My mother, Emma Winsloe, came of quite a different
class from my father. His ancestor of earliest memory was factor
to Lord Bute, whose ploughman was Robert Burns, the poet. His
grandson was my grandfather Tennant of St. Rollox. My mother's
family were of gentle blood. Richard Winsloe (b. 1770, d. 1842)
was rector of Minster Forrabury in Cornwall and of Ruishton, near
Taunton. He married Catherine Walter, daughter of the founder of
the Times. Their son, Richard Winsloe, was sent to Oxford to study
for the Church. He ran away with Charlotte Monkton, aged 17. They
were caught at Evesham and brought back to be married next day at
Taunton, where Admiral Monkton was living. They had two children:
Emma, our mother, and Richard, my uncle.]

My mother was more unlike my father than can easily be imagined.
She was as timid, as he was bold, as controlled as he was
spontaneous and as refined, courteous and unassuming as he was
vibrant, sheer and adventurous.

Fond as we were of each other and intimate over all my love-
affairs, my mother never really understood me; my vitality,
independent happiness and physical energies filled her with
fatigue. She never enjoyed her prosperity and suffered from all
the apprehension, fussiness and love of economy that should by
rights belong to the poor, but by a curious perversion almost
always blight the rich.

Her preachings on economy were a constant source of amusement to
my father. I made up my mind at an early age, after listening to
his chaff, that money was the most overrated of all anxieties; and
not only has nothing occurred in my long experience to make me
alter this opinion but everything has tended to reinforce it.

In discussing matrimony my father would say:

"I'm sure I hope, girls, you'll not marry penniless men; men
should not marry at all unless they can keep their wives,' etc.

To this my mother would retort:

"Do not listen to your father, children! Marrying for money has
never yet made any one happy; it is not blessed."

Mamma had no illusions about her children nor about anything else;
her mild criticisms of the family balanced my father's obsessions.
When Charty's looks were praised, she would answer with a fine
smile:

"Tant soit peu mouton!"

She thought us all very plain, how plain I only discovered by
overhearing the following conversation.

I was seventeen and, a few days after my return from Dresden, I
was writing behind the drawing room screen in London, when an
elderly Scotch lady came to see my mother; she was shown into the
room by the footman and after shaking hands said:

"What a handsome house this is. ..."

MY MOTHER (IRRELEVANTLY): "I always think your place is so nice.
Did your garden do well this year?"

ELDERLY LADY: "Oh, I'm not a gardener and we spend very little
time at Auchnagarroch; I took Alison to the Hydro at Crieff for a
change. She's just a growing girl, you know, and not at all clever
like yours."

MY MOTHER: "My girls never grow! I am sure I wish they would!"

ELDERLY LADY: "But they are so pretty! My Marion has a homely
face!"

MY MOTHER: "How old is she?"

ELDERLY LADY: "Sixteen."

MY MOTHER: "L'AGE INGRAT! I would not trouble myself, if I were
you, about her looks; with young people one never can tell;
Margot, for instance (with a resigned sigh), a few years ago
promised to be so pretty; and just look at her now!"

When some one suggested that we should be painted it was almost
more than my mother could bear. The poorness of the subject and
the richness of the price shocked her profoundly. Luckily my
father--who had begun to buy fine pictures--entirely agreed with
her, though not for the same reasons:

"I am sure I don't know where I could hang the girls, even if I
were fool enough to have them painted!" he would say.

I cannot ever remember kissing my mother without her tapping me on
the back and saying, "Hold yourself up!" or kissing my father
without his saying, "Don't frown!" And I shall never cease being
grateful for this, as a l'heure qu'il est I have not a line in my
forehead and my figure has not changed since my marriage.

My mother's indifference to--I might almost say suspicion of--
other people always amused me:

"I am sure I don't know why they should come here! unless it is to
see the garden!" Or, "I cannot help wondering what was at the back
of her mind."

When I suggested that perhaps the lady she referred to had no
mind, my mother would say, "I don't like people with ARRIERE--
PENSEES"; and ended most of her criticisms by saying, "It looks to
me as if she had a poor circulation."

My mother had an excellent sense of humour. Doll Liddell
[Footnote: The late A.G.C. Lidell.] said: "Lucy has a touch of
mild genius." And this is exactly what my mother had.

People thought her a calm, serene person, satisfied with pinching
green flies off plants and incapable of deep feeling, but my
mother's heart had been broken by the death of her first four
children, and she dreaded emotion. Any attempt on my part to
discuss old days or her own sensations was resolutely discouraged.
There was a lot of fun and affection but a tepid intimacy between
us, except about my flirtations; and over these we saw eye to eye.

My mother, who had been a great flirt herself, thoroughly enjoyed
all love-affairs and was absolutely unshockable. Little words of
wisdom would drop from her mouth:

MY MOTHER: "Men don't like being run after ..."

MARGOT: "Oh, don't you believe it, mamma!"

MY MOTHER: "You can do what you like in life if you can hold your
tongue, but the world is relentless to people who are found out."

She told my father that if he interfered with my love-affairs I
should very likely marry a groom.

She did me a good turn here, for, though I would not have married
a groom, I might have married the wrong man and, in any case,
interference would have been cramping to me.

I have copied out of my diary what I wrote about my mother when
she died.

"January 21st, 1895.

"Mamma is dead. She died this morning and Glen isn't my home any
more: I feel as if I should be 'received' here in future, instead
of finding my own darling, tender little mother, who wanted
arranging for and caring for and to whom my gossipy trivialities
were precious and all my love-stories a trust. How I WISH I could
say sincerely that I had understood her nature and sympathised
with her and never felt hurt by anything she could say and had
EAGERLY shown my love and sought hers. ... Lucky Lucy! She CAN say
this, but I do not think that I can.

"Mamma's life and death have taught me several things. Her
sincerity and absence of vanity and worldliness were her really
striking qualities. Her power of suffering passively, without
letting any one into her secret, was carried to a fault. We who
longed to share some part, however small, of the burden of her
emotion were not allowed to do so. This reserve to the last hour
of her life remained her inexorable rule and habit. It arose from
a wish to spare other people and fear of herself and her own
feelings. To spare others was her ideal. Another characteristic
was her pity for the obscure, the dull and the poor. The postman
in winter ought to have fur-lined gloves; and we must send our
Christmas letters and parcels before or after the busy days. Lord
Napier's [Footnote: Lord Napier and Ettrick, father of Mark
Napier.] coachman had never seen a comet; she would write and tell
him what day it was prophesied. The lame girl at the lodge must be
picked up in the brougham and taken for a drive, etc. ...

"She despised any one who was afraid of infection and was
singularly ignorant on questions of health; she knew little or
nothing of medicine and never believed in doctors; she made an
exception of Sir James Simpson, who was her friend. She told me
that he had said there was a great deal of nonsense talked about
health and diet:

"'If the fire is low, it does not matter whether you stir it with
the poker or the tongs.'

"She believed firmly in cold water and thought that most illnesses
came from 'checked perspiration.'

"She loved happy people--people with courage and go and what she
called 'nature'--and said many good things. Of Mark Napier: 'He
had so much nature, I am sure he had a Neapolitan wet-nurse' (here
she was right). Of Charty: 'She has so much social courage.' Of
Aunt Marion [Footnote: My father's sister, Mrs. Wallace.]: 'She is
unfortunately inferior.' Of Lucy's early friends: 'Lucy's trumpery
girls.'

"Mamma was not at all spiritual, nor had she much intellectual
imagination, but she believed firmly in God and was profoundly
sorry for those who did not. She was full of admiration for
religious people. Laura's prayer against high spirits she thought
so wonderful that she kept it in a book near her bed.

"She told me she had never had enough circulation to have good
spirits herself and that her old nurse often said:

"'No one should ever be surprised at anything they feel.'

"My mamma came of an unintellectual family and belonged to a
generation in which it was not the fashion to read. She had lived
in a small milieu most of her life, without the opportunity of
meeting distinguished people. She had great powers of observation
and a certain delicate acuteness of expression which identified
all she said with herself. She was fine-mouche and full of tender
humour, a woman of the world, but entirely bereft of worldliness.

"Her twelve children, who took up all her time, accounted for some
of her a quoi bon attitude towards life, but she had little or no
concentration and a feminine mind both in its purity and
inconsequence.

"My mother hardly had one intimate friend and never allowed any
one to feel necessary to her. Most people thought her gentle to
docility and full of quiet composure. So much is this the general
impression that, out of nearly a hundred letters which I received,
there is not one that does not allude to her restful nature. As a
matter of fact, Mamma was one of the most restless creatures that
ever lived. She moved from room to room, table to table, and topic
to topic, not, it is true, with haste or fretfulness, but with no
concentration of either thought or purpose; and I never saw her
put up her feet in my life.

"Her want of confidence in herself and of grip upon life prevented
her from having the influence which her experience of the world
and real insight might have given her; and her want of expansion
prevented her own generation and discouraged ours from approaching
her closely.

"Few women have speculative minds nor can they deliberate: they
have instincts, quick apprehensions and powers of observation; but
they are seldom imaginative and neither their logic nor their
reason are their strong points. Mamma was in all these ways like
the rest of her sex.

"She had much affection for, but hardly any pride in her children.
Laura's genius was a phrase to her; and any praise of Charty's
looks or Lucy's successes she took as mere courtesy on the part of
the speaker. I can never remember her praising me, except to say
that I had social courage, nor did she ever encourage me to draw,
write or play the piano.

"She marked in a French translation of "The Imitation of Christ"
which Lucy gave her:

"'Certes au jour du jugement on ne nous demandera point ce que
nous avons lu, mais ce que nous avons fait; ni si nous avons bien
parle mais si nous avons bien vecu.'

"She was the least self-centred and self-scanned of human beings,
unworldly and uncomplaining. As Doll Liddell says in his admirable
letter to me, 'She was often wise and always gracious.'"





CHAPTER II

GLEN AMONG THE MOORS--MARGOT'S ADVENTURE WITH A TRAMP--THE
SHEPHERD BOY--MEMORIES AND ESCAPADES--LAURA AND MARGOT; PROPOSALS
OF MARRIAGE--NEW MEN FRIENDS--LAURA ENGAGED; PROPOSAL IN THE
DUSK--MARGOT'S ACCIDENT IN HUNTING FIELD--LAURA'S PREMONITION OF
DEATH IN CHILD-BIRTH--LAURA'S WILL


My home, Glen, is on the border of Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire,
sixteen miles from Abbotsford and thirty from Edinburgh. It was
designed on the lines of Glamis and Castle Fraser, in what is
called Scottish baronial style. I well remember the first shock I
had when some one said: "I hate turrets and tin men on the top of
them!" It unsettled me for days. I had never imagined that
anything could be more beautiful than Glen. The classical style of
Whittingehame--and other fine places of the sort--appeared to me
better suited for municipal buildings; the beams and flint in
Cheshire reminded me of Earl's Court; and such castles as I had
seen looked like the pictures of the Rhine on my blotting-book. I
was quite ignorant and "Scottish baronial" thrilled me.

What made Glen really unique was not its architecture but its
situation. The road by which you approached it was a cul-de-sac
and led to nothing but moors. This--and the fact of its being ten
miles from a railway station--gave it security in its wildness.
Great stretches of heather swept down to the garden walls; and,
however many heights you climbed, moor upon moor rose in front of
you.

Evan Charteris [Footnote: The Hon. Evan Charteris] said that my
hair was biography: as it is my only claim to beauty, I would like
to think that this is true, but the hills at Glen are my real
biography.

Nature inoculates its lovers from its own culture; sea, downs and
moors produce a different type of person. Shepherds, fishermen and
poachers are a little like what they contemplate and, were it
possible to ask the towns to tell us whom they find most
untamable, I have not a doubt that they would say, those who are
born on the moors.

I married late--at the age of thirty--and spent all my early life
at Glen. I was a child of the heather and quite untamable. After
my sister Laura Lyttelton died, my brother Eddy and I lived alone
with my parents for nine years at Glen.

When he was abroad shooting big game, I spent long days out of
doors, seldom coming in for lunch. Both my pony and my hack were
saddled from 7 a.m., ready for me to ride, every day of my life. I
wore the shortest of tweed skirts, knickerbockers of the same
stuff, top-boots, a covert-coat and a coloured scarf round my
head. I was equipped with a book, pencils, cigarettes and food.
Every shepherd and poacher knew me; and I have often shared my
"piece" with them, sitting in the heather near the red burns, or
sheltered from rain in the cuts and quarries of the open road.

After my first great sorrow--the death of my sister Laura--I was
suffocated in the house and felt I had to be out of doors from
morning till night.

One day I saw an old shepherd called Gowanlock coming up to me,
holding my pony by the rein. I had never noticed that it had
strayed away and, after thanking him, I observed him looking at me
quietly--he knew something of the rage and anguish that Laura's
death had brought into my heart--and putting his hand on my
shoulder, he said:

"My child, there's no contending. ... Ay--ay"--shaking his
beautiful old head--"THAT IS SO, there's no contending. ..."

Another day, when it came on to rain, I saw a tramp crouching
under the dyke, holding an umbrella over his head and eating his
lunch. I went and sat down beside him and we fell into desultory
conversation. He had a grand, wild face and I felt some curiosity
about him; but he was taciturn and all he told me was that he was
walking to the Gordon Arms, on his way to St. Mary's Loch. I asked
him every sort of question--as to where he had come from, where he
was going to and what he wanted to do--but he refused to gratify
my curiosity, so I gave him one of my cigarettes and a light and
we sat peacefully smoking together in silence. When the rain
cleared, I turned to him and said:

"You seem to walk all day and go nowhere; when you wake up in the
morning, how do you shape your course?"

To which he answered:

"I always turn my back to the wind."

Border people are more intelligent than those born in the South;
and the people of my birthplace are a hundred years in advance of
the Southern English even now.

When I was fourteen, I met a shepherd-boy reading a French book.
It was called "Le Secret de Delphine." I asked him how he came to
know French and he told me it was the extra subject he had been
allowed to choose for studying in his holidays; he walked eighteen
miles a day to school--nine there and nine back--taking his
chance of a lift from any passing vehicle. I begged him to read
out loud to me, but he was shy of his accent and would not do it.
The Lowland Scotch were a wonderful people in my day.

I remember nothing unhappy in my glorious youth except the
violence of our family quarrels. Reckless waves of high and low
spirits, added to quick tempers, obliged my mother to separate us
for some time and forbid us to sleep in the same bedroom. We raged
and ragged till the small hours of the morning, which kept us thin
and the household awake.

My mother told me two stories of myself as a little child:

"When you were sent for to come downstairs, Margot, the nurse
opened the door and you walked in--generally alone--saying,
'Here's me! ...'"

This rather sanguine opening does not seem to have been
sufficiently checked. She went on to say:

"I was dreadfully afraid you would be upset and ill when I took
you one day to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in Glasgow, as you felt
things with passionate intensity. Before starting I lifted you on
to my knee and said, 'You know, darling, I am going to take you to
see some poor people who cannot speak.' At which you put your arms
round my neck and said, with consoling emphasis, 'I will soon make
them speak!'"

The earliest event I can remember was the arrival of the new baby,
my brother Jack, when I was two years old. Dr. Cox was spoiling my
mother's good-night visit while I was being dried after my bath.
My pink flannel dressing-gown, with white buttonhole stitching,
was hanging over the fender; and he was discussing some earnest
subject in a low tone. He got up and, pinching my chin said:

"She will be very angry, but we will give her a baby of her own,"
or words to that effect.

The next day a huge doll obliterated from my mind the new baby
which had arrived that morning.

We were left very much alone in our nursery, as my mother
travelled from pillar to post, hunting for health for her child
Pauline. Our nurse, Mrs. Hills--called "Missuls" for short--left
us on my tenth birthday to become my sister's lady's-maid, and
this removed our first and last restriction.

We were wild children and, left to ourselves, had the time of our
lives. I rode my pony up the front stairs and tried to teach my
father's high-stepping barouche-horses to jump--crashing their
knees into the hurdles in the field--and climbed our incredibly
dangerous roof, sitting on the sweep's ladder by moonlight in my
nightgown. I had scrambled up every tree, walked on every wall and
knew every turret at Glen. I ran along the narrow ledges of the
slates in rubber shoes at terrific heights. This alarmed other
people so much that my father sent for me one day to see him in
his "business room" and made me swear before God that I would give
up walking on the roof; and give it up I did, with many tears.

Laura and I were fond of acting and dressing up. We played at
being found in dangerous and adventurous circumstances in the
garden. One day the boys were rabbit-shooting and we were acting
with the doctor's daughter. I had spoilt the game by running round
the kitchen-garden wall instead of being discovered--as I was
meant to be--in a Turkish turban, smoking on the banks of the
Bosphorus. Seeing that things were going badly and that the others
had disappeared, I took a wild jump into the radishes. On landing
I observed a strange gentleman coming up the path. He looked at my
torn gingham frock, naked legs, tennis shoes and dishevelled curls
under an orange turban; and I stood still and gazed at him.

"This is a wonderful place," he said; to which I replied:

"You like it?"

HE: "I would like to see the house. I hear there are beautiful
things in it."

MARGOT: "I think the drawing-rooms are all shut up."

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, finishing 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 glass 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-class at the minister's and an arithmetic-class
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 class, 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
amusements, 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 assumed 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 glass 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 God'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 passionate, 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 passages 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 godfather, Godfrey 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 God 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 passionate 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.

One day, about the time of which I am writing, I was thirteen; I
took a letter out of the pocket of what I thought was my skirt and
read it; it was from Laura to my eldest sister Posie and, though I
do not remember it all, one sentence was burnt into me:

"Does it not seem extraordinary that Margot should be teaching a
Sunday class?"

I wondered why any one should think it extraordinary! I went
upstairs and cried in a small black cupboard, where I generally
disappeared when life seemed too much for me.

The Sunday class I taught need have disturbed no one, for I regret
to relate that, after a striking lesson on the birth of Christ,
when I asked my pupils who the Virgin was, one of the most
promising said:

"Queen Victoria!"

The idea had evidently gone abroad that I was a frivolous
character; this hurt and surprised me. Naughtiness and frivolity
are different, and I was always deeply in earnest.

Laura was more gentle than I was; and her goodness resolved itself
into greater activity.

She and I belonged to a reading-class. I read more than she did
and at greater speed, but we were all readers and profited by a
climate which kept us indoors and a fine library. The class
obliged us to read an hour a day, which could not be called
excessive, but the real test was doing the same thing at the same
time. I would have preferred three or four hours' reading on wet
days and none on fine, But not so our Edinburgh tutor.

Laura started the Girls' Friendly Society in the village, which
was at that time famous for its drunkenness and immorality. We
drove ourselves to the meetings in a high two-wheeled dog-cart
behind a fast trotter, coming back late in pitch darkness along
icy roads. These drives to Innerleithen and our moonlight talks
are among my most precious recollections.

At the meetings--after reading aloud to the girls while they sewed
and knitted--Laura would address them. She gave a sort of lesson,
moral, social and religious, and they all adored her. More
remarkable at her age than speaking to mill-girls were her Sunday
classes at Glen, in the housekeeper's room. I do not know one girl
now of any age--Laura was only sixteen--who could talk on
religious subjects with profit to the butler, housekeeper and
maids, or to any grown-up people, on a Sunday afternoon.

Compared with what the young men have written and published during
this war, Laura's literary promise was not great; both her prose
and her poetry were less remarkable than her conversation.

She was not so good a judge of character as I was and took many a
goose for a swan, but, in consequence of this, she made people of
both sexes--and even all ages--twice as good, clever and
delightful as they would otherwise have been.

I have never succeeded in making any one the least different from
what they are and, in my efforts to do so, have lost every female
friend that I have ever had (with the exception of four). This was
the true difference between us. I have never influenced anybody
but my own two children, Elizabeth and Anthony, but Laura had such
an amazing effect upon men and women that for years after she died
they told me that she had both changed and made their lives. This
is a tremendous saying. When I die, people may turn up and try to
make the world believe that I have influenced them and women may
come forward whom I adored and who have quarrelled with me and
pretend that they always loved me, but I wish to put it on record
that they did not, or, if they did, their love is not my kind of
love and I have no use for it.

The fact is that I am not touchy or impenitent myself and forget
that others may be and I tell people the truth about themselves,
while Laura made them feel it. I do not think I should mind
hearing from any one the naked truth about myself; and on the few
occasions when it has happened to me, I have not been in the least
offended. My chief complaint is that so few love one enough, as
one grows older, to say what they really think; nevertheless I
have often wished that I had been born with Laura's skill and tact
in dealing with men and women. In her short life she influenced
more people than I have done in over twice as many years. I have
never influenced people even enough to make them change their
stockings! And I have never succeeded in persuading any young
persons under my charge--except my own two children--to say that
they were wrong or sorry, nor at this time of life do I expect to
do so.

There was another difference between Laura and me: she felt sad
when she refused the men who proposed to her; I pitied no man who
loved me. I told Laura that both her lovers and mine had a very
good chance of getting over it, as they invariably declared
themselves too soon. We were neither of us au fond very
susceptible. It was the custom of the house that men should be in
love with us, but I can truly say that we gave quite as much as we
received.

I said to Rowley Leigh [Footnote: The Hon. Rowland Leigh, of
Stoneleigh Abbey.]--a friend of my brother Eddy's and one of the
first gentlemen that ever came to Glen--when he begged me to go
for a walk with him:

"Certainly, if you won't ask me to marry you."

To which he replied:

"I never thought of it!"

"That's all right!" said I, putting my arm confidingly and
gratefully through his.

He told me afterwards that he had been making up his mind and
changing it for days as to how he should propose.

Sir David Tennant, a former Speaker at Cape Town and the most
distant of cousins, came to stay at Glen with his son, a young man
of twenty. After a few days, the young man took me into one of the
conservatories and asked me to marry him. I pointed out that I
hardly knew him by sight, and that "he was running hares." He took
it extremely well and, much elated, I returned to the house to
tell Laura. I found her in tears; she told me Sir David Tennant
had asked her to marry him and she had been obliged to refuse. I
cheered her up by pointing out that it would have been awkward had
we both accepted, for, while remaining my sister, she would have
become my mother-in-law and my husband's stepmother.

We were not popular in Peeblesshire, partly because we had no
county connection, but chiefly because we were Liberals. My father
had turned out the sitting Tory, Sir Graham Montgomery, of Stobo,
and was member for the two counties Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire.
As Sir Graham had represented the counties for thirty years, this
was resented by the Montgomery family, who proceeded to cut us.
Laura was much worried over this, but I was amused. I said the
love of the Maxwell Stuarts, Maxwell Scotts, Wolfe Murrays and Sir
Thomas--now Lord--Carmichael was quite enough for me and that if
she liked she could twist Sir Graham Montgomery round her little
finger; as a matter of fact, neither Sir Graham nor his sons
disliked us. I met Basil Montgomery at Traquair House many years
after my papa's election, where we were entertained by Herbert
Maxwell--the owner of one of the most romantic houses in Scotland,
and our most courteous and affectionate neighbour. Not knowing who
he was, I was indignant when he told me he thought Peeblesshire
was dull; I said where we lived it was far from dull and asked him
if he knew many people in the county. To which he answered:

"Chiefly the Stobo lot."

At this I showed him the most lively sympathy and invited him to
come to Glen. In consequence of this visit he told me years
afterwards his fortune had been made. My father took a fancy to
him and at my request employed him on the Stock Exchange.

Laura and I shared the night nursery together till she married;
and, in spite of mixed proposals, we were devoted friends. We read
late in bed, sometimes till three in the morning, and said our
prayers out loud to each other every night. We were discussing
imagination one night and were comparing Hawthorne, De Quincey,
Poe and others, in consequence of a dispute arising out of one of
our pencil-games; and we argued till the housemaid came in with
the hot water at eight in the morning.

I will digress here to explain our after-dinner games. There were
several, but the best were what Laura and I invented: one was
called "Styles," another "Clumps"--better known as "Animal,
Vegetable or Mineral"--a third, "Epigrams" and the most dangerous
of all "Character Sketches." We were given no time-limit, but sat
feverishly silent in different corners of the room, writing as
hard as we could. When it was agreed that we had all written
enough, the manuscripts were given to our umpire, who read them
out loud. Votes were then taken as to the authorship, which led to
first-rate general conversation on books, people and manner of
writing. We have many interesting umpires, beginning with Bret
Harte and Laurence Oliphant and going on to Arthur Balfour, George
Curzon, George Wyndham, Lionel Tennyson, [Footnote: Brother of
the present Lord Tennyson.] Harry Cust and Doll Liddell: all good
writers themselves.

Some of our guests preferred making caricatures to competing in
the more ambitious line of literature. I made a drawing of the
Dowager Countess of Aylesbury, better known as "Lady A."; Colonel
Saunderson--a famous Orangeman--did a sketch of Gladstone for me;
while Alma Tadema gave me one of Queen Victoria, done in four
lines.

These games were good for our tempers and a fine training; any
loose vanity, jealousy, or over-competitiveness were certain to be
shown up; and those who took the buttons off the foils in the duel
of argument--of which I have seen a good deal in my life--were
instantly found out. We played all our games with much greater
precision and care than they are played now and from practice
became extremely good at them. I never saw a playing-card at Glen
till after I married, though--when we were obliged to dine
downstairs to prevent the company being thirteen at dinner--I
vaguely remember a back view of my grandpapa at the card-table
playing whist.

Laura was a year and a half older than I was and came out in 1881,
while I was in Dresden. The first party that she and I went to
together was a political crush given by Sir William and Lady
Harcourt. I was introduced to Spencer Lyttleton and shortly after
this Laura met his brother Alfred.

One day, as she and I were leaving St. Paul's Cathedral, she
pointed out a young man to me and said:

"Go and ask Alfred Lyttelton to come to Glen any time this
autumn," which I promptly did.

The advent of Alfred into our family coincided with that of
several new men, the Charterises, Balfours, George Curzon, George
Wyndham, Harry Cust, the Crawleys, Jack Pease, "Harry" Paulton,
Lord Houghton, Mark Napier, Doll Liddell and others. High hopes
had been entertained by my father that some of these young men
might marry us, but after the reception we gave to Lord Lymington
--who, to do him justice, never proposed to any of us except in the
paternal imagination--his nerve was shattered and we were left to
ourselves.

Some weeks before Alfred's arrival, Laura had been much disturbed
by hearing that we were considered "fast"; she told me that
receiving men at midnight in our bedroom shocked people and that
we ought, perhaps, to give it up. I listened closely to what she
had to say, and at the end remarked that it appeared to me to be
quite absurd. Godfrey Webb agreed with me and said that people who
were easily shocked were like women who sell stale pastry in
cathedral towns; and he advised us to take no notice whatever of
what any one said. We hardly knew the meaning of the word "fast"
and, as my mother went to bed punctually at eleven, it was
unthinkable that men and women friends should not be allowed to
join us. Our bedroom had been converted by me out of the night-
nursery into a sitting-room. The shutters were removed and book-
shelves put in their place, an idea afterwards copied by my
friends. The Morris carpet and chintzes I had discovered for
myself and chosen in London; and my walls were ornamented with
curious objects, varying from caricatures and crucifixes to prints
of prize-fights, fox-hunts, Virgins and Wagner. In one of the
turrets I hung my clothes; in the other I put an altar on which I
kept my books of prayer and a skull which was given to me by the
shepherd's son and which is on my bookshelf now; we wore charming
dressing-jackets and sat up in bed with coloured cushions behind
our backs, while the brothers and their friends sat on the floor
or in comfortable chairs round the room. On these occasions the
gas was turned low, a brilliant fire made up and either a guest or
one of us would read by the light of a single candle, tell ghost-
stories or discuss current affairs: politics, people and books.
Not only the young, but the old men came to our gatherings. I
remember Jowett reading out aloud to us Thomas Hill Green's lay
sermons; and when he had finished I asked him how much he had
loved Green, to which he replied:

"I did not love him at all."

That these midnight meetings should shock any one appeared
fantastic; and as most people in the house agreed with me, they
were continued.

It was not this alone that disturbed Laura; she wanted to marry a
serious, manly fellow, but as she was a great flirt, other types
of a more brilliant kind obscured this vision and she had become
profoundly undecided over her own love-affairs; they had worked so
much upon her nerves that when Mr. Lyttelton came to Glen she was
in bed with acute neuralgia and unable to see him.

My father welcomed Alfred warmly, for, apart from his charming
personality, he was Gladstone's nephew and had been brought up in
the Liberal creed.

On the evening of his arrival, we all went out after dinner. There
had been a terrific gale which had destroyed half a wood on a hill
in front of the library windows and we wanted to see the roots of
the trees blown up by dynamite. It was a moonlight night, but the
moon is always brighter in novels than in life and it was pitch
dark. Alfred and I, walking arm in arm, talked gaily to each other
as we stumbled over the broken brushwood by the side of the Quair
burn. As we approached the wood a white birch lay across the water
at a slanting angle and I could not resist leaving Alfred's side
to walk across it. It was, however, too slippery for me and I
fell. Alfred plunged into the burn and scrambled me out. I landed
on my feet and, except for sopping stockings, no harm was done.
Our party had scattered in the dark and, as it was past midnight,
we walked back to the house alone. When we returned, we found
everybody had gone to their rooms and Alfred suggested carrying me
up to bed. As I weighed under eight stone, he lifted me up like a
toy and deposited me on my bed. Kneeling down, he kissed my hand
and said good night to me.

Two days after this my brother Eddy and I travelled North for the
Highland meeting. Laura, who had been gradually recovering, was
well enough to leave her room that day; and I need hardly say that
this had the immediate effect of prolonging Alfred's visit.

On my return to Glen ten days later she told me she had made up
her mind to marry Alfred Lyttleton.

After what Mrs. Lyttelton has written of her husband, there is
little to add, but I must say one word of my brother-in-law as he
appeared to me in those early days.

Alfred Lyttelton was a vital, splendid young man of fervent
nature, even more spoilt than we were. He was as cool and as
fundamentally unsusceptible as he was responsive and emotional.
Every one adored him; he combined the prowess at games of a Greek
athlete with moral right-mindedness of a high order. He was
neither a gambler nor an artist. He respected discipline, but
loathed asceticism.

What interested me most in him was not his mind--which lacked
elasticity--but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the
will of God and his perfect freedom from cant. His mentality was
brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny
and serene in games. There are people who thought Alfred was a man
of strong physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had
achieved complete self-mastery, but nothing was farther from the
truth. In him you found combined an ardent nature, a cool
temperament and a peppery intellectual temper. Alfred would have
been justified in taking out a patent in himself as an Englishman,
warranted like a dye never to lose colour. To him most foreigners
were frogs. In Edward Lyttelton's admirable monograph of his
brother, you will read that one day, when Alfred was in the train,
sucking an orange, "a small, grubby Italian, leaning on his
walking-stick, smoking a cheroot at the station," was looked
upon, not only by Alfred but by his biographer, as an
"irresistible challenge to fling the juicy, but substantial,
fragment full at the unsuspecting foreigner's cheek." At this we
are told that "Alfred collapsed into noble convulsions of
laughter." I quote this incident, as it illustrates the difference
between the Tennant and the Lyttelton sense of humour. Their
laughter was a tornado or convulsion to which they succumbed; and
even the Hagley ragging, though, according to Edward Lyttelton's
book, it was only done with napkins, sounds formidable enough.
Laura and Alfred enjoyed many things together--books, music and
going to church--but they did not laugh at the same things. I
remember her once saying to me in a dejected voice:

"Wouldn't you have thought that, laughing as loud as the
Lytteltons do, they would have loved Lear? Alfred says none of
them think him a bit funny and was quite testy when I said his was
the only family in the world that didn't."

It was his manliness, spirituality and freedom from pettiness that
attracted Alfred to Laura; he also had infinite charm. It might
have been said of him what the Dowager Lady Grey wrote of her
husband to Henry when thanking him for his sympathy:

"He lit so many fires in cold rooms."

After Alfred's death, my husband said this of him in the House of
Commons:

It would not, I think, be doing justice to the feelings which are
uppermost in many of our hearts, if we passed to the business of
the day without taking notice of the fresh gap which has been made
in our ranks by the untimely death of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton. It is
a loss of which I hardly trust myself to speak; for, apart from
ties of relationship, there had subsisted between us for thirty-
three years, a close friendship and affection which no political
differences were ever allowed to loosen, or even to affect. Nor
could I better describe it than by saying that he, perhaps, of all
men of this generation, came nearest to the mould and ideal of
manhood, which every English father would like to see his son
aspire to, and, if possible, to attain. The bounty of nature,
enriched and developed not only by early training, but by constant
self-discipline through life, blended in him gifts and graces
which, taken alone, are rare, and in such attractive union are
rarer still. Body, mind and character, the schoolroom, the cricket
field, the Bar, the House of Commons--each made its separate
contribution to the faculty and the experience of a many-sided and
harmonious whole. But what he was he gave--gave with such ease
and exuberance that I think it may be said without exaggeration
that wherever he moved he seemed to radiate vitality and charm. He
was, as we here know, a strenuous fighter. He has left behind him
no resentments and no enmity; nothing but a gracious memory of a
manly and winning personality, the memory of one who served with
an unstinted measure of devotion his generation and country. He
has been snatched away in what we thought was the full tide of
buoyant life, still full of promise and of hope. What more can we
say? We can only bow once again before the decrees of the Supreme
Wisdom. Those who loved him--and they are many, in all schools of
opinion, in all ranks and walks of life--when they think of him,
will say to themselves:

   This is the happy warrior, this is he
   Who every man in arms should wish to be.

On the occasion of Alfred Lyttelton's second visit to Glen, I will
quote my diary:

"Laura came into my bedroom. She was in a peignoir and asked me
what she should wear for dinner. I said:

"'Your white muslin, and hurry up. Mr. Lyttelton is strumming in
the Doo'cot and you had better go and entertain him, poor fellow,
as he is leaving for London tonight.'

"She tied a blue ribbon in her hair, hastily thrust her diamond
brooch into her fichu and then, with her eyes very big and her
hair low and straight upon her forehead, she went into our
sitting-room (we called it the Doo'cot, because we all quarrelled
there). Feeling rather small, but, half-shy, half-bold, she shut
the door and, leaning against it, watched Alfred strumming. He
turned and gazed at the little figure so near him, so delicate in
her white dress.

"The silence was broken by Alfred asking her if any man ever left
Glen without telling her that he loved her; but suddenly all talk
stopped and she was in his arms, hiding her little face against
his hard coat. There was no one to record what followed; only the
night rising with passionate eyes:

'The hiding, receiving night that talks not.'

"They were married on the 10th of May, 1885. "In April of 1886,
Laura's baby was expected any day; and my mother was anxious that
I should not be near her when the event took place. The Lytteltons
lived in Upper Brook Street; and, Grosvenor Square being near, it
was thought that any suffering on her part might make a lasting
and painful impression on me, so I was sent down to Easton Grey to
stay with Lucy and hunt in the Badminton country. Before going
away, I went round to say good-bye to Laura and found her in a
strange humour.

"LAURA: 'I am sure I shall die with my baby.'

"MARGOT: 'How can you talk such nonsense? Every one thinks that.
Look at mamma! She had twelve children without a pang!'

"LAURA: 'I know she did; but I am sure I shall die.'

"MARGOT: 'I am just as likely to be killed out hunting as you are
to die, darling! It makes me miserable to hear you talk like
this.'

"LAURA: 'If I die, Margot, I want you to read my will to the
relations and people that will be in my bedroom. It is in that
drawer. Promise me you will not forget.'

"MARGOT: 'All right, darling, I will; but let us kneel down and
pray that, whether it is me or you who die first, if it is God's
will, one of us may come to the other down here and tell us the
truth about the next world and console us as much as possible in
this!'"

We knelt and prayed and, though I was more removed from the world
and in the humour both to see and to hear what was not material,
in my grief over Laura's death, which took place ten days later, I
have never heard from her or of her from that day to this.

Mrs. Lyttelton has told the story of her husband's first marriage
with so much perfection that I hesitate to go over the same ground
again, but, as my sister Laura's death had more effect on me than
any event in my life, except my own marriage and the birth of my
children, I must copy a short account of it written at that time:

'On Saturday, 17th April, 1886, I was riding down a green slope in
Gloucestershire while the Beaufort hounds were scattered below
vainly trying to pick up the scent; they were on a stale line and
the result had been general confusion. It was a hot day and the
woods were full of children and primroses.

"The air was humming with birds and insects, nature wore an
expectant look and all the hedge-rows sparkled with the spangles
of the spring. There was a prickly gap under a tree which divided
me from my companions. I rode down to jump it, but, whether from
breeding, laziness or temper, my horse turned round and refused to
move. I took my foot out of the stirrup and gave him a slight
kick. I remember nothing after that till I woke up in a cottage
with a tremendous headache. They said that the branch was too low,
or the horse jumped too big and a withered bough had caught me in
the face. In consequence I had concussion of the brain; and my
nose and upper lip were badly torn. I was picked up by my early
fiance. He tied my lip to my hair--as it was reposing on my chin--
and took me home in a cart. The doctor was sent for, but there was
no time to give me chloroform. I sat very still from vanity while
three stitches were put through the most sensitive part of my
nose. When it was all over, I looked at myself in the looking-
glass and burst into tears. I had never been very pretty ("worse
than that," as the Marquis of Soveral [Footnote: The Late
Portuguese Minister.] said) but I had a straight nose and a look
of intelligence; and now my face would be marked for life like a
German student's.

"The next day a telegram arrived saying: "'Laura confined--a boy--
both doing well.'

"We sent back a message saying: "'Hurrah and blessing!'

On Sunday we received a letter from Charty saying Laura was very
ill and another on Monday telling us to go to London. I was in a
state of acute anxiety and said to the doctor I must go and see
Laura immediately, but he would not hear of it:

"'Impossible! You'll get erysipelas and die. Most dangerous to
move with a face like that,' he said.

"On the occasion of his next visit, I was dressed and walking up
and down the room in a fume of nervous excitement, for go I WOULD.
Laura was dying (I did not really think she was, but I wanted to
be near her). I insisted upon his taking the stitches out of my
face and ultimately he had to give in. At 6 p.m. I was in the
train for London, watching the telegraph-posts flying past me.

"My mind was going over every possibility. I was sitting near her
bed with the baby on my arm, chattering over plans, arranging
peignoirs, laughing at the nurse's anecdotes, talking and
whispering over the thousand feminine things that I knew she would
be longing to hear. ... Or perhaps she was dying... asking for me
and wondering why I did not come... thinking I was hunting instead
of being with her. Oh, how often the train stopped! Did any one
really live at these stations? No one got out; they did not look
like real places; why should the train stop? Should I tell them
Laura was dying? ... We had prayed so often to die the same day.
.. Surely she was not going to die... it could not be... her
vitality was too splendid, her youth too great... God would not
allow this thing. How stiff my face felt with its bandages; and if
I cried they would all come off!

"At Swindon I had to change. I got out and sat in the vast eating-
room, with its atmosphere of soup and gas. A crowd of people were
talking of a hunting accident: this was mine. Then a woman came in
and put her bag down. A clergyman shook hands with her; he said
some one had died. I moved away.

"'World! Trewth! The Globe! Paper, miss? Paper? ...'

"'No, thank you.'

"'London train!' was shouted and I got in. I knew by the loud
galloping sound that we were going between high houses and at each
gallop the wheels seemed to say, 'Too late--too late!' After a
succession of hoarse screams we dashed into Paddington.

"It was midnight. I saw a pale, grave face, and recognised Evan
Charteris, who had come in Lady Wemyss' brougham to meet me. I
said:

'"Is she dead?' "To which he answered: "'No, but very, very ill.'
"We drove in silence to 4 Upper Brook Street.

Papa, Jack and Godfrey Webb stood in the hall. They stopped me as
I passed and said: 'She is no worse'; but I could not listen. I
saw Arthur Balfour and Spencer Lyttelton standing near the door of
Alfred's room. They said: "'You look ill. Have you had a fall?'

"I explained the plaster on my swollen face and asked if I might
go upstairs to see Laura; and they said they thought I might. When
I got to the top landing, I stood in the open doorway of the
boudoir. A man was sitting in an arm-chair by a table with a
candle on it. It was Alfred and I passed on. I saw the silhouette
of a woman through the open door of Laura's room; this was Charty.
We held each other close to our hearts... her face felt hot and
her eyes were heavy.

"'Don't look at her to-night, sweet. She is unconscious,' she
said.

"I did not take this in and asked to be allowed to say one word to
her. ... I said:

"'I know she'd like to see me, darling, if only just to nod to,
and I promise I will go away quickly. Indeed, indeed I would not
tire her! I want to tell her the train was late and the doctor
would not let me come up yesterday. Only one second, PLEASE,
Charty! ...'

"'But, my darling heart, she's unconscious. She has never been
conscious all day. She would not know you!'

"I sank stunned upon the stair. Some one touched my shoulder:

"'You had better go to bed, it is past one. No, you can't sleep
here: there's no bed. You must lie down; a sofa won't do, you are
too ill. Very well, then, you are not ill, but you will be to-
morrow if you don't go to bed.'

"I found myself in the street, Arthur Balfour holding one of my
arms and Spencer Lyttelton the other. They took me to 40 Grosvenor
Square. I went to bed and early next morning I went across to
Upper Brook Street. The servant looked happy:

"'She's better, miss, and she's conscious.'

"I flew upstairs, and Charty met me in her dressing-gown. She was
calm and capable as always, but a new look, less questioning and
more intense, had come into her face. She said:

"'You can go in now.'

"I felt a rushing of my soul and an over-eagerness that half-
stopped me as I opened the door and stood at the foot of the
wooden bed and gazed at what was left of Laura.

"Her face had shrunk to the size of a child's; her lashes lay a
black wall on the whitest of cheeks; her hair was hanging dragged
up from her square brow in heavy folds upon the pillow. Her mouth
was tightly shut and a dark blood-stain marked her chin. After a
long silence, she moved and muttered and opened her eyes. She
fixed them on me, and my heart stopped. I stretched my hands out
towards her, and said, 'Laura!'... But the sound died; she did not
know me. I knew after that she could not live.

"People went away for the Easter Holidays: Papa to North Berwick,
Arthur Balfour to Westward Ho! and every day Godfrey Webb rode a
patient cob up to the front door, to hear that she was no better.
I sat on the stairs listening to the roar of London and the clock
in the library. The doctor--Matthews Duncan--patted my head
whenever he passed me on the stair and said, in his gentle Scotch
accent:

"'Poor little girl! Poor, poor little girl!'

"I was glad he did not say that 'while there was life there was
hope,' or any of the medical platitudes, or I would have replied
that he LIED. There was no hope--none! ...

"One afternoon I went with Lucy to St. George's, Hanover Square.
The old man was sweeping out the church; and we knelt and prayed.
Laura and I have often knelt side by side at that altar and I
never feel alone when I am in front of the mysterious Christ-
picture, with its bars of violet and bunches of grapes.

"On my return I went upstairs and lay on the floor of Laura's
bedroom, watching Alfred kneeling by her side with his arms over
his head. Charty sat with her hands clasped; a single candle
behind her head transfigured her lovely hair into a halo. Suddenly
Laura opened her eyes and, turning them slowly on Charty, said:

"'You are HEAVENLY! . . .'

"A long pause, and then while we were all three drawing near her
bed we heard her say:

"'I think God has forgotten me.'

"The fire was weaving patterns on the ceiling; every shadow seemed
to be looking with pity on the silence of that room, the long
silence that has never been broken.

"I did not go home that night, but slept at Alfred's house. Lucy
had gone to the early Communion, but I had not accompanied her,
as I was tired of praying. I must have fallen into a heavy sleep,
when suddenly I felt some one touching my bed. I woke with a start
and saw nurse standing beside me. She said in a calm voice:

"'My dear, you must come. Don't look like that; you won't be able
to walk.'

"Able to walk! Of course I was! I was in my dressing-gown and
downstairs in a flash and on to the bed. The room was full of
people. I lay with my arm under Laura, as I did in the old Glen
days, when after our quarrels we crept into each other's beds
to'make it up.' Alfred was holding one of her hands against his
forehead; and Charty was kneeling at her feet.

"She looked much the same, but a deeper shadow ran under her brow
and her mouth seemed to be harder shut. I put my cheek against her
shoulder and felt the sharpness of her spine. For a minute we lay
close to each other, while the sun, fresh from the dawn, played
upon the window-blinds. ... Then her breathing stopped; she gave a
shiver and died. ... The silence was so great that I heard the
flight of Death and the morning salute her soul.

"I went downstairs and took her will out of the drawer where she
had put it and told Alfred what she had asked me to do. The room
was dark with people; and a tall man, gaunt and fervid, was
standing up saying a prayer. When he had finished I read the will
through:

My Will [Footnote: The only part of the will I have left out is a
few names with blank spaces which she intended to fill up.], made
by me, Laura Mary Octavia Lyttelton, February, 1886.

"I have not much to leave behind me, should I die next month,
having my treasure deep in my heart where no one can reach it, and
where even Death cannot enter. But there are some things that have
long lain at the gates of my Joy House that in some measure have
the colour of my life in them, and would, by rights of love,
belong to those who have entered there. I should like Alfred to
give these things to my friends, not because my friends will care
so much for them, but because they will love best being where I
loved to be.

"I want, first of all, to tell Alfred that all I have in the world
and all I am and ever shall be, belongs to him, and to him more
than any one, so that if I leave away from him anything that
speaks to him of a joy unknown to me, or that he holds dear for
any reason wise or unwise, it is his, and my dear friends will
forgive him and me.

"So few women have been as happy as I have been every hour since I
married--so few have had such a wonderful sky of love for their
common atmosphere, that perhaps it will seem strange when I write
down that the sadness of Death and Parting is greatly lessened to
me by the fact of my consciousness of the eternal, indivisible
oneness of Alfred and me. I feel as long as he is down here I must
be here, silently, secretly sitting beside him as I do every
evening now, however much my soul is the other side, and that if
Alfred were to die, we would be as we were on earth, love as we
did this year, only fuller, quicker, deeper than ever, with a
purer passion and a wiser worship. Only in the meantime, whilst my
body is hid from him and my eyes cannot see him, let my trivial
toys be his till the morning comes when nothing will matter
because all is spirit.

"If my baby lives I should like it to have my pearls. I do not
love my diamond necklace, so I won't leave it to any one.

"I would like Alfred to have my Bible. It has always rather
worried him to hold because it is so full of things; but if I know
I am dying, I will clean it out, because, I suppose, he won't like
to after. I think I am fonder of it--not, I mean, because it's the
Bible--but because it's such a friend, and has been always with
me, chiefly under my pillow, ever since I had it--than of anything
I possess, and I used to read it a great deal when I was much
better than I am now. I love it very much, so, Alfred, you must
keep it for me.

"Then the prayer book Francie [Footnote: Lady Horner, of Mells.]
gave me is what I love next, and I love it so much I feel I would
like to take it with me. Margot wants a prayer book, so I leave it
to her. It is so dirty outside, but perhaps it would be a pity to
bind it. Margot is to have my darling little Daily Light, too.

"Then Charty is to have my paste necklace she likes, and any two
prints she cares to have, and my little trefeuille diamond brooch
--oh! and the Hope she painted for me. I love it very much, and my
amethyst beads.

"Little Barbara is to have my blue watch, and Tommy my watch--
there is no chain.

"Then Lucy is to have my Frances belt, because a long time ago the
happiest days of my girlhood were when we first got to know
Francie, and she wore that belt in the blue days at St. Moritz
when we met her at church and I became her lover; and I want Lucy
to have my two Blakes and the dear little Martin Schongaun Madonna
and Baby--dear little potbellied baby, sucking his little sacred
thumb in a garden with a beautiful wall and a little pigeon-house
turret. I bought it myself, and do rather think it was clever of
me--all for a pound.

"And Posie is to have my little diamond wreaths, and she must
leave them to Joan, [Footnote: My niece, Mrs. Jamie Lindsay.] and
she is to have my garnets too, because she used to like them, and
my Imitation and Marcus Aurelius.

"I leave Eddy my little diamond necklace for his wife, and he must
choose a book.

"And Frank is just going to be married, so I would like him to
have some bit of my furniture, and his wife my little silver
clock.

"I leave Jack the little turquoise ring Graham gave me. He must
have it made into a stud.

"Then I want Lavinia [Footnote: Lavinia Talbot is wife of the
present Bishop of Winchester] to have my bagful of silver
dressing-things Papa gave me, and the little diamond and sapphire
bangle I am so fond of; and tell her what a joy it has been to
know her, and that the little open window has let in many sunrises
on my married life. She will understand.

"Then I want old Lucy [Footnote: Lady Frederick Cavendish, whose
husband was murdered in Ireland] to have my edition of the
"Pilgrim's Progress," that dear old one, and my photograph in the
silver frame of Alfred, if my baby dies too, otherwise it is to
belong to him (or her). Lucy was Alfred's little proxy-mother, and
she deserves him. He sent the photograph to me the first week we
were engaged, and I have carried it about ever since. I don't
think it very good. It always frightened me a little; it is so
stern and just, and the 'just man' has never been a hero of mine.
I love Alfred when he is what he is to me, and I don't feel that
is just, but generous.

"Then I want Edward [Footnote: The late Head Master of Eton] to
have the "Days of Creation," and Charles [Footnote: The present
Lord Cobham, Alfred's eldest brother] to have my first editions of
Shelley, and Arthur [Footnote: The late Hon. Arthur Temple
Lyttelton, Bishop of Southampton] my first edition of Beaumont and
Fletcher; and Kathleen [Footnote: The Late Hon. Mrs. Arthur
Lyttelton.] is to have my little silver crucifix that opens, and
Alfred must put in a little bit of my hair, and Kathleen must keep
it for my sake--I loved her from the first.

"I want Alfred to give my godchild, Cicely Horner,[Footnote: The
present Hon. Mrs. George Lambton.], the bird-brooch Burne Jones
designed, and the Sintram Arthur [Footnote: The Right Hon. Arthur
Balfour.], gave me. I leave my best friend, Frances, my grey
enamel and diamond bracelet, my first edition of Wilhelm Meister,
with the music folded up in it, and my Burne Jones ''spression'
drawings. Tell her I leave a great deal of my life with her, and
that I never can cease to be very near her.

"I leave Mary Elcho [Footnote: The present Countess of Wemyss.]
my Chippendale cradle. She must not think it bad luck. I suppose
some one else possessed it once, and, after all, it isn't as if I
died in it! She gave me the lovely hangings, and I think she will
love it a little for my sake, because I always loved cradles and
all cradled things; and I leave her my diamond and red enamel
crescent Arthur gave me. She must wear it because two of her dear
friends are in it, as it were. And I would like her to have oh!
such a blessed life, because I think her character is so full of
blessed things and symbols. ...

"I leave Arthur Balfour--Alfred's and my dear, deeply loved
friend, who has given me so many happy hours since I married, and
whose sympathy, understanding, and companionship in the deep sense
of the word has never been withheld from me when I have sought it,
which has not been seldom this year of my blessed Vita Nuova--I
leave him my Johnson. He taught me to love that wisest of men--and
I have much to be grateful for in this. I leave him, too, my
little ugly Shelley--much read, but not in any way beautiful; if
he marries I should like him to give his wife my little red enamel
harp--I shall never see her if I die now, but I have so often
created her in the Islands of my imagination--and as a Queen has
she reigned there, so that I feel in the spirit we are in some
measure related by some mystic tie."

Out of the many letters Alfred received, this is the one I liked
best:

HAWARDEN CASTLE,

April 27th, 1886. MY DEAR ALFRED,

It is a daring and perhaps a selfish thing to speak to you at a
moment when your mind and heart are a sanctuary in which God is
speaking to you in tones even more than usually penetrating and
solemn. Certainly it pertains to few to be chosen to receive such
lessons as are being taught you. If the wonderful trials of
Apostles, Saints and Martyrs have all meant a love in like
proportion wonderful, then, at this early period of your life,
your lot has something in common with theirs, and you will bear
upon you life-long marks of a great and peculiar dispensation
which may and should lift you very high. Certainly you two who are
still one were the persons whom in all the vast circuit of London
life those near you would have pointed to as exhibiting more than
any others the promise and the profit of BOTH worlds. The call
upon you for thanksgiving seemed greater than on any one--you will
not deem it lessened now. How eminently true it is of her that in
living a short she fulfilled a long time. If Life is measured by
intensity, hers was a very long life--and yet with that rich
development of mental gifts, purity and singleness made her one of
the little children of whom and of whose like is the Kingdom of
Heaven. Bold would it indeed be to say such a being died
prematurely. All through your life, however it be prolonged, what
a precious possession to you she will be. But in giving her to
your bodily eye and in taking her away the Almighty has specially
set His seal upon you. To Peace and to God's gracious mercy let us
heartily, yes, cheerfully, commend her. Will you let Sir Charles
and Lady Tennant and all her people know how we feel with and for
them?

Ever your affec.

W. E. GLADSTONE.

Matthew Arnold sent me this poem because Jowett told him I said it
might have been written for Laura:

REQUIESCAT

   Strew on her roses, roses,
   And never a spray of yew!
   In quiet she reposes;
   Ah, would that I did too!

   Her mirth the world required;
   She bathed it in smiles of glee.
   But her heart was tired, tired,
   And now they let her be.

   Her life was turning, turning,
   In mazes of heat and sound,
   But for peace her soul was yearning,
   And now peace laps her round.

   Her cabin'd, ample spirit,
   It flutter'd and fail'd for breath.
   To-night it doth inherit
   The vasty hall of death.





CHAPTER III

SLUMMING IN LONDON; ADVENTURE IN WHITECHAPEL; BRAWL IN A SALOON;
OUTINGS WITH WORKING GIRLS--MARGOT MEETS THE PRINCESS OF WALES--
GOSSIP OVER FRIENDSHIP WITH PRINCE OF WALES--LADY RANDOLPH
CHURCHILL'S BALL--MARGOT'S FIRST HUNT; ECCENTRIC DUKE OF BEAUFORT;
FALLS IN LOVE AT SEVENTEEN; COMMANDEERS A HORSE


After Laura's death I spent most of my time in the East End of
London. One day, when I was walking in the slums of Whitechapel, I
saw a large factory and girls of all ages pouring in and out of
it. Seeing the name "Cliffords" on the door, I walked in and asked
a workman to show me his employer's private room. He indicated
with his finger where it was and I knocked and went in. Mr.
Cliffords, the owner of the factory, had a large red face and was
sitting in a bare, squalid room, on a hard chair, in front of his
writing-table. He glanced at me as I shut the door, but did not
stop writing. I asked him if I might visit his factory once or
twice a week and talk to the work-girls. At this he put his pen
down and said:

"Now, miss, what good do you suppose you will do here with my
girls?"

MARGOT: "It is not exactly THAT. I am not sure I can do any one
any good, but do you think I could do your girls any harm?"

CLIFFORDS: "Most certainly you could and, what is more, you WILL"

MARGOT: "How?"

CLIFFORDS: "Why, bless my soul! You'll keep them all jawing and
make them late for their work! As it is, they don't do overmuch.
Do you think my girls are wicked and that you are going to make
them good and happy and save them and all that kind of thing?"

MARGOT: "Not at all; I was not thinking of them, _I_ am so very
unhappy myself."

CLIFFORDS (RATHER MOVED AND LOOKING AT ME WITH CURIOSITY): "Oh,
that's quite another matter! If you've come here to ask me a
favour, I might consider it."

MARGOT (HUMBLY): "That is just what I have come for. I swear I
would only be with your girls in the dinner interval, but if by
accident I arrive at the wrong time I will see that they do not
stop their work. It is far more likely that they won't listen to
me at all than that they will stop working to hear what I have to
say."

CLIFFORDS: "Maybe!"

So it was fixed up. He shook me by the hand, never asked my name
and I visited his factory three days a week for eight years when I
was in London (till I married, in 1894).

The East End of London was not a new experience to me. Laura and I
had started a creche at Wapping the year I came out; and in
following up the cases of deserving beggars I had come across a
variety of slums. I have derived as much interest and more benefit
from visiting the poor than the rich and I get on better with
them. What was new to me in Whitechapel was the head of the
factory.

Mr. Cliffords was what the servants describe as "a man who keeps
himself to himself," gruff, harsh, straight and clever. He hated
all his girls and no one would have supposed, had they seen us
together, that he liked me; but, after I had observed him blocking
the light in the doorway of the room when I was speaking, I knew
that I should get on with him.

The first day I went into the barn of a place where the boxes were
made, I was greeted by a smell of glue and perspiration and a roar
of wheels on the cobblestones in the yard. Forty or fifty women,
varying in age from sixteen to sixty, were measuring, cutting and
glueing cardboard and paper together; not one of them looked up
from her work as I came in.

I climbed upon a hoarding, and kneeling down, pinned a photograph
of Laura on a space of the wall. This attracted the attention of
an elderly woman who turned to her companions and said:

"Come and have a look at this, girls! why, it's to the life!"

Seeing some of the girls leave their work and remembering my
promise to Cliffords, I jumped up and told them that in ten
minutes' time they would be having their dinners and then I would
like to speak to them, but that until then they must not stop
their work. I was much relieved to see them obey me. Some of them
kept sandwiches in dirty paper bags which they placed on the floor
with their hats, but when the ten minutes were over I was
disappointed to see nearly all of them disappear. I asked where
they had gone to and was told that they either joined the men
packers or went to the public-house round the corner.

The girls who brought sandwiches and stayed behind liked my visits
and gradually became my friends. One of them--Phoebe Whitman by
name--was beautiful and had more charm than the others for me; I
asked her one day if she would take me with her to the public-
house where she always lunched, as I had brought my food with me
in a bag and did not suppose the public-house people would mind my
eating it there with a glass of beer. This request of mine
distressed the girls who were my friends. They thought it a
terrible idea that I should go among drunkards, but I told them I
had brought a book with me which they could look at and read out
loud to each other while I was away--at which they nodded gravely
--and I went off with my beautiful cockney.

The "Peggy Bedford" was in the lowest quarter of Whitechapel and
crowded daily with sullen and sad-looking people. It was hot,
smelly and draughty. When we went in I observed that Phoebe was a
favourite; she waved her hand gaily here and there and ordered
herself a glass of bitter. The men who had been hanging about
outside and in different corners of the room joined up to the
counter on her arrival and I heard a lot of chaff going on while
she tossed her pretty head and picked at potted shrimps. The room
was too crowded for any one to notice me; and I sat quietly in a
corner eating my sandwiches and smoking my cigarette. The frosted-
glass double doors swung to and fro and the shrill voices of
children asking for drinks and carrying them away in their mugs
made me feel profoundly unhappy. I followed one little girl
through the doors out into the street and saw her give the mug to
a cabman and run off delighted with his tip. When I returned I was
deafened by a babel of voices; there was a row going on: one of
the men, drunk but good-tempered, was trying to take the flower
out of Phoebe's hat. Provoked by this, a young man began jostling
him, at which all the others pressed forward; the barman shouted
ineffectually to them to stop; they merely cursed him and said
that they were backing Phoebe. A woman, more drunk than the
others, swore at being disturbed and said that Phoebe was a
blasted something that I could not understand. Suddenly I saw her
hitting out like a prize-fighter; and the men formed a ring round
them. I jumped up, seized an under-fed, blear-eyed being who was
nearest to me and flung him out of my way. Rage and disgust
inspired me with great physical strength; but I was prevented from
breaking through the ring by a man seizing my arm and saying:

"Let be or her man will give you a damned thrashing!"

Not knowing which of the women he was alluding to, I dipped down
and, dodging the crowd, broke through the ring and flung myself
upon Phoebe; my one fear was that she would be too late for her
work and that the promise I had made to Cliffords would be broken.

Women fight very awkwardly and I was battered about between the
two. I turned and cursed the men standing round for laughing and
doing nothing and, before I could separate the combatants, I had
given and received heavy blows; but unexpected help came from a
Cliffords packer who happened to look in. We extricated ourselves
as well as we could and ran back to the factory. I made Phoebe
apologise to the chief for being late and, feeling stiff all over,
returned home to Grosvenor Square.

Cliffords, who was an expert boxer, invited me into his room on my
next visit to tell him the whole story and my shares went up.

By the end of July all the girls--about fifty-two--stayed with me
after their work and none of them went to the "Peggy Bedford."

The Whitechapel murders took place close to the factory about that
time, and the girls and I visited what the journalists call "the
scene of the tragedy." It was strange watching crowds of people
collected daily to see nothing but an archway.

I took my girls for an annual treat to the country every summer,
starting at eight in the morning and getting back to London at
midnight. We drove in three large wagonettes behind four horses,
accompanied by a brass band. On one occasion I was asked if the
day could be spent at Caterham, because there were barracks there.
I thought it a dreary place and strayed away by myself, but Phoebe
and her friends enjoyed glueing their noses to the rails and
watching the soldiers drill. I do not know how the controversy
arose, but when I joined them I heard Phoebe shout through the
railings that some one was a "bloody fish!" I warned her that I
should leave Cliffords for ever, if she went on provoking rows and
using such violent language, and this threat upset her; for a
short time she was on her best behaviour, but I confess I find the
poor just as uninfluenceable and ungrateful as the rich, and I
often wonder what became of Phoebe Whitman.

At the end of July I told the girls that I had to leave them, as I
was going back to my home in Scotland.

PHOEBE: "You don't know, lady, how much we all feels for you
having to live in the country. Why, when you pointed out to us on
the picnic-day that kind of a tower-place, with them walls and
dark trees, and said it reminded you of your home, we just looked
at each other! 'Well, I never!' sez I; and we all shuddered!"

None of the girls knew what my name was or where I lived till they
read about me in the picture-papers, eight years later at the
time of my marriage.

When I was not in the East-end of London, I wandered about looking
at the shop-windows in the West. One day I was admiring a
photograph of my sister Charty in the window of Macmichael's, when
a footman touched his hat and asked me if I would speak to "her
Grace" in the carriage. I turned round and saw the Duchess of
Manchester [Footnote: Afterwards the late Dutchess of Devonshire];
as I had never spoken to her in my life, I wondered what she could
possibly want me for. After shaking hands, she said:

"Jump in, dear child! I can't bear to see you look so sad. Jump in
and I'll take you for a drive and you can come back to tea with
me."

I got into the carriage and we drove round Hyde Park, after which
I followed her upstairs to her boudoir in Great Stanhope Street.
In the middle of tea Queen Alexandra--then Princess of Wales--
came in to see the Duchess. She ran in unannounced and kissed her
hostess.

My heart beat when I looked at her. She had more real beauty, both
of line and expression, and more dignity than any one I had ever
seen; and I can never forget that first meeting.

These were the days of the great beauties. London worshipped
beauty like the Greeks. Photographs of the Princess of Wales, Mrs.
Langtry, Mrs. Cornwallis West, Mrs. Wheeler and Lady Dudley
[Footnote: Georgiana, Countess of Dudley.] collected crowds in
front of the shop windows. I have seen great and conventional
ladies like old Lady Cadogan and others standing on iron chairs in
the Park to see Mrs. Langtry walk past; and wherever Georgiana
Lady Dudley drove there were crowds round her carriage when it
pulled up, to see this vision of beauty, holding a large holland
umbrella over the head of her lifeless husband.

Groups of beauties like the Moncrieffes, Grahams, Conynghams, de
Moleynses, Lady Mary Mills, Lady Randolph Churchill, Mrs. Arthur
Sassoon, Lady Dalhousie, Lady March, Lady Londonderry and Lady de
Grey were to be seen in the salons of the 'eighties. There is
nothing at all like this in London to-day and I doubt if there is
any one now with enough beauty or temperament to provoke a fight
in Rotten Row between gentlemen in high society: an incident of my
youth which I was privileged to witness and which caused a
profound sensation.

Queen Alexandra had a more perfect face than any of those I have
mentioned; it is visible even now, because the oval is still
there, the frownless brows, the carriage and, above all, the grace
both of movement and of gesture which made her the idol of her
people.

London society is neither better nor worse than it was in the
'eighties; there is less talent and less intellectual ambition and
much less religion; but where all the beauty has gone to I cannot
think!

When the Princess of Wales walked into the Duchess of Manchester's
boudoir that afternoon, I got up to go away, but the Duchess
presented me to her and they asked me to stay and have tea, which
I was delighted to do. I sat watching her, with my teacup in my
hand, thrilled with admiration.

Queen Alexandra's total absence of egotism and the warmth of her
manner, prompted not by consideration, but by sincerity, her
gaiety of heart and refinement--rarely to be seen in royal people
--inspired me with a love for her that day from which I have never
departed.

I had been presented to the Prince of Wales--before I met the
Princess--by Lady Dalhousie, in the Paddock at Ascot. He asked me
if I would back my fancy for the Wokingham Stakes and have a
little bet with him on the race. We walked down to the rails and
watched the horses gallop past. One of them went down in great
form; I verified him by his colours and found he was called
Wokingham. I told the Prince that he was a sure winner; but out of
so many entries no one was more surprised than I was when my horse
came romping in. I was given a gold cigarette-case and went home
much pleased.

King Edward had great charm and personality and enormous prestige;
he was more touchy than King George and fonder of pleasure. He and
Queen Alexandra, before they succeeded, were the leaders of London
society; they practically dictated what people could and could not
do; every woman wore a new dress when she dined at Marlborough
House; and we vied with each other in trying to please him.

Opinions differ as to the precise function of royalty, but no one
doubts that it is a valuable and necessary part of our
Constitution. Just as the Lord Mayor represents commerce, the
Prime Minister the Government, and the Commons the people, the
King represents society. Voltaire said we British had shown true
genius in preventing our kings by law from doing anything but
good. This sounds well, but we all know that laws do not prevent
men from doing harm.

The two kings that I have known have had in a high degree both
physical and moral courage and have shown a sense of duty
unparalleled in the Courts of Europe; it is this that has given
them their stability; and added to this their simplicity of nature
has won for them our lasting love.

They have been exceptionally fortunate in their private
secretaries: Lord Knollys and Lord Stamfordham are liberal-minded
men of the highest honour and discretion; and I am proud to call
them my friends.

Before I knew the Prince and Princess of Wales, I did not go to
fashionable balls, but after that Ascot I was asked everywhere. I
was quite unconscious of it at the time, but was told afterwards
that people were beginning to criticise me; one or two incidents
might have enlightened me had I been more aware of myself.

One night, when I was dining tete-a-tete with my beloved friend,
Godfrey Webb, in his flat in Victoria Street, my father sent the
brougham for me with a message to ask if I would accompany him to
supper at Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill's, where we had been
invited to meet the Prince of Wales. I said I should be delighted
if I could keep on the dress that I was wearing, but as it was
late and I had to get up early next day I did not want to change
my clothes; he said he supposed my dress would be quite smart
enough, so we drove to the Randolph Churchills' house together.

I had often wanted to know Lord Randolph, but it was only a few
days before the supper that I had had the good fortune to sit next
to him at dinner. When he observed that he had been put next to a
"miss," he placed his left elbow firmly on the table and turned
his back upon me through several courses. I could not but admire
the way he appeared to eat everything with one hand. I do not know
whether it was the lady on his right or what it was that prompted
him, but he ultimately turned round and asked me if I knew any
politicians. I told him that, with the exception of himself, I
knew them all intimately. This surprised him, and after discussing
Lord Rosebery--to whom he was devoted--he said:

"Do you know Lord Salisbury?"

I told him that I had forgotten his name in my list, but that I
would like above everything to meet him; at which he remarked that
I was welcome to all his share of him, adding:

"What do you want to know him for?"

MARGOT: "Because I think he is amazingly amusing and a very fine
writer."

LORD RANDOLPH (muttering something I could not catch about
Salisbury lying dead at his feet): "I wish to God that I had NEVER
known him!"

MARGOT: "I am afraid you resigned more out of temper than
conviction, Lord Randolph." At this he turned completely round
and, gazing at me, said:

"Confound your cheek! What do you know about me and my
convictions? I hate Salisbury! He jumped at my resignation like a
dog at a bone. The Tories are ungrateful, short-sighted beasts. I
hope you are a Liberal?"

I informed him that I was and exactly what I thought of the Tory
party; and we talked through the rest of dinner. Towards the end
of our conversation he asked me who I was. I told him that, after
his manners to me in the earlier part of the evening, it was
perhaps better that we should remain strangers. However, after a
little chaff, we made friends and he said that he would come and
see me in Grosvenor Square.

On the night of the supper-party, I was wearing a white muslin
dress with transparent chemise sleeves, a fichu and a long skirt
with a Nattier blue taffeta sash. I had taken a bunch of rose
carnations out of a glass and pinned them into my fichu with three
diamond ducks given me by Lord Carmichael, our delightful
Peeblesshire friend and neighbour.

On my arrival at the Churchills', I observed all the fine ladies
wearing ball-dresses off the shoulder and their tiaras. This made
me very conspicuous and I wished profoundly that I had changed
into something smarter before going out.

The Prince of Wales had not arrived and, as our hostess was giving
orders to the White Hungarian Band, my father and I had to walk
into the room alone.

I saw several of the ladies eyeing my toilette, and having
painfully sharp ears I heard some of their remarks:

"Do look at Miss Tennant! She is in her night-gown!"

"I suppose it is meant to be 'ye olde Englishe pictury!' I wonder
she has not let her hair down like the Juliets at the Oakham
balls!"

Another, more charitable, said:

"I daresay no one told her that the Prince of Wales was coming.
.. Poor child! What a shame!"

And finally a man said:

"There is nothing so odd as the passion some people have for self-
advertisement; it only shows what it is to be intellectual!"

At that moment our hostess came up to us with a charming accueil.

The first time I saw Lady Randolph was at Punchestown races, in
1887, where I went with my new friends, Mrs. Bunbury, Hatfield
Harter and Peter Flower. I was standing at the double when I
observed a woman next to me in a Black Watch tartan skirt, braided
coat and astrachan hussar's cap. She had a forehead like a
panther's and great wild eyes that looked through you; she was so
arresting that I followed her about till I found some one who
could tell me who she was.

Had Lady Randolph Churchill been like her face, she could have
governed the world.

My father and I were much relieved at her greeting; and while we
were talking the Prince of Wales arrived. The ladies fell into
position, ceased chattering and made subterranean curtsies. He
came straight up to me and told me I was to sit on the other side
of him at supper. I said, hanging my head with becoming modesty
and in a loud voice:

"Oh no, Sir, I am not dressed at all for the part! I had better
slip away, I had no notion this was going to be such a smart party
.. I expect some of the ladies here think I have insulted them by
coming in my night-gown!"

I saw every one straining to hear what the Prince's answer would
be, but I took good care that we should move out of earshot. At
that moment Lord Hartington [Footnote: The late Duke of
Devonshire.] came up and told me I was to go in to supper with
him. More than ever I wished I had changed my dress, for now every
one was looking at me with even greater curiosity than hostility.

The supper was gay and I had remarkable talks which laid the
foundation of my friendship both with King Edward and the Duke of
Devonshire. The Prince told me he had had a dull youth, as Queen
Victoria could not get over the Prince Consort's death and kept up
an exaggerated mourning. He said he hoped that when I met his
mother I should not be afraid of her, adding, with a charming
smile, that with the exception of John Brown everybody was. I
assured him with perfect candour that I was afraid of no one. He
was much amused when I told him that before he had arrived that
evening some of the ladies had whispered that I was in my night-
gown and I hope he did not think me lacking in courtesy because I
had not put on a ball-dress. He assured me that on the contrary he
admired my frock very much and thought I looked like an old
picture. This remark made me see uncomfortable visions of the
Oakham ball and he did not dispel them by adding:

"You are so original! You must dance the cotillion with me."

I told him that I could not possibly stay, it would bore my father
stiff, as he hated sitting up late; also I was not dressed for
dancing and had no idea there was going to be a ball. When supper
was over, I made my best curtsy and, after presenting my father to
the Prince, went home to bed.

Lord Hartington told me in the course of our conversation at
supper that Lady Grosvenor [Footnote: The Countess of Grosvenor.]
was by far the most dangerous syren in London and that he would
not answer for any man keeping his head or his heart when with
her, to which I entirely agreed.

When the London season came to an end we all went up to Glen.

Here I must retrace my steps.

In the winter of 1880 I went to stay with my sister, Lucy Graham
Smith, in Wiltshire.

I was going out hunting for the first time, never having seen a
fox, a hound or a fence in my life; my heart beat as my sisters
superintending my toilette put the last hair-pin into a crinkly
knot of hair; I pulled on my top-boots and, running down to the
front door, found Ribblesdale, who was mounting me, waiting to
drive me to the meet. Hounds met at Christian Malford station.

Not knowing that with the Duke of Beaufort's hounds every one wore
blue and buff, I was disappointed at the appearance of the field.
No one has ever suggested that a touch of navy blue improves a
landscape; and, although I had never been out hunting before, I
had looked forward to seeing scarlet coats.

We moved off, jostling each other as thick as sardines, to draw
the nearest cover. My mount was peacocking on the grass when
suddenly we heard a "Halloa!" and the whole field went hammering
like John Gilpin down the hard high road.

Plunging through a gap, I dashed into the open country. Storm
flung herself up to the stars over the first fence and I found
myself seated on the wettest of wet ground, angry but unhurt; all
the stragglers--more especially the funkers--agreeably diverted
from pursuing the hunt, galloped off to catch my horse. I walked
to a cottage; and nearly an hour afterwards Storm was returned to
me.

After this contretemps my mount was more amenable and I determined
that nothing should unseat me again. Not being hurt by a fall
gives one a sense of exhilaration and I felt ready to face an arm
of the sea.

The scattered field were moving aimlessly about, some looking for
their second horses, some eating an early sandwich, some in groups
laughing and smoking and no one knowing anything about the hounds;
I was a little away from the others and wondering--like all
amateurs--why we were wasting so much time, when a fine old
gentleman on a huge horse came up to me and said, with a sweet
smile:

"Do you always whistle out hunting?"

MARGOT: "I didn't know I was whistling ... I've never hunted
before."

STRANGER: "Is this really the first time you've ever been out with
hounds?"

MARGOT: "Yes, it is."

STRANGER: "How wonderfully you ride! But I am sorry to see you
have taken a toss."

MARGOT: "I fell off at the first fence, for though I've ridden all
my life I've never jumped before."

STRANGER: "Were you frightened when you fell?"

MARGOT: "No, my horse was ..."

STRANGER: "Would you like to wear the blue and buff?"

MARGOT: "It's pretty for women, but I don't think it looks
sporting for men, though I see you wear it; but in any case I
could not get the blue habit."

STRANGER: "Why not?"

MARGOT: "Because the old Duke of Beaufort only gives it to women
who own coverts; I am told he hates people who go hard and after
today I mean to ride like the devil."

STRANGER: "Oh, do you? But is the 'old Duke,' as you call him, so
severe?"

MARGOT: "I've no idea; I've never seen him or any other duke!"

STRANGER: "If I told you I could get you the blue habit, what
would you say?"

MARGOT (with a patronising smile): "I'm afraid I should say you
were running hares!"

STRANGER: "You would have to wear a top-hat, you know, and you
would not like that! But, if you are going to ride like the devil,
it might save your neck; and in any case it would keep your hair
tidy."

MARGOT (anxiously pushing back her stray curls): "Why, is my hair
very untidy? It is the first time it has ever been up; and, when I
was 'thrown from my horse,' as the papers call it, all the hair-
pins got loose."

STRANGER: "It doesn't matter with your hair; it is so pretty I
think I shall call you Miss Fluffy! By the bye, what is your
name?"

When I told him he was much surprised:

"Oh, then you are a sister-in-law of the Ancestor's, are you?"

This was the first time I ever heard Ribblesdale called "the
Ancestor"; and as I did not know what he meant, I said:

"And who are you?"

To which he replied:

"I am the Duke of Beaufort and I am not running hares this time. I
will give you the blue habit, but you know you will have to wear a
top-hat."

MARGOT: "Good gracious! I hope I've said nothing to offend you? Do
you always do this sort of thing when you meet any one like me for
the first time?"

DUKE OF BEAUFORT (with a smile, lifting his hat): "Just as it is
the first time you have ever hunted, so it is the first time I
have ever met any one like you."

On the third day with the Beaufort hounds, my horse fell heavily
in a ditch with me and, getting up, galloped away. I was picked up
by a good-looking man, who took me into his house, gave me tea
and drove me back in his brougham to Easton Grey; I fell
passionately in love with him. He owned a horse called Lardy
Dardy, on which he mounted me.

Charty and the others chaffed me much about my new friend, saying
that my father would never approve of a Tory and that it was lucky
he was married.

I replied, much nettled, that I did not want to marry any one and
that, though he was a Tory, he was not at all stupid and would
probably get into the Cabinet.

This was my first shrewd political prophecy, for he is in the
Cabinet now.

I cannot look at him without remembering that he was the first man
I was ever in love with, and that, at the age of seventeen, I said
he would be in the Cabinet in spite of his being a Tory.

For pure unalloyed happiness those days at Easton Grey were
undoubtedly the most perfect of my life. Lucy's sweetness to me,
the beauty of the place, the wild excitement of riding over fences
and the perfect certainty I had that I would ride better than any
one in the whole world gave me an insolent confidence which no
earthquake could have shaken.

Off and on, I felt qualms over my lack of education; and when I
was falling into a happy sleep, dreaming I was overriding hounds,
echoes of "Pray, Mamma" out of Mrs. Markham, or early punishments
of unfinished poems would play about my bed.

On one occasion at Easton Grey, unable to sleep for love of life,
I leant out of the window into the dark to see if it was thawing.
It was a beautiful night, warm and wet, and I forgot all about my
education.

The next day, having no mount, I had procured a hireling from a
neighbouring farmer, but to my misery the horse did not turn up at
the meet; Mr. Golightly, the charming parish priest, said I might
drive about in his low black pony-carriage, called in those days a
Colorado beetle, but hunting on wheels was no role for me and I
did not feel like pursuing the field.

My heart sank as I saw the company pass me gaily down the road,
preceded by the hounds, trotting with a staccato step and their
noses in the air.

Just as I was turning to go home, a groom rode past in mufti,
leading a loose horse with a lady's saddle on it. The animal gave
a clumsy lurch; and the man, jerking it violently by the head,
bumped it into my phaeton. I saw my chance.

MARGOT: "Hullo, man! ... That's my horse! Whose groom are you?"

MAN (rather frightened at being caught jobbing his lady's horse in
the mouth): "I am Mrs. Chaplin's groom, miss."

MARGOT: "Jump off; you are the very man I was looking for; tell
me, does Mrs. Chaplin ride this horse over everything?"

MAN (quite unsuspicious and thawing at my sweetness and
authority): "Bless your soul! Mrs. Chaplin doesn't 'unt this
'orse! It's the Major's! She only 'acked it to the meet."

MARGOT (apprehensively and her heart sinking): "But can it jump?
.. Don't they hunt it?"

MAN (pulling down my habit skirt): "It's a 'orse that can very
near jump anythink, I should say, but the Major says it shakes
every tooth in 'is gums and she says it's pig-'eaded."

It did not take me long to mount and in a moment I had left the
man miles behind me. Prepared for the worst, but in high glee, I
began to look about me: not a sign of the hunt! Only odd remnants
of the meet, straggling foot-passengers, terriers straining at a
strap held by drunken runners--some in old Beaufort coats, others
in corduroy--one-horse shays of every description by the sides of
the road and sloppy girls with stick and tammies standing in gaps
of the fences, straining their eyes across the fields to see the
hounds.

My horse with a loose rein was trotting aimlessly down the road
when, hearing a "Halloa!" I pulled up and saw the hounds streaming
towards me all together, so close that you could have covered them
with a handkerchief.

What a scent! What a pack! Have I headed the fox? Will they cross
the road? No! They are turning away from me! Now's the moment!!

I circled the Chaplin horse round with great resolution and
trotted up to a wall at the side of the road; he leapt it like a
stag; we flew over the grass and the next fence; and, after a
little scrambling, I found myself in the same field with hounds.
The horse was as rough as the boy said, but a wonderful hunter; it
could not put a foot wrong; we had a great gallop over the walls,
which only a few of the field saw.

When hounds checked, I was in despair; all sorts of ladies and
gentlemen came riding towards me and I wondered painfully which of
them would be Mr. and which Mrs. Chaplin. What was I to do?
Suddenly remembering my new friend and patron, I peered about for
the Duke; when I found him and told him of the awkward
circumstances in which I had placed myself, he was so much amused
that he made my peace with the Chaplins, who begged me to go on
riding their horse. They were not less susceptible to dukes than
other people and in any case no one was proof against the old Duke
of Beaufort. At the end of the day I was given the brush--a
fashion completely abandoned in the hunting-field now--and I went
home happy and tired.





CHAPTER IV

MARGOT AT A GIRLS' SCHOOL--WHO SPILT THE INK?--THE ENGINE
DRIVER'S MISTAKEN FLIRTATION--MARGOT LEAVES SCHOOL IN DISGUST--
DECIDES TO GO TO GERMANY TO STUDY


Although I did not do much thinking over my education, others did
it for me.

I had been well grounded by a series of short-stayed governesses
in the Druids and woad, in Alfred and the cakes, Romulus and Remus
and Bruce and the spider. I could speak French well and German a
little; and I knew a great deal of every kind of literature from
Tristram Shandy and The Antiquary to Under Two Flags and The
Grammarian's Funeral; but the governesses had been failures and,
when Lucy married, my mother decided that Laura and I should go to
school.

Mademoiselle de Mennecy--a Frenchwoman of ill-temper and a lively
mind--had opened a hyper-refined seminary in Gloucester Crescent,
where she undertook to "finish" twelve young ladies. My father had
a horror of girls' schools (and if he could "get through"--to use
the orthodox expression of the spookists--he would find all his
opinions on this subject more than justified by the manners,
morals and learning of the young ladies of the present day) but as
it was a question of only a few months he waived his objection.

No. 7 Gloucester Crescent looked down on the Great Western
Railway; the lowing of cows, the bleating of sheep and sudden
shrill whistles and other odd sounds kept me awake, and my bed
rocked and trembled as the vigorous trains passed at uncertain
intervals all through the night. This, combined with sticky food,
was more than Laura could bear and she had no difficulty in
persuading my papa that if she were to stay longer than one week
her health would certainly suffer. I was much upset when she left
me, but faintly consoled by receiving permission to ride in the
Row three times a week; Mlle. de Mennecy thought my beautiful hack
gave prestige to her front door and raised no objections.

Sitting alone in the horsehair schoolroom, with a French patent-
leather Bible in my hands, surrounded by eleven young ladies, made
my heart sink. "Et le roi David deplut a l' Eternel," I heard in a
broad Scotch accent; and for the first time I looked closely at my
stable companions.

Mlle. de Mennecy allowed no one to argue with her; and our first
little brush took place after she informed me of this fact.

"But in that case, mademoiselle," said I, "how are any of us to
learn anything? I don't know how much the others know, but I know
nothing except what I've read; so, unless I ask questions, how am
I to learn?"

MLLE. DE MENNECY: "Je ne vous ai jamais defendu de me questionner;
vous n'ecoutez pas, mademoiselle. J'ai dit qu'il ne fallait pas
discuter avec moi."

MARGOT (keenly): "But, mademoiselle, discussion is the only way of
making lessons interesting."

MLLE. DE MENNECY (with violence): "Voulez-vous vous taire?"

To talk to a girl of nearly seventeen in this way was so
unintelligent that I made up my mind I would waste neither time
nor affection on her.

None of the girls were particularly clever, but we all liked each
other and for the first time--and I may safely say the last--I was
looked upon as a kind of heroine. It came about in this way: Mlle.
de Mennecy was never wrong. To quote Miss Fowler's admirable
saying a propos of her father, "She always let us have her own
way." If the bottle of ink was upset, or the back of a book burst,
she never waited to find out who had done it, but in a torrent of
words crashed into the first girl she suspected, her face becoming
a silly mauve and her bust heaving with passion. This made me so
indignant that, one day when the ink was spilt and Mlle. de
Mennecy as usual scolded the wrong girl, I determined I would
stand it no longer. Meeting the victim of Mademoiselle's temper in
the passage, I said to her:

"But why didn't you say you hadn't done it, ass!"

GIRL (catching her sob): "What was the good! She never listens;
and I would only have had to tell her who really spilt the ink."

This did seem a little awkward, so I said to her:

"That would never have done! Very well, then, I will go and put
the thing right for you, but tell the girls they must back me.
She's a senseless woman and I can't think why you are all so
frightened of her."

GIRL: "It's all very well for you! Madmozell is a howling snob,
you should have heard her on you before you came! She said your
father would very likely be made a peer and your sister Laura
marry Sir Charles Dilke." (The thought of this overrated man
marrying Laura was almost more than I could bear, but curiosity
kept me silent, and she continued.) "You see, she is far nicer to
you than to us, because she is afraid you may leave her."

Not having thought of this before, I said:

"Is that really true? What a horrible woman! Well, I had better go
and square it up; but will you all back me? Now don't go fretting
on and making yourself miserable."

GIRL: "I don't so much mind what you call her flux-de-bouche
scolding, but, when she flounced out of the room, she said I was
not to go home this Saturday."

MARGOT: "Oh, that'll be all right. Just you go off." (Exit girl,
drying her eyes.)

It had never occurred to me that Mlle. de Mennecy was a snob: this
knowledge was a great weapon in my hands and I determined upon my
plan of action. I hunted about in my room till I found one of my
linen overalls, heavily stained with dolly dyes. After putting it
on, I went and knocked at Mlle. de Mennecy's door and opening it
said:

"Mademoiselle, I'm afraid you'll be very angry, but it was I who
spilt the ink and burst the back of your dictionary. I ought to
have told you at once, I know, but I never thought any girl would
be such an image as to let you scold her without telling you she
had not done it." Seeing a look of suspicion on her sunless face,
I added nonchalantly, "Of course, if you think my conduct sets a
bad example in your school, I can easily go!"

I observed her eyelids flicker and I said:

"I think, before you scolded Sarah, you might have heard what she
had to say."

MLLE. DE MENNECY: "Ce que vous dites me choque profondement; il
m'est difficile de croire que vous avez fait une pareille lachete,
mademoiselle!"

MARGOT (protesting with indignation): "Hardly lachete,
Mademoiselle! I only knew a few moments ago that you had been so
amazingly unjust. Directly I heard it, I came to you; but as I
said before, I am quite prepared to leave."

MLLE. DE MENNECY (feeling her way to a change of front): "Sarah
s'est conduite si heroiquement que pour le moment je n'insiste
plus. Je vous felicite, mademoiselle, sur votre franchise; vous
pouvez rejoindre vos camarades."

The Lord had delivered her into my hands.

One afternoon, when our instructress had gone to hear Princess
Christian open a bazaar, I was smoking a cigarette on the
schoolroom balcony which overlooked the railway line.

It was a beautiful evening, and a wave of depression came over me.
Our prettiest pupil, Ethel Brydson, said to me:

"Time is up! We had better go in and do our preparation. There
would be the devil to pay if you were caught with that cigarette."

I leant over the balcony blowing smoke into the air in a vain
attempt to make rings, but, failing, kissed my hand to the sky and
with a parting gesture cursed the school and expressed a vivid
desire to go home and leave Gloucester Crescent for ever.

ETHEL (pulling my dress): "Good gracious, Margot! Stop kissing
your hand! Don't you see that man?"

I looked down and to my intense amusement saw an engine-driver
leaning over the side of his tender, kissing his hand to me. I
strained over the balcony and kissed both mine back to him, after
which I returned to the school-room.

Our piano was placed in the window and, the next morning, while
Ethel was arranging her music preparatory to practising, it
appeared my friend the engine-driver began kissing his hand to
her. It was eight o'clock and Mlle. de Mennecy was pinning on her
twists in the window.

I had finished my toilette and was sitting in the reading-room,
learning the passage chosen by our elocution master for the final
competition in recitation.

My fingers were in my ears and I was murmuring in dramatic tones:

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, I come to bury
Caesar, not to praise him. ..."

The girls came in and out, but I never noticed them; and when the
breakfast bell rang, I shoved the book into my desk and ran
downstairs to breakfast. I observed that Ethel's place was empty;
none of the girls looked at me, but munched their bread and sipped
their tepid tea while Mademoiselle made a few frigid general
remarks and, after saying a French grace, left the room.

"Well," said I, "what's the row?"

Silence.

MARGOT (looking from face to face): "Ah! The mot d'ordre is that
you are not to speak to me. Is that the idea?"

Silence.

MARGOT (vehemently, with bitterness): "This is exactly what I
thought would happen at a girls' school--that I should find myself
boycotted and betrayed."

FIRST GIRL (bursting out): "Oh, Margot, it's not that at all! It's
because Ethel won't betray you that we are all to be punished to-
day!"

MARGOT: "What! Collective punishment? And I am the only one to get
off? How priceless! Well, I must say this is Mlle. de Mennecy's
first act of justice. I've been so often punished for all of you
that I'm sure you won't mind standing me this little outing! Where
is Ethel? Why don't you answer? (Very slowly) Oh, all right! I
have done with you! And I shall leave this very day, so help me
God!"

On hearing that Mlle. de Mennecy had dismissed Ethel on the spot
because the engine-driver had kissed his hand to her, I went
immediately and told her the whole story; all she answered was
that I was such a liar she did not believe a word I said.

I assured her that I was painfully truthful by nature, but her
circular and senseless punishments had so frightened the girls
that lying had become the custom of the place and I felt in honour
bound to take my turn in the lies and the punishments. After which
I left the room and the school.

On my arrival in Grosvenor Square I told my parents that I must go
home to Glen, as I felt suffocated by the pettiness and
conventionality of my late experience. The moderate teaching and
general atmosphere of Gloucester Crescent had depressed me, and
London feels airless when one is out of spirits: in any case it
can never be quite a home to any one born in Scotland.

The only place I look upon as home which does not belong to me is
Archerfield [Footnote: Archerfield belonged to Mrs. Hamilton
Ogilvie, of Beale.]--a house near North Berwick, in which we
lived for seven years. After Glen and my cottage in Berkshire,
Archerfield is the place I love best in the world. I was both
happier and more miserable there than I have ever been in my life.
Just as William James has written on varieties of religious
experience, so I could write on the varieties of my moral and
domestic experiences at that wonderful place. If ever I were to be
as unhappy again as I was there, I would fly to the shelter of
those Rackham woods, seek isolation on those curving coasts where
the gulls shriek and dive and be ultimately healed by the beauty
of the anchored seas which bear their islands like the Christ
Child on their breasts.

Unfortunately for me, my father had business which kept him in
London. He was in treaty with Lord Gerard to buy his uninteresting
house in an uninteresting square. The only thing that pleased me
in Grosvenor Square was the iron gate. When I could not find the
key of the square and wanted to sit out with my admirers, after
leaving a ball early, I was in the habit of climbing over these
gates in my tulle dress. This was a feat which was attended by
more than one risk: if you did not give a prominent leap off the
narrow space from the top of the gate, you would very likely be
caught up by the tulle fountain of your dress, in which case you
might easily lose your life; or, if you did not keep your eye on
the time, you would very likely be caught by an early house-maid,
in which case you might easily lose your reputation. No one is a
good judge of her own reputation, but I like to think that those
iron gates were the silent witnesses of my milder manner.

My father, however, loved Grosvenor Square and, being anxious that
Laura and I should come out together, bought the house in 1881.

No prodigal was ever given a warmer welcome than I was when I left
the area of the Great Western Railway; but the problem of how to
finish my education remained and I was determined that I would not
make my debut till I was eighteen. What with reading, hunting and
falling in love at Easton Grey, I was not at all happy and wanted
to be alone.

I knew no girls and had no friends except my sisters and was not
eager to talk to them about my affairs; I never could at any time
put all of myself into discussion which degenerates into gossip. I
had not formed the dangerous habit of writing good letters about
myself, dramatizing the principal part. I shrank then, as I do
now, from exposing the secrets and sensations of life. Reticence
should guard the soul and only those who have compassion should be
admitted to the shrine. When I peer among my dead or survey my
living friends, I see hardly any one with this quality. For the
moment my cousin Nan Tennant, Mrs. Arthur Sassoon, Mrs. James
Rothschild, Antoine Bibesco, and my son and husband are the only
people I can think of who possess it.

John Morley has, in carved letters of stone upon his chimney-
piece, Bacon's fine words, "The nobler a soul, the more objects of
compassion it hath."

When I first read them, I wondered where I could meet those souls
and I have wondered ever since. To have compassion you need
courage, you must fight for the objects of your pity and you must
feel and express tenderness towards all men. You will not meet
disinterested emotion, though you may seek it all your life, and
you will seldom find enough pity for the pathos of life.

My husband is a man of disinterested emotion. One morning, when he
and I were in Paris, where we had gone for a holiday, I found him
sitting with his head in his hands and the newspaper on his knee.
I saw he was deeply moved and, full of apprehension, I put my arm
round him and asked if he had had bad news. He pointed to a
paragraph in the paper and I read how some of the Eton boys had
had to break the bars of their windows to escape from fire and
others had been burnt to death. We knew neither a boy nor the
parent of any boy at Eton at that time, but Henry's eyes were full
of tears, and he could not speak.

I had the same experience with him over the wreck of the Titanic.
When we read of that challenging, luxurious ship at bay in the
ice-fields and the captain sending his unanswered signals to the
stars, we could not sit through dinner.

I knew no one of this kind of sympathy in my youth, and my father
was too busy and my mother too detached for me to have told them
anything. I wanted to be alone and I wanted to learn. After
endless talks it was decided that I should go to Germany for four
or five months and thus settle the problem of an unbegun but
finishing education.

Looking back on this decision, I think it was a remarkable one. I
had a passion for dancing and my father wanted me to go to balls;
I had a genius for horses and adored hunting; I had such a
wonderful hack that every one collected at the Park rails when
they saw me coming into the Row; but all this did not deflect me
from my purpose and I went to Dresden alone with a stupid maid at
a time when--if not in England, certainly in Germany--I might
have passed as a moderate beauty.





CHAPTER V

A DRESDEN LODGING HOUSE--MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE WITH AN OFFICER AFTER
THE OPERA----AN ELDERLY AMERICAN ADMIRER--YELLOW ROSES, GRAF VON--
VON--AND MOTIFS FROM WAGNER


Frau von Mach kept a ginger-coloured lodging-house high up in
Luttichau-strasse. She was a woman of culture and refinement; her
mother had been English and her husband, having gone mad in the
Franco-Prussian war, had left her penniless with three children.
She had to work for her living and she cooked and scrubbed without
a thought for herself from dawn till dark.

There were thirteen pianos on our floor and two or three permanent
lodgers. The rest of the people came and went--men, women and boys
of every nationality, professionals and amateurs--but I was too
busy to care or notice who went or who came.

Although my mother was bold and right to let me go as a bachelor
to Dresden, I could not have done it myself. Later on, like every
one else, I sent my stepdaughter and daughter to be educated in
Germany for a short time, but they were chaperoned by a woman of
worth and character, who never left them: my German nursery-
governess, who came to me when Elizabeth was four.

In parenthesis, I may mention that, in the early terrible days of
the war, our thoughtful Press, wishing to make money out of public
hysteria, had the bright idea of turning this simple, devoted
woman into a spy. There was not a pressman who did not laugh in
his sleeve at this and openly make a stunt of it, but it had its
political uses; and, after the Russians had been seen with snow on
their boots by everyone in England, the gentlemen of the Press
calculated that almost anything would be believed if it could be
repeated often enough. And they were right: the spiteful and the
silly disseminated lies about our governess from door to door with
the kind of venom that belongs in equal proportions to the
credulous, the cowards and the cranks. The greenhorns believed it
and the funkers, who saw a plentiful crop of spies in every bush,
found no difficulty in mobilising their terrors from my governess
--already languishing in the Tower of London--to myself, who
suddenly became a tennis-champion and an habituee of the German
officers' camps!

The Dresden of my day was different from the Dresden of twenty
years after. I never saw an English person the whole time I was
there. After settling into my new rooms, I wrote out for myself a
severe Stundenplan, which I pinned over my head next to my alarm-
clock. At 6 every morning I woke up and dashed into the kitchen to
have coffee with the solitary slavey; after that I practised the
fiddle or piano till 8.30, when we had the pension breakfast; and
the rest of the day was taken up by literature, drawing and other
lessons. I went to concerts or the opera by myself every night.

One day Frau von Mach came to me greatly disdressed by a letter
she had received from my mother begging her to take in no men
lodgers while I was in the pension, as some of her friends in
England had told her that I might elope with a foreigner. To this
hour I do not know whether my mother was serious; but I wrote and
told her that Frau von Mach's life depended on her lodgers, that
there was only one permanent lodger--an old American called
Loring, who never spoke to me--and that I had no time to elope.
Many and futile were the efforts to make me return home; but,
though I wrote to England regularly, I never alluded to any of
them, as they appeared childish to me.

I made great friends with Frau von Mach and in loose moments sat
on her kitchen-table smoking cigarettes and eating black cherries;
we discussed Shakespeare, Wagner, Brahms, Middlemarch, Bach and
Hegel, and the time flew.

One night I arrived early at the Opera House and was looking about
while the fiddles were tuning up. I wore my pearls and a scarlet
crepe-de-chine dress and a black cloth cape with a hood on it,
which I put on over my head when I walked home in the rain. I was
having a frank stare at the audience, when I observed just
opposite me an officer in a white uniform. As the Saxon soldiers
wore pale blue, I wondered what army he could belong to.

He was a fine-looking young man, with tailor-made shoulders, a
small waist and silver and black on his sword-belt. When he turned
to the stage, I looked at him through my opera-glasses. On closer
inspection, he was even handsomer than I had thought. A lady
joined him in the box and he took off her cloak, while she stood
up gazing down at the stalls, pulling up her long black gloves.
She wore a row of huge pearls, which fell below her waist, and a
black jet decollete dress. Few people wore low dresses at the
opera and I saw half the audience fixing her with their glasses.
She was evidently famous. Her hair was fox-red and pinned back on
each side of her temples with Spanish combs of gold and pearls;
she surveyed the stalls with cavernous eyes set in a snow-white
face; and in her hand she held a bouquet of lilac orchids. She was
the best-looking woman I saw all the time I was in Germany and I
could not take my eyes off her. The white officer began to look
about the opera-house when my red dress caught his eye. He put up
his glasses, and I instantly put mine down. Although the lights
were lowered for the overture, I saw him looking at me for some
time.

I had been in the habit of walking about in the entr'actes and,
when the curtain dropped at the end of the first act, I left the
box. It did not take me long to identify the white officer. He was
not accompanied by his lady, but stood leaning against the wall
smoking a cigar and talking to a man; as I passed him I had to
stop for a moment for fear of treading on his outstretched toes.
He pulled himself erect to get out of my way; I looked up and our
eyes met; I don't think I blush easily, but something in his gaze
may have made me blush. I lowered my eyelids and walked on.

The Meistersinger was my favourite opera and so it appeared to be
of the Dresdeners; Wagner, having quarrelled with the authorities,
refused to allow the Ring to be played in the Dresden Opera House;
and every one was tired of the swans and doves of Lohengrin and
Tannhauser.

There was a great crowd that night and, as it was raining when we
came out, I hung about, hoping to get a cab; I saw my white
officer with his lady, but he did not see me; I heard him before
he got into the brougham give elaborate orders to the coachman to
put him down at some club.

After waiting for some time, as no cab turned up, I pulled the
hood of my cloak over my head and started to walk home; when the
crowd scattered I found myself alone and I turned into a little
street which led into Luttichau-strasse. Suddenly I became aware
that I was being followed; I heard the even steps and the click of
spurs of some one walking behind me; I should not have noticed
this had I not halted under a lamp to pull on my hood, which the
wind had blown off. When I stopped, the steps also stopped. I
walked on, wondering if it had been my imagination, and again I
heard the click of spurs coming nearer. The street being deserted,
I was unable to endure it any longer; I turned round and there was
the officer. His black cloak hanging loosely over his shoulders
showed me the white uniform and silver belt. He saluted me and
asked me in a curious Belgian French if he might accompany me
home. I said:

"Oh, certainly! But I am not at all nervous in the dark."

OFFICER (stopping under the lamp to light a cigarette): "You like
Wagner? Do you know him well? I confess I find him long and loud."

MARGOT: "He is a little long, but so wonderful!"

OFFICER: "Don't you feel tired? (With emphasis) _I_ DO!"

MARGOT: "No, I'm not at all tired."

OFFICER: "You would not like to go and have supper with me in a
private room in a hotel, would you?"

MARGOT: "You are very kind, but I don't like supper; besides, it
is late. (Leaving his side to look at the number on the door) I am
afraid we must part here."

OFFICER (drawing a long breath): "But you said I might take you
home!!"

MARGOT (with a slow smile): "I know I did, but this is my home."

He looked disappointed and surprised, but taking my hand he kissed
it, then stepping back saluted and said:

"Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle."

My second adventure occurred on my way back to England. After a
little correspondence, my mother allowed me to take Frau von Mach
with me to Berlin to hear the Ring der Nibelungen. She and I were
much excited at this little outing, in honour of which I had
ordered her a new black satin dress. German taste is like German
figures, thick and clumsy, and my dear old friend looked like a
hold-all in my gift.

When we arrived in Berlin I found my room in the hotel full of
every kind of flower; and on one of the bouquets was placed the
card of our permanent lodger, Mr. Loring. I called out to Frau von
Mach, who was unpacking:

"Do come here, dearest, and look at my wonderful roses! You will
never guess who they come from!"

FRAU VON MACH (looking rather guilty): "I think I can guess."

MARGOT: "I see you know! But who would have dreamt that an old
maid like Loring would have thought of such gallantry?"

FRAU VON MACH: "But surely, dear child, you knew that he admired
you?"

MARGOT: "Admired me! You must be cracked! I never remember his
saying a civil word to me the whole time I was in Dresden. Poor
mamma! If she were here now she would feel that her letter to you
on the danger of my elopement was amply justified!"

Frau von Mach and I sat side by side at the opera; and on my left
was a German officer. In front of us there was a lady with
beautiful hair and diamond grasshoppers in it; her two daughters
sat on either side of her.

Everything was conducted in the dark and it was evident that the
audience was strung up to a high pitch of expectant emotion, for,
when I whispered to Frau von Mach, the officer on my left said,
"Hush!" which I thought extremely rude. Several men in the stalls,
sitting on the nape of their necks, had covered their faces with
pocket-handkerchiefs, which I thought infinitely ridiculous,
bursting as they were with beef and beer. My musical left was only
a little less good-looking than the white officer. He kept a rigid
profile towards me and squashed up into a corner to avoid sharing
an arm of the stall with me. As we had to sit next to each other
for four nights running, I found this a little exaggerated.

I was angry with myself for dropping my fan and scent-bottle; the
lady picked up the bottle and the officer the fan. The lady gave
me back my bottle and, when the curtain fell, began talking to me.

She had turned round once or twice during the scene to look at me.
I found her most intelligent; she knew England and had heard
Rubinstein and Joachim play at the Monday Pops. She had been to
the Tower of London, Madame Tussaud's and Lord's.

The officer kept my fan in his hands and, instead of going out in
the entr'acte, stayed and listened to our conversation. When the
curtain went up and the people returned to their seats, he still
held my fan. In the next interval the lady and the girls went out
and my left-hand neighbour opened conversation with me. He said in
perfect English:

"Are you really as fond of this music as you appear to be?"

To which I replied:

"You imply I am humbugging! I never pretend anything; why should
you think I do? I don't lean back perspiring or cover my face with
a handkerchief as your compatriots are doing, it is true, but..."

HE (interrupting): "I am very glad of that! Do you think you would
recognise a motif if I wrote one for you?"

Feeling rather nettled, I said:

"You must think me a perfect gowk if you suppose I should not
recognise any motif in any opera of Wagner!"

I said this with a commanding gesture, but I was far from
confident that he would not catch me out. He opened his cigarette-
case, took out a visiting card and wrote the Schlummermotif on the
back before giving it to me. After telling him what the motif was,
I looked at his very long name on the back of the card: Graf von--

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