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
Sir John Williams [Footnote: Sir John Williams, of Aberystwyth,
Wales.] was my doctor and would have been a remarkable man in any
country, but in Wales he was unique. He was a man of heart without
hysteria and both loyal and truthful.
On the 18th of May, 1895, my sisters Charlotte and Lucy were
sitting with me in my bedroom. I will quote from my diary the
account of my first confinement and how I got to know him:
"I began to feel ill. My Gamp, an angular-faced, admirable old
woman called Jerusha Taylor--'out of the Book of Kings'--was
bustling about preparing for the doctor. Henry was holding my
hands and I was sobbing in an arm-chair, feeling the panic of pain
and fear which no one can realise who has not had a baby.
"When Williams arrived, I felt as if salvation must be near; my
whole soul and every beat of my heart went out in dumb appeal to
him, and his tenderness on that occasion bred in me a love and
gratitude which never faded, but was intensified by all I saw of
him afterwards. He seemed to think a narcotic would calm my
nerves, but the sleeping-draught might have been water for all
the effect it had upon me, so he gave me chloroform. The room grew
dark; grey poppies appeared to be nodding at me--and I gasped:
"'Oh, doctor, DEAR doctor, stay with me to-night, just THIS one
night, and I will stay with you whenever you like!'
"But Williams was too anxious, my nurse told me, to hear a word I
said.
"At four o'clock in the morning, Henry went to fetch the
anaesthetist and in his absence Williams took me out of
chloroform. Then I seemed to have a glimpse of a different world:
if PAIN is evil, then it was HELL; if not, I expect I got nearer
Heaven than I have ever been before . ...
"I saw Dr. Bailey at the foot of the bed, with a bag in his hand,
and Charty's outline against the lamp; then my head was placed on
the pillow and a black thing came between me and the light and
closed over my mouth, a slight beating of carpets sounded in my
brain and I knew no more . ...
"When I came to consciousness about twelve the next morning, I saw
Charty looking at me and I said to her in a strange voice:
"'I can't have any more pain, it's no use.'
"CHARTY: 'No, no, darling, you won't have any more.' (SILENCE.)
"MARGOT: 'But you don't mean it's all over?'
"CHARTY (soothingly): 'Go to sleep, dearest.'
"I was so dazed by chloroform that I could hardly speak. Later on
the nurse told me that the doctor had had to sacrifice my baby and
that I ought to be grateful for being spared, as I had had a very
dangerous confinement.
"When Sir John Williams came to see me, he looked white and tired
and, finding my temperature was normal, he said fervently:
"'Thank you, Mrs. Asquith.'
"I was too weak and uncomfortable to realise all that had
happened; and what I suffered from the smallest noise I can hardly
describe. I would watch nurse slowly approaching and burst into a
perspiration when her cotton dress crinkled against the chintz of
my bed. I shivered with fear when the blinds were drawn up or the
shutters unfastened; and any one moving up or down stairs, placing
a tumbler on the marble wash-hand-stand or reading a newspaper
would bring tears into my eyes."
In connection with what I have quoted out of my diary here it is
not inappropriate to add that I lost my babies in three out of my
five confinements. These poignant and secret griefs have no place
on the high-road of life; but, just as Henry and I will stand
sometimes side by side near those little graves unseen by
strangers, so he and I in unobserved moments will touch with one
heart an unforgotten sorrow.
Out of the many letters which I received, this from our intimate
and affectionate friend, Lord Haldane, was the one I liked best:
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I cannot easily tell you how much touched I was in the few minutes
I spent talking to you this afternoon, by what I saw and what you
told me. I left with the sense of witnessing triumph in failure
and life come through death. The strength that is given at such
times arises not from ignoring loss, or persuading oneself that
the thing is not that IS; but from the resolute setting of the
face to the East and the taking of one step onwards. It is the
quality we touch--it may be but for a moment--not the quantity we
have, that counts. "All I could never be, all that was lost in me
is yet there--in His hand who planned the perfect whole." That was
what Browning saw vividly when he wrote his Rabbi Ben Ezra. You
have lost a great joy. But in the deepening and strengthening the
love you two have for each other you have gained what is rarer and
better; it is well worth the pain and grief--the grief you have
borne in common--and you will rise stronger and freer.
We all of us are parting from youth, and the horizon is narrowing,
but I do not feel any loss that is not compensated by gain, and I
do not think that you do either. Anything that detaches one, that
makes one turn from the past and look simply at what one has to
do, brings with it new strength and new intensity of interest. I
have no fear for you when I see what is absolutely and
unmistakably good and noble obliterating every other thought as I
saw it this afternoon. I went away with strengthened faith in what
human nature was capable of.
May all that is highest and best lie before you both.
Your affec. friend,
R. B. HALDANE.
I was gradually recovering my health when on May the 21st, 1895,
after an agonising night, Sir John Williams and Henry came into my
bedroom between five and six in the morning and I was told that I
should have to lie on my back till August, as I was suffering from
phlebitis; but I was too unhappy and disappointed to mind. It was
then that my doctor, Sir John Williams, became my friend as well
as my nurse, and his nobility of character made him a powerful
influence in my life.
To return to my diary:
"Queen Victoria took a great interest in my confinement, and wrote
Henry a charming letter. She sent messengers constantly to ask
after me and I answered her myself once, in pencil, when Henry was
at the Home Office.
"I was convalescing one day, lying as usual on my bed, my mind a
blank, when Sir William Harcourt's card was sent up to me and my
door was darkened by his huge form.
I had seen most of my political and other friends while I was
convalescing: Mr. Gladstone, Lord Haldane, Mr. Birrell, Lord
Spencer, Lord Rosebery, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Morley,
Arthur Balfour, Sir Alfred Lyall and Admiral Maxse; and I was
delighted to see Sir William Harcourt. When he came into my room,
he observed my hunting-crops hanging on the wall from a rack, and
said:
"I am glad to see those whips! Asquith will be able to beat you if
you play fast and loose with him. That little tight mouth of his
convinces me he has the capacity to do it.
"After my nurse had left the room, he expressed surprise that I
should have an ugly woman near me, however good she might be, and
told me that his son, Bobby, had been in love with his nurse and
wrote to her for several years. He added, in his best Hanoverian
vein:
"'I encourage my boys all I can in this line; it promises well for
their future.'"
"After some talk, Mr. John Morley's card was brought up and,
seeing Sir William look rather subdued, I told the servant to ask
him to wait in my boudoir for a few minutes and assured my guest
that I was in no hurry for him to go; but Harcourt began to fidget
about and after a little he insisted on John Morley coming up. We
had a good talk a trots, starting by abusing men who minded other
people's opinion or what the newspapers said of them. Knowing, as
I did, that both of them were highly sensitive to the Press, I
encouraged the conversation.
"JOHN MORLEY: 'I can only say I agree with what Joe once said to
me, "I would rather the newspapers were for than against me."'
"SIR WILLIAM: 'My dear chap, you would surely not rather have the
DAILY CHRONICLE on your side. Why, bless my soul, our party has
had more harm done it through the DAILY CHRONICLE than anything
else!'
"MARGOT: Do you think so? I think its screams, though pitched a
little high, are effective!'
"JOHN MORLEY: 'Oh, you like Massingham, of course, because your
husband is one of his heroes.'
"SIR WILLIAM: 'Well, all I can say is he always abuses me and I am
glad of it.'
"JOHN MORLEY: 'He abuses me, too, though not, perhaps, quite so
often as you!'
"MARGOT: 'I would like him to praise me. I think his descriptions
of the House of Commons debates are not only true and brilliant
but fine literature; there is both style and edge in his writing
and I rather like that bitter-almond flavour! How strangely the
paper changed over to Lord Rosebery, didn't it?'
"Feeling this was ticklish ground, as Harcourt thought that he and
not Rosebery should have been Prime Minister, I turned the talk on
to Goschen.
"SIR WILLIAM: 'It is sad to see the way Goschen has lost his hold
in the country; he has not been at all well treated by his
colleagues.'
"This seemed to me to be also rather risky, so I said boldly that
I thought Goschen had done wonders in the House and country,
considering he had a poor voice and was naturally cautious. I told
them I loved him personally and that Jowett at whose house I first
met him shared my feeling in valuing his friendship. After this he
took his departure, promising to bring me roses from Malwood.
"John Morley--the most fastidious and fascinating of men--stayed
on with me and suggested quite seriously that, when we went out of
office (which might happen any day), he and I should write a novel
together. He said that, if I would write the plot and do the
female characters, he would manage the men and politics.
I asked if he wanted the old Wilkie Collins idea of a plot with a
hundred threads drawn into one woof, or did he prefer modern
nothingness, a shred of a story attached to unending analysis and
the infinitely little commented upon with elaborate and
pretentious humour. He scorned the latter.
I asked him if he did not want to go permanently away from
politics to literature and discussed all his wonderful books and
writings. I chaffed him about the way he had spoken of me before
our marriage, in spite of the charming letter he had written, how
it had been repeated to me that he had said my light-hearted
indiscretions would ruin Henry's career; and I asked him what I
had done since to merit his renewed confidence.
"He did not deny having criticised me, for although 'Honest John'
--the name by which he went among the Radicals--was singularly ill-
chosen, I never heard of Morley telling a lie. He was quite
impenitent and I admired his courage.
"After an engrossing conversation, every moment of which I loved,
he said good-bye to me and I leant back against the pillow and
gazed at the pattern on the wall.
"Henry came into my room shortly after this and told me the
Government had been beaten by seven in a vote of censure passed on
Campbell-Bannerman in Supply, in connection with small arms
ammunition. I looked at him wonderingly and said:
"'Are you sad, darling, that we are out?'
"To which he replied:
"'Only for one reason. I wish I had completed my prison reforms. I
have, however, appointed the best committee ever seen, who will go
on with my work. Ruggles-Brise, the head of it, is a splendid
little fellow!'
"At that moment he received a note to say he was wanted in the
House of Commons immediately, as Lord Rosebery had been sent for
by the Queen. This excited us much and, before he could finish
telling me what had happened, he went straight down to Westminster
. ... John Morley had missed this fateful division, as he was
sitting with me, and Harcourt had only just arrived at the House
in time to vote.
"Henry returned at 1 a.m. and came to say good night to me: he
generally said his prayers by my bedside. He told me that St. John
Brodrick's motion to reduce C. B.'s salary by L100 had turned the
Government out; that Rosebery had resigned and gone straight down
to Windsor; that Campbell-Bannerman was indignant and hurt; that
few of our men were in the House; and that Akers Douglas, the Tory
Whip, could not believe his eyes when he handed the figures to Tom
Ellis, our chief Whip, who returned them to him in silence.
"The next morning St. John Brodrick came to see me, full of
excitement and sympathy. He was anxious to know if we minded his
being instrumental in our downfall; but I am so fond of him that,
of course, I told him that I did not mind, as a week sooner or
later makes no difference and St. John's division was only one out
of many indications in the House and the country that our time was
up. Henry came back from the Cabinet in the middle of our talk and
shook his fist in fun at 'our enemy.' He was tired, but good-
humoured as ever.
"At 3:30 Princess Helene d'Orleans came to see me and told me of
her engagement to the Due d'Aosta. She looked tall, black and
distinguished. She spoke of Prince Eddy to me with great
frankness. I told her I had sometimes wondered at her devotion to
one less clever than herself. At this her eyes filled with tears
and she explained to me how much she had been in love and the
sweetness and nobility of his character. I had reason to know the
truth of what she said when one day Queen Alexandra, after talking
to me in moving terms of her dead son, wrote in my Prayer Book:
"Man looketh upon the countenance, but God upon the heart.
"Helene adores the Princess of Wales [Footnote: Queen Alexandra.]
but not the Prince! [Footnote: King Edward VII.] and says the
latter's rudeness to her brother, the Duc d'Orleans, is terrible.
I said nothing, as I am devoted to the Prince and think her
brother deserves any ill-treatment he gets. I asked her if she was
afraid of the future: a new country and the prospect of babies,
etc. She answered that d'Aosta was so genuinely devoted that it
would make everything easy for her.
"'What would you do if he were unfaithful to you?' I asked.
"PRINCESS HELENE: 'Oh! I told Emanuel. ... I said, "You see? I
leave you ... If you are not true to me, I instantly leave you,"
and I should do so at once.'
"She begged me never to forget her, but always to pray for her.
"'I love you,' she said, 'as every one else does'; and with a warm
embrace she left the room.
"She came of a handsome family: Blowitz's famous description,'de
loin on dirait un Prussien, de pres un imbecile,' was made of a
near relation of the Duchesse d'Aosta."
With the fall of the Government my diary of that year ceases to
have the smallest interest.