Asquith Read online

  His first taste of this came immediately after he ceased to be an undergraduate, when he spent the summer and early autumn of 1874 coaching the son of the Earl of Portsmouth, and moving between his two country houses, Hurstbourne Park in Hampshire and Eggesford in Devon. “ I thus obtained a glimpse of a kind of life which was new to me,”q he recorded. At Lord Portsmouth’s he met politicians like Lord Carnarvon, who was then Colonial Secretary, and fashionable men of letters like Lord Houghton.

  This interlude over he returned to Balliol and spent the first year of his fellowship in residence. But he did not continue this habit. He wished to be a lawyer and not a don, because the law was the accepted door, for young men without position, into the world of power and politics. This meant London and not Oxford. For the remaining six years of his fellowship it was merely a small but useful source of income to him. He left Oxford finally at the end of the summer term of 1875, and although he retained for the University a deep and almost romantic attachment, unusual in one whose later life was to be so strikingly successful, he never lived again within the city.

  1 The Moravians, a highly disciplined Protestant sect with a strong missionary bent, trace their origin back to 1457 when a group of peasants in the Kingdom of Bohemia retired to a remote Moravian village, and there established a Unitas Fratrum. After 1620 they were forced underground in Bohemia, and only attracted the name Moravian when groups of them began to emigrate early in the eighteenth century. They first came to Yorkshire in 1742. The boarding school at Fulneck existed from 1801 to 1884

  A STRUGGLING BARRISTER

  1875-86

  After leaving Balliol in June, 1875, Asquith spent six weeks as a member of a reading party at St. Andrews. Most of his close Oxford associates were there, and the expedition later came to assume for him the glow of a long-remembered Indian summer to his university life. But it also contained some seeds of the future. It was his first visit to Scotland and it took him, by chance, into the heart of the constituency which he was to represent in the House of Commons for thirty-two years. All around him, during this long vacation, lay the rolling countryside of East Fife and the electors who, with their children, were to be faithful to him throughout the long years of his mounting success—but not afterwards.

  Even nearer at hand were the links of the Royal and Ancient St. Andrews Golfing Society, and Asquith there made his first acquaintance with the only non-sedentary game which was ever to arouse his interest. It was a useful acquaintanceship, for although golf was then so little developed that he and his modest-living student companions were able to hire the services of the British open champion to carry their clubs, the game was to become an almost essential accompaniment to Edwardian politics. In the heyday of Asquith’s career, there was hardly a politician of note who did not seek his relaxation (and in some cases attempt to transact a part of his business) upon a golf links. Balfour was at least as addicted to the game as was Asquith himself, and Lloyd George even built himself a house alongside one of the best-known Surrey courses.

  The Scottish holiday over, Asquith went to London and moved into rooms at the imposing address of 90 Mount Street, Mayfair. He had been eating his dinners in Lincoln’s Inn for his last few years at Oxford, and he came to London for nine months’ work in chambers before his call to the bar. He had been accepted as a pupil by Charles Bowen, one of the most distinguished of nineteenth-century legal minds, and he began work with him in the last days of October. Bowen, apart from being the son of a country parson and a Rugbeian, had a similar background to Asquith’s own. He had been a scholar and fellow of Balliol and President of the Union. He had won all the University prizes and was Jowett’s favourite pupil. Unlike Asquith, however, he was a notable athlete with poor health. He once exhibited the former prowess by the curiously unmodern feat of jumping a cow as it stood in a field, and the latter weakness led to frequent periods of long convalescence and an early death before the age of sixty. But by that time he had been successively a puisne judge for three years, a lord justice of appeal for eleven, and a law lord for one. He was also a notable wit, although many of his verses and recorded remarks now seem to suffer from the contrived facetiousness which came only too easily to Victorian classicists in their lighter moments.

  When he accepted Asquith, Bowen had recently made his reputation in the interminable case of the Tichborne Claimant, and was Junior Counsel to the Treasury, or “ Attorney-General’s devil.” He also had a large general practice, and was at the height of his success as an advocate; three years later, at the age of forty-four, he went straight from the junior bar to the bench. A short period as a pupil therefore gave Asquith a little experience of almost all branches of Common Law work. It also gave him a modified admiration for this perfect example of a Balliol man of the previous generation. His admiration was modified because Bowen’s supremely refined intelligence was not muscular enough for his own taste; and because he was irritated by the latter’s inability to delegate work—a capacity which was always highly developed in Asquith himself—and which resulted in most of the pupils’ drafts being completely re-written by Bowen. Despite this, and despite his removal to another set of chambers immediately after his call to the bar in June, 1876, Asquith remained on terms of close acquaintanceship with Bowen. Sixteen years later, as Home Secretary, he gave the judge his last public appointment.

  The chambers in which Asquith established himself were at 6, Fig Tree Court. The other occupants were two almost equally junior men who had also been pupils of Bowen’s. In these surroundings he spent seven extremely lean years. The tide of success which had flowed strongly from his last years at school to his acceptance in chambers as distinguished as Bowen’s, suddenly ceased to run. He was without legal connections, there was no one in the chambers from whom work might filter down to him, and he had no money of his own. Placed as he was, indeed, the whole venture of going to the bar, rather than remaining at Oxford or seeking some public service employment, was a hazardous gamble. And it was a gamble which brought no early winnings. For at least five years after his call, his professional earnings were negligible. His reaction was not to withdraw disappointedly or even, as might have been expected from Jowett’s view of him as above all a determinedly ambitious young man1, to meet setback with caution. On the contrary, he doubled his stake. In August, 1877 he got married.

  1 “ Asquith will get on ; he is so direct,” had been the Master of Balliol’s summing up (Spender and Asquith, Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith, j, p. 35).

  His wife was Helen Melland, the daughter of a Manchester doctor. Asquith had known her since 1870, when he was eighteen and she only fifteen. They had met at St. Leonards-on-Sea, while Asquith was staying with his mother and she with some neighbouring cousins. Throughout his time at Oxford occasional vacation meetings on the South Coast were supplemented by a growing correspondence. She was Asquith’s first love, and for many years his only one. “ The first real one,” he wrote later, after referring to Ills already mentioned non-real, schoolboy attachment to Madge Robertson, “ .. . was Helen who afterwards became my wife. I showed the same constancy which has since been practised by my sons, and waited from about 18 to 25 (hardly ever seeing her in the interval).”a During 1874 they became secretly engaged, and in the autumn of 1876 Asquith went to Manchester to try to turn this clandestine arrangement into an open one. Dr. Melland, a well-established physician of commanding presence who survived to the age of 98, responded to Asquith’s approach with a combination of courtesy and caution. But two months later he gave his consent by letter. “ Although I have not had any opportunity of becoming better acquainted with you personally,” he wrote, “ I have been able to make certain enquiries which have satisfied me that I may give my consent to your becoming engaged to my daughter. I have the fullest conviction that your industry and ability will procure for you in due time that success in your profession which has attended you in your past career.b If the standard was to be “ industry and ability,” it would have require
d a very exacting father-in-law to fault Asquith.

  Miss Melland’s position and fortune were not such that there could have been any question of a man with Asquith’s ambitions marrying her for worldly reasons. But she was not so penniless that the change of circumstances meant any reduction in his standard of living. With her income of a few hundred pounds a year, with the money from his Balliol fellowship still continuing, and with chance earnings from lecturing and journalism, which he began increasingly to seek, they were able to move at once into a spacious, white-walled, early nineteenth century house in what was then John Street, and is now Keats Grove, Hampstead. Here, surrounded by a large garden and looking across the street to John Keats’s old house, they lived what Asquith’s official biographers insist was a simple, but agreeable and placid married life.

  Placidity, indeed, was constantly stressed by Asquith himself as the keynote both of his wife’s character and of the satisfaction which he derived from the marriage. This is a recurring theme of his writing about the relationship his wife wanted not only after and during the marriage, but even before it took place. “ I am more than ever convinced,” he wrote to his mother in January, 1877, “ that H’s health and happiness depend upon a speedy marriage and the chance of a quiet home, where she can be properly looked after and cared for.”c But he was equally insistent that “ a quiet home ” and a simple unpretentious domesticity was what he, too, required. Yet an element of doubt remains as to whether Asquith, even at this stage in his career, did not secretly hanker after a more tense relationship and a more dramatic way of life. There was always in his character a surprising but strong streak of recklessness. It made him go to the bar instead of seeking a safer occupation. It made him marry before he had an assured income. It was later to make him enter Parliament before he had an established practice. And it made him, in the early ’eighties, when his briefs were still rare, spend nearly .£300 (equivalent to at least .£1200 today) on a diamond necklace for his wife. It must, from everything that is known of her character and pattern of life, have been almost the last thing that she wanted.

  In appearance Helen Asquith was tall, brown-haired and very good-looking in a quiet featured way. The impression which survives of her is of an unambitious woman, with a calm and quietly assured character. “ Hers was a beautiful and simple spirit,”d Haldane recorded in his autobiography. Her husband wrote: “ She had one of those personalities which it is almost impossible to depict. The strong colours of the palette seem to be too heavy and garish: it is difficult to paint a figure in the soft grey tints which would best suit her, and yet she was not neutral or negative. Her mind was clear and strong, but it was not cut in facets and did not flash lights, and no one would have called her clever or “ intellectual ”. What gave her her rare quality was her character, which everyone who knew her intimately (Haldane for instance) agrees was the most selfless and unworldly that they have ever encountered. She was warm, impulsive, naturally quick-tempered, and generous almost to a fault. . . . ”e

  Asquith was right about the difficulties of depiction. The picture he gives is not altogether clear. But there is no doubt that he lived contentedly with her for many years; and the talent of so many of their children was such that she must surely have contributed substantially to the strain.

  The first of these children, Raymond, was born in 1878. Partly on the basis of an effortless academic record which surpassed even that of his father, he left the memory of a figure of almost legendary talent when he was killed in 1916. The second son, Herbert (or Beb as he was known in the family) was born three years later. He followed his father and brother in becoming President of the Union, but not in their quality as classical scholars, although he made a minor reputation as a poet and novelist. The third son, Arthur (or Oc), born in 1883, was the least intellectual of the family. But he achieved distinction as a war-time soldier, reached the rank of Brigadier-General at 31, and was recommended for the Victoria Cross.

  In 1887 Helen Asquith’s only daughter, now Lady Violet Bonham Carter, was born. The conventions of her time and milieu denied her any opportunity for academic achievement, but she developed a political knowledge and oratorical power which have made her one of the outstanding women of her generation. The last child was Cyril, born in 1890. His academic record was still more memorable than that of his older brother.1 Like Raymond and Herbert he went to the bar and rose to become a Lord of Appeal Ordinary before his relatively early death in 1954.

  1 The freemasonry of intellectual success within which Asquith family relations came to be conducted is perfectly summed up by the note which Cyril received from Raymond when in 1908) he followed him (and his father) in winning the first Balliol scholarship:

  Dear Cyril,

  Fancy you being as clever as—

  Raymond.

  At least three of these children were by any standards exceptional and the other two were in no way negligible figures. The one quality which their father failed to transmit to any of them (except to Violet, to whom it was of least use) was the sustained ambition which comes from a desire to influence the development of events. Here, perhaps, their mother’s character played its part.

  With the growth of Ills family—at least until 1883—greatly exceeding that of his practice, and with his Balliol fellowship expiring in 1881, Asquith’s need for additional income became intense. At first his search for this had mainly to take the form of examining and teaching, and not at a particularly elevated level. For a few years he marked papers set by the Oxford and Cambridge Board for examinations at the public schools, and reviewed the work, amongst many others, of George Curzon at Eton and Austen Chamberlain at Rugby. Then he taught himself the rudiments of economics (a subject for which his sceptical and strictly non-mathematical mind gave him neither great affinity nor particular aptitude) in order that he might pass on the teaching of Marshall and Jevons to University Extension Classes at Wimbledon and Clapham and other suburbs. He also lectured in the law to audiences of would-be solicitors. In 1880 he gave a course in Chancery Lane on the law of insurance and carriage by land.

  None of this work was either well-paid or intellectually stimulating to Asquith. He was not a natural teacher, for his lucidity was unmatched by any insistent desire to impart knowledge or to open the minds of others. Even as a political speaker he neither sought nor needed any very close relationship with his audience, and as an advocate he was always a little impatient (and consequently unskilled) in dealing with the whims of juries—and even of judges. He was therefore not sorry when it became possible to tilt the balance of his income-raising efforts towards writing, which had the additional advantage of being more remunerative. His attempt at publication within the field of his profession was unsuccessful however. He did a lot of work in preparation of a manual on the law of carriage by sea, but was frustrated by the publication, before he was ready, of a definitive text-book on the subject, and consequently abandoned his own labours.

  As was his habit, he met the setback with equanimity; and it was, in any event, balanced by the growth of an intimate connection with two leading weekly papers. The first was the Spectator, then under the joint editorship and proprietorship of Richard Holt Hutton and Meredith Townsend. They were an incongruous couple,1 but they worked smoothly together and produced a successful paper, Liberal in politics but literary in much of its content, and almost all written by themselves. What was not written by them was written by a very few outside contributors, of whom Asquith was probably the most constant. His association with the paper was sufficiently close that when one or other of the two editors went away, he frequently moved in and helped to put the paper together. He wrote for them upon what he described as “ almost every kind of topic—political, social, literary, economic,”f but the two essays which he chose subsequently to republishg' were both on severely classical subjects—The Art of Tacitus and The Age of Demosthenes.

  1 “ Ostensibly they had nothing in common,” Asquith wrote of them “ Townsend, with
his courtly Anglo-Indian air, tapping his snuff-box, am walking up and down his room, emitting dogmatic paradoxes: Hutton more than short-sighted, looking out on external things through a monoc with an extra-powerful lens, and talking with the almost languid, air of one who had in the old days breakfasted with Crabbe Robinson, and sat at the feet of Arthur Clough.” (Memories and Refections, 1, p. 68.)

  Asquith’s Spectator period lasted for ten years. It began, tentatively, even before his call to the bar, and it continued, perhaps with lessening intensity towards the end, until 1886, the year of the Home Rule split in the Liberal Party. Although Hutton had hitherto been a Gladstone man almost without reserve, the paper then took a firmly Unionist line against the Prime Minister, and Asquith thought that political divergence on an issue of such importance made it necessary for him to sever his connection. A few years later the Hutton-Town end partnership ended and the Spectator passed under the control St. Loe Strachey with whom Asquith was on friendly terms, but with whom he agreed on little beyond free trade. He never renewed his contributions.

  At the end of the ’seventies, Hutton and Townsend, as well as using Asquith’s work themselves, had introduced him to the Economist. The Economist was then jointly edited by Palgrave and Lathbury but continued to live under the shadow of Walter Bagehot who had died, still in the editorial chair, only in 1877. Asquith’s work for this paper became more regular than for the Spectator, but the connection (as it appears from his subsequent writings about the periodh) was a more work-a-day and less enjoyable one for him. He was retained at a salary of .£150 a year, and in return for this he wrote, almost every week, one of the paper’s two leading articles. He found no difficulty in striking the note of rational radicalism which was called for by the paper’s tradition. This connection came to an end in 1885, but because of the growth of his work at the bar and not of any political disagreement.