Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  From 1895 onwards Asquith believed that, without some unforeseen ill chance, he would one day be leader of the Liberal Party. But he was in no great hurry to hasten that day, partly because he was by nature a patient man, and partly because he would have suffered considerable personal inconvenience from becoming leader early in a long period of opposition. It would have involved devoting all his time to a salary-less occupation, and this he could not afford. His second marriage brought him £5,000 a year, but it also brought him a pattern of expenditure which precluded full-time politics unless his party were in office and he was paid another £5,000 a year as a minister.

  In the autumn of 1894 he had taken a lease on 20, Cavendish Square, and this remained his London house, with the exception of the years in Downing Street, until 1920. It was a spacious and comfortable house, but inconvenient to run—all the food had to be brought from a mews kitchen across the courtyard at the back,—and upon the scale at which it was maintained, extremely expensive. There were normally fourteen servants in the house, including a butler and two footmen, who were occupied with a continuous round of luncheon and dinner parties. In addition to the fourteen there were a coachman and boy in the stable. Until the Wharf, near Abingdon, was acquired nearly twenty years later, the Asquiths had no regular house out of London, so that expense at least was spared. But they usually took a house in Scotland for the later summer and early autumn; and Mrs. Asquith’s resumption of hunting soon after their marriage led to considerable expenditure which ended only when she finally sold her horses in 1906.

  Even without the new lavishness which came with his second marriage, Asquith would have remained dependent on his professional earnings. He had five children—four of them boys—to educate, and after the age of about forty any return to the austerity of his early Hampstead days would have been most unwelcome to him. His marriage to Margot meant that his total family expenditure was much higher; but even had this not taken place he would still have had to return to the bar. He could never have afforded to be a full time politician in opposition. In 1888, well before the death of his first wife, he had told his pupil John Roskill that, if he achieved his immediate ambition of becoming Home Secretary in the next Government, his firm plan, when he was again in opposition, was to return to practice. At that time, no doubt, he could not foresee how near and how quickly he would approach the leadership, but his declaration of intention was important because it then involved a sharp break with tradition. No former Cabinet Minister had ever previously appeared in a supplicatory role before judges. The distinction was a fine one, for former law officers had frequently done this. In 1886, for example, Sir Henry James and Sir Charles Russell, each a former Attorney-General, had both appeared in the Dilke case. But neither had served in the Cabinet, nor did any law officer until 1912, when Asquith himself included Sir Rufus Isaacs, then Attorney-General. They were not therefore Privy Councillors, for this political honour was then granted sufficiently sparingly that it was in effect confined to the Cabinet.1 And the point of the loose convention which Asquith was preparing to break was that, as a Privy Councillor, he would be of higher rank than most of the judges before whom he was likely to appear, and that this might be damaging both to his own dignity and even to the whole established system of precedence. In fact, when he broke the convention relatively little notice was taken and no dire consequences followed, either for himself or anyone else. Since then there has never been any question of the right of lawyers to return to practice from the Cabinet, although the numbers who have wished to do so have been surprisingly small; Simon in the ’twenties and Shawcross in the ’fifties have been the most notable examples.

  1 There were occasional exceptions. When Chamberlain unavailingly tried to persuade Dilke to accept the Irish Office without the Cabinet in 1882 he argued that “ it carried with it the Privy Council ” and he was probably speaking with Gladstone’s authority, although G. O. Trevelyan, who accepted the job after Dilke’s refusal, did not get the honour. And in 1856, a still more pertinent exception, Palmerston made Stuart Wortley, who had already acquired a Privy Councillorship, his Solicitor General. In 1902, Haldane, a member of the Chancery Bar, who had never held office although he was a more prominent member of Parliament than most of those who had, was made a right honourable in the Coronation honours. But this was after Asquith’s break with tradition.

  In the autumn of 1895 Asquith therefore returned to 1,Paper Buildings and began his final period of practice, which was to last a solid decade. He had lost some ground as a result of his absence and new leaders had established themselves. Russell had become Lord Chief Justice, and Carson and Edward Clarke had succeeded as the most formidable jury advocates. More significantly from Asquith’s point of view, Haldane and C. A. Cripps (later Lord Parmoor) had taken the leading places in appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and cases before the Railway Commission. This was the type of work on which, together with House of Lords appeals, Asquith’s practice became increasingly concentrated.

  After a short interval he achieved a position roughly equal to that of Cripps and Haldane. But he never rose above this. His jury appeal, in spite of his political success, remained woefully deficient. He never became a fashionable advocate, and he appeared in few cases which attracted much public interest. One of the exceptions was Powell v. Kempton Park Racecourse Company, and here he was engaged, during the several stages of a long-drawn-out battle, in arguing the abstruse proposition that an unroofed enclosure adjoining a race-course was a “place kept and used for betting” within the meaning of the Act of 1853, rather than in any dramatic destruction of witnesses or deployment of evidence. He never again spent as widely-publicised a day in court as that on which he had dissected Macdonald of The Times before the Parnell Commission in 1888. Asa result his legal work was notably lacking in that aura of anecdote which surrounded the careers of Russell or Carson, or F. E. Smith or Marshall-Hall, or even Haldane —if only because of the last-named’s verbal convolutions.

  From the layman’s point of view, Asquith’s practice was, quite simply, a dull one, efficiently but undramatically conducted, without an undue expenditure of effort, and probably not of absorbing interest even to Asquith himself. But it yielded an income which, over the decade from 1895, fluctuated between £5,000 and £10,000 a year. He was never poorer, and sometimes much better off, than when in office. As a mark of success as a barrister his earnings may be considered high without being sensational; but they might have been markedly higher had he not been devoting a substantial part of his energies to politics.

  Even upon politics, however, Asquith’s expenditure of effort in the years after 1895 was in no way prodigal. Although he now had the concentrated front bench responsibilities associated with being one of the only six members of the late Cabinet left in the Commons, he returned so far as possible to the pattern of parliamentary attendance which he had followed between 1886 and 1892. In the session of 1896 he spoke eighteen times, but voted in only 124 divisions out of 419. In 1897 he spoke on 28 occasions, and voted once more in 124 divisions —out of a total 375. Many of his House of Commons speeches were on major occasions, and he supplemented them, as in the previous period, by occasional well-chosen platform engagements in the country. Nevertheless, his parliamentary economy did not pass without some comment, although this mostly took the form of regret that he was not more available rather than of a feeling that anyone who was so occupied outside was of little use to the Liberal Party. “ But I do find that Grey is hopeful,” Arthur Acland wrote to Asquith on January 20th, 1899 in a letter which began by complaining about the laziness of Harcourt’s leadership, “ and that you and he may do a good bit (in the H. of C.) if you have time to spare from law and society, and he from his country pursuits... .”b

  The edge of criticism here, of course lay more in the suggestion of Asquith’s pre-occupation with society than of his immersion in the law. Insofar as there was a basis for the suggestion it arose partly, but by no mean
s entirely, out of his second marriage. Several years before this took place he was living a life (while a minister) in which it was possible, as he recorded perhaps more with surprise than pleasure, to lunch three times in one week in the company of Balfour’s friend, Lady Elcho, and also to sit next to her twice at dinner. But a week of such concentrated social activity was more unusual for him in the early ’nineties than at the end of the decade. Until 1894 Asquith gave very few luncheon or dinner parties of his own and went to no balls. After his marriage he was no less active as a host (or perhaps as a hostess’s husband) than as a guest, and, in addition, his summer nights were often rounded-off by brief, non-dancing visits to the balls of the season. His wife has testified that this worldy activity was only of superficial interest to him, and there is certainly force in her parallel view that Iris outlook and actions were never influenced by any desire to stand well in the drawing-rooms of London. Why then, did he choose to spend so much time in them? The answer is partly that this was the sort of life he thought he had settled for when he married Margot, and partly that, when not engaged in the actual business of law or politics, he increasingly enjoyed feminine rather than masculine company, and frivolous rather than serious conversation; and this was the easiest way to find it.

  Margot Asquith herself was a specialist in conversation which was both feminine and frivolous, and it might have been expected that her husband’s desires in this direction would be satisfied at home. But she was perhaps a better performer in public than in private. And although their marriage forged a strong and lasting bond of intellectual and political loyalty between them, and was also a considerable success from the point of view of Margot’s relations with the Asquith children, its early years were overshadowed by her persistent ill-health. In May, 1895, her first confinement resulted in a few days of great fear for her life, the loss of the child, and her condemnation, as a result of phlebitis, to three months of prostration.

  She was by no means entirely solitary or consistently cast down during these months,1 but it was obviously a dismal and trying period,

  particularly when the general election took away from London not only her husband but most of her other friends as well. And at the end of it she was far from recovering her full health.

  1 In her Autobiography (I, p. 289) she describes a visit from Harcourt on June 21 st: “I had seen most of my political and other friends—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 was delighted to see Sir William Harcourt.” This visit took place on the evening of the Government’s defeat on the cordite vote, and Harcourt only just got back into the House in time. But John Morley, who had unexpectedly joined Harcourt at her bedside, was still with her—and unpaired—when the division took place.

  “For many years after my first confinement,” she wrote, “I was a delicate woman.” Her disease was regarded as neurasthenia, and its worst manifestation was a persistent and almost complete sleeplessness. “Not the least sorrowful part of having neurasthenia ” she continued, “ is that your will-power, your character and your body are almost equally affected by it.” And again: “ No one who has not experienced over any length of time real sleeplessness can imagine what this means.. . insomnia is akin to insanity.”c

  There were occasional periods of relief. She enjoyed “ bouts of health golfing in Scotland and hunting in Leicestershire,” and at the beginning of 1897 she managed a successful confinement and her daughter Elizabeth was born.1

  1 1897-1945 In 1919 she married the Roumanian diplomat Prince Antoine Bibesco.

  In addition she always had great buoyancy of spirit, at least in public. But her troubles continued for a long time. All her pregnancies were difficult ones. Her son Anthony— Asquith’s last child—was born in 1902, but, in addition to the misfortune of 1895, she lost two other children at birth—in 1899 and 1907. Her ill-health, according to her own testimony, continued for so long that “ in the year 1908, when my husband became Prime Minister, I went to St. Paul’s Cathedral and prayed that I might die rather than hamper his life as an invalid.”d

  The effect of all this was private rather than public. Margot did not become a recluse. Nor was there any question of a foundering of the marriage or a rupture of relations between herself and Asquith. But it did mean that the fulfilment he found was not as complete as he had perhaps hoped for before the marriage took place. It was not only that her illness made her difficult to live with. He probably expected that she would in any event be that. Rather was it that it made her less exhilarating and satisfying—which he had certainly not expected.

  During these years towards and around the turn of the century Asquith’s appearance underwent a great change. When the Liberal Government left office he was 42. He still looked a young man. Although he was always of rather stocky build he was not particularly heavy and his features were clear cut. His hair was fair and rather neat. He retained something of his Oxford and Hampstead air of ingenuous earnestness.

  At first the main change in his appearance which resulted from his marriage was a considerable smartening-up of his dress. Left to himself he was always indifferent to clothes, but Margot thought them mere important. Her account of their first meeting stressed his virtues despite the fact that he was “ unfashionably dressed.” And in their early letters there were occasional mocking remarks—from both sides— about the inelegance of his suits and hats. For a short time this was corrected. Their marriage photographs show that on this day at least he was fully presentable; and in the picture facing p. 64 which was taken in the summer of 1898 and shows Asquith walking with his daughter Elizabeth, he had even achieved a certain glossiness.

  It was a short-lived quality. This photograph was a transitional one. His features were still young but they had become plump. A few years later the youth had gone. He put on much more weight, his face became not merely full-cheeked but heavy-jowled, and his hair became quite grey and, apparently, much looser in texture. By 1902 or ’03 Ills appearance was that of a man well-advanced in middle-age. And with this advance there went the final abandonment of any attempt at elegance. Either Margot had ceased to care or, in this respect, he had revolted against her influence. His clothes were mostly the conventional ones for the occasion—although both on the golf course and in Scotland he preferred blue serge to tweed—but were baggy and carelessly worn. His hair was allowed to grow much longer, and he visited the barber with reluctance. In general his appearance became rather shaggy and he assumed that look of dignified, benevolent slovenliness, which was how he was to be best remembered. It is well expressed by the photograph opposite p. 320, which shows him in Whitehall in the early years of the Liberal Government of 1905. Thereafter he did not change much until well after the end of his premiership.

  A DISMAL OPPOSITION

  1895-9

  The troubles which had beset the Liberal Party in government and during the general election showed no sign of diminishing in the new Parliament. Before it had even met Rosebery communicated to Lord Spencer his “ irrevocable decision not to meet Harcourt in council any more.” Harcourt received the news from Spencer. Asquith received it direct from Rosebery in a letter dated August 12th. This referred to “ the contingency which we foresaw ” having arrived, and made it clear that the proscription meant there could be no full meetings of former Liberal ministers, and that Rosebery wished all his colleagues to know what he had written in his letter to Spencer: “ Had we boxes I would circulate it in a box! ”

  “Let me say one word quite frankly to you,” he concluded.

  “I am more than willing to stand aside, if that should be judged best for the party. Nor does it seem easy to see how in our shattered condition the party can be led by a peer. But what would be worse, and indeed worst, would be that the party should be led by a Commons Castor and a peer Pollux who disagree on every subject and communicate on none.”

  For a man of su
ch notoriously bad temper Harcourt took the proscription with remarkable equanimity. He referred to it as “a damned piece of impertinence ” but, according to Lord Spencer, these were “ the only bitter words used by him.” Perhaps he was as reluctant as Rosebery to make any further attempts at co-operation, but was delighted that the responsibility for the break should rest so obviously on the other side. For a brief moment, at this stage, the possibility of an Asquith leadership was discussed, but as Harcourt showed no disposition to retire—why should he have played Rosebery’s game for him?—the proposal lapsed.

  It was accepted that for the time being the 1894 arrangement should persist. Harcourt would lead in the Commons and Kimberley in the Lords, while Rosebery would retain the titular leadership of the whole party, although his lack of any contact with Harcourt obviously made this role almost meaningless. Demoralisation followed rapidly and inevitably from this situation. Harcourt himself, with his old trouper’s persistence, plodded on from the front bench, but there was hardly any one to support him. “ Asquith went off to Scotland for good yesterday,” he wrote to his wife on August 15th. “ Campbell-Bannerman will not return from Marienbad. Bryce only is left, and he is off this week to the Cape. Acland is ill and Fowler shows up rarely”a