Your kindest of letters gave me uncommon pleasure, both personal and literary.  Personal, because I like to know that we are still affectionate friends, as we have been for such long, important and trying years.  Literary—­because it is a brilliant example of that character-writing in which the French so indisputably beat us.  If you like, you can be as keen and brilliant and penetrating as Madame de Sevigne or the best of them, and if I were a publisher, I would tempt you by high emoluments and certainty of fame.  You ask me to leave you a book when I depart this life.  If I were your generous well-wisher, I should not leave, but give you, my rather full collection of French Memoirs now while I am alive.  Well, I am in very truth your best well-wisher, but incline to bequeath my modern library to a public body of female ladies, if you pardon that odd and inelegant expression.  I have nothing good or interesting to tell you of myself.  My strength will stand no tax upon it.

The bequest from my old friend [Footnote:  Andrew Carnegie.] in America was a pleasant refresher, and it touched me, considering how different we were in training, character, tastes, temperament.  I was first introduced to him with commendation by Mr. Arnold—­a curious trio, wasn’t it?  He thought, and was proud of it, that he, A. C., introduced M. A. and me to the United States.

I watch events and men here pretty vigilantly, with what good and hopeful spirits you can imagine.  When you return do pay me a visit.  There’s nobody who would be such a tonic to an octogenarian.

Always, always, your affectionate friend,

J. M.

When I had been wrestling with this autobiography for two months I wrote and told John Morley of my venture, and this is his reply: 

FLOWERMEAD, princes road, Wimbledon park, S.W. (Jan., 1920).

Dear Mrs. Asquith,

A bird in the air had already whispered the matter of your literary venture, and I neither had nor have any doubt at all that the publisher knew very well what he was about.  The book will be bright in real knowledge of the world; rich in points of life; sympathetic with human nature, which in strength and weakness is never petty or small.

Be sure to trust yourself; and don’t worry about critics.  You need no words to tell you how warmly I am interested in your great design.  Persevere.

How kind to bid me to your royal [Footnote:  I invited him to meet the Prince of Wales.] meal.  But I am too old for company that would be so new, so don’t take it amiss, my best of friends, if I ask to be bidden when I should see more of you.  You don’t know how dull a man, once lively, can degenerate into being.

Your always affectionate and grateful

J. Morley.

To return to my triumphant youth:  I will end this chapter with a note which my friend, Lady Frances Balfour—­one of the few women of outstanding intellect that I have known—­sent me from her father, the late Duke of Argyll, the wonderful orator of whom it was said that he was like a cannon being fired off by a canary.