“Oh! he was a real gentleman, ma’am!  I know a gentleman when I see him; he had a gardenia in his buttonhole, but he didn’t get my ticket!”

Our register was signed by four Prime Ministers:  Mr. Gladstone, Lord Rosebery, Arthur Balfour and my husband.  We spent the first part of our honeymoon at Mells Park, Frome, lent to us by Sir John and Lady Horner, and the second at Clovelly Court with our friend and hostess, Mrs. Hamlyn.

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

I do not think if you had ransacked the world you could have found natures so opposite in temper, temperament and outlook as myself and my stepchildren when I first knew them.

If there was a difference between the Tennants and Lytteltons of laughter, there was a difference between the Tennants and Asquiths of tears.  Tennants believed in appealing to the hearts of men, firing their imagination and penetrating and vivifying their inmost lives.  They had a little loose love to give the whole world.  The Asquiths—­without mental flurry and with perfect self-mastery—­believed in the free application of intellect to every human emotion; no event could have given heightened expression to their feelings.  Shy, self-engaged, critical and controversial, nothing surprised them and nothing upset them.  We were as zealous and vital as they were detached and as cocky and passionate as they were modest and emotionless.

They rarely looked at you and never got up when any one came into the room.  If you had appeared downstairs in a ball-dress or a bathing-gown they would not have observed it and would certainly never have commented upon it if they had.  Whether they were glowing with joy at the sight of you or thrilled at receiving a friend, their welcome was equally composed.  They were devoted to one another and never quarrelled; they were seldom wild and never naughty.  Perfectly self-contained, truthful and deliberate, I never saw them lose themselves in my life and I have hardly ever seen the saint or hero that excited their disinterested emotion.

When I thought of the storms of revolt, the rage, the despair, the wild enthusiasms and reckless adventures, the disputes that finished not merely with fights, but with fists in our nursery and schoolroom, I was stunned by the steadiness of the Asquith temper.

Let it not be inferred that I am criticising them as they now are, or that their attitude towards myself was at any time lacking in sympathy.  Blindness of heart does not imply hardness; and expression is a matter of temperament or impulse; hut it was their attitude towards life that was different from my own.  They over-valued brains, which was a strange fault, as they were all remarkably clever.  Hardly any Prime Minister has had famous children, but the Asquiths were all conspicuous in their different ways:  Raymond and Violet the most striking, Arthur the most capable, Herbert a poet and Cyril the shyest and the rarest.