“Gladstone thinks my fitness to be Henry’s wife should be prayed for like the clergy:  ’Almighty and Everlasting God, who alone workest great marvels . ...’”

John Morley wrote: 

95 Elm park gardens, South Kensington, S.W.  March 7,1894.  My dear miss Margot,

Now that the whirl of congratulations must be ceasing, here are mine, the latest but not the least warm of them all.  You are going to marry one of the finest men in all the world, with a great store of sterling gifts both of head and heart, and with a life before him of the highest interest, importance and power.  Such a man is a companion that any woman might envy you.  I daresay you know this without my telling you.  On the other part, I will not add myself to those impertinents who—­as I understand you to report—­wish you “to improve.”  I very respectfully wish nothing of the sort.  Few qualities are better worth leaving as they are than vivacity, wit, freshness of mind, gaiety and pluck.  Pray keep them all.  Don’t improve by an atom.

Circumstances may have a lesson or two to teach you, but ’tis only the dull who don’t learn, and I have no fear but that such a pair have happy years in front of them.

You ask for my blessing and you have it.  Be sure that I wish you as unclouded a life as can be the lot of woman, and I hope you will always let me count myself your friend.  I possess some aphorisms on the married state—­but they will keep.  I only let them out as occasion comes.  Always yours sincerely, John Morley.

Looking back now on the first years of my marriage, I cannot exaggerate the gratitude which I feel for the tolerance, patience and loyalty that my stepchildren extended to a stranger; for, although I introduced an enormous amount of fun, beauty and movement into their lives, I could not replace what they had lost.

Henry’s first wife, Helen Asquith, was an exceptionally pretty, refined woman; never dull, never artificial, and of single-minded goodness; she was a wonderful wife and a devoted mother, but was without illusions and even less adventurous than her children.  She told me in one of our talks how much she regretted that her husband had taken silk and was in the House of Commons, at which I said in a glow of surprise: 

“But surely, Mrs. Asquith, you are ambitious for your husband!  Why, he’s a wonderful man!”

This conversation took place in Grosvenor Square the second time that we met, when she brought her little girl to see me.  Violet was aged four and a self-possessed, plump, clever little creature, with lovely hair hanging in Victorian ringlets down her back.