My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleymethod was to notify him in advance that you were going to raise a point, and whenhe had had time to think it over he would allow it if it were at all reasonable. A realpersonality of that kind in the Chair is a big factor in maintaining the prestige ofparliament.After this maiden speech my part in debate was not noteworthy until the autumn of1920. My divergence in the interval from the majority in that House of Commons onthe subject of the Versailles Treaty will be discussed later. This period was spent inthe intensive study of politics and all its related questions; also in learning to knowbetter its leading figures. Particularly my association with the group of HenryBentinck, Aubrey Herbert, Godfrey Locker-Lampson and their friends grewcontinuously closer, and a little later came my relationship with Lord Robert Ceciland his organisation, the League of Nations Union, and with both him and his brotherLord Hugh Cecil over the Irish question. Meantime, I was liquidating all my outsideinterests and distractions; the well-loved horses soon went, both hunters and poloponies. Politics had become for me the overriding interest and required singlemindedness.My maiden speech was delivered with impudent celerity, but it opened to me manydoors and made me known to many people who had never heard of me. Back from thewar and up from the country, I knew few people in public life, and still fewer inofficial circles, apart from my brief experience in the Foreign Office and Ministry ofMunitions. I was invited to spend the weekend at the Asquiths' house, The Wharf,where I enjoyed at dinner the first evening all the exquisite embarrassment of Mrs.Asquith's gay enthusiasm for my effort. Earlier in the day I had arrived, very shy,among a large and seemingly distinguished company of whom I knew not a soul. Mr.Asquith was pacing the lawn, an imposing figure in all the majesty of remote reverie.'Go and talk to him,' said Margot, yet the least appropriate action for an unknown newboy seemed to me the rousing of an ex-Prime Minister from more important thoughts.So she took me by the hand and led me up to him; all his deep kindness and subtlecharm at once unfolded. I forget which of his friends described him as a 'small manwith the beatific smile of one who has seen the heavens open', but I remembered itbecause it seemed to me true. His extraordinary serenity in adversity was perhaps dueto his great scholarship; he rested on the sunlit heights of Hellenism, but neverthelessattended a Church of England service every Sunday morning, with only rareaccompaniment of family.That evening after dinner he invited me to play chess with him in another room, ratherunexpectedly, as it was his habit to play bridge. It was quickly apparent that both of ushad little capacity and less interest for the game. Soon he desisted and began to talk ofthe political past, magnificently. I listened entranced, and he long continued, as oldmen will when a young audience responds with a reasonable appreciation. Eventually,feeling selfish and socially apprehensive at this happy monopoly, I murmured someregard for his other guests. He replied: 'Generally I only play bridge to protect myselffrom the conversation of the people Margot brings to this house'. My awe at the otherguests and my credulity of the less worthy Asquith legends simultaneouslydiminished. He was reputed to be unduly addicted to bridge and to drink, but I neversaw him, or for that matter Mr. Churchill—another victim of the same rumour—inany way incapacitated by drink. Certainly they pursued the old English habit of livingwhich reached its apogee in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They both did80 of 424