Asquith (12 page)

Gladstone resigned as Prime Minister on March 3rd, 1894. He had been in dispute with his colleagues since January 9th, when in an argument with Lord Spencer about the size of the naval estimates he had been supported only by Shaw-Lefevre, the First Commissioner of Works. He had then retired to Biarritz for three weeks, but showed no desire to give way while there. Nor did the other ministers. Asquith recorded in his diary for January 13th:
⁴⁴
Lunch with Harcourts. Talk with H. and Loulou.
¹
We agreed that we could make no proposals. Best chance to trust to time and Atlantic breezes.” But the main result of the Atlantic breezes, according to Sir Algernon West, was to produce in Gladstone a growing conviction that all his colleagues, except Shaw-Lefevre, were
⁴⁴
mad and drunk.” The real cause of the dispute, of course, was something deeper than the question of economy in naval expenditure. Had this been the only point at issue Harcourt would hardly have found himself opposed to the Prime Minister. But on Gladstone’s side there was the constant desire to embroil the Government in a struggle to the death with the House of Lords over Ireland.
⁴⁴
After breakfast to A. Morley’s,
²
where was A. West just back from Biarritz with Mr. G’s latest,” Asquith wrote in his diary for February 7th. "He proposes an immediate dissolution—pretext being action of H. of Lords on our Bills; we all agreed that this is madness.”
³
On the side of the other ministers there was the growing conviction that Gladstone was no longer either physically or mentally capable of presiding over the Government. The
⁴⁴
gradual closing of 
the doors of the senses,” which he had first mentioned in 1892, was gathering momentum.

¹
_{Lewis (later 1st Viscount) Harcourt, Sir William’s son by his first marriage.}

²
_{Former Chief Whip and then Postmaster General.}

³
_{Accusations of insanity were freely exchanged between the Prime Minister and his Cabinet at this stage.}

Asquith wrote later that “ Mr. Gladstone’s resignation was entirely his own act
” 
^g
and this was no doubt formally true. But Asquith himself, like most other ministers, had come to the conclusion by early January that it was time for the act to be committed. His admiration for Gladstone had been unconfmed. To the end of his life he thought him the greatest man with whom he had ever worked. But he knew how rapidly Gladstone’s judgment was failing. In consequence, he made no attempt to cling to the Grand Old Man during this Lear-like period. His relations with Gladstone had been based on high mutual respect, but hardly upon great personal intimacy. And this was a time when those who had been far closer, Morley particularly, and Rosebery too, were convinced that the moment for resignation had come.

Gladstone at last made his decision known to his colleagues on February 27th, and on March 1st he attended his final Cabinet and made his last speech in the House of Commons. What happened at this Cabinet—the “ blubbering Cabinet ” as Gladstone subsequently referred to it—was described by Asquith many years later: “ Before the Cabinet separated, Lord Kimberley (the senior member), who was genuinely moved, had uttered a few broken sentences of affection and reverence, when Harcourt produced from his box and proceeded to read a well-thumbed
ms
of highly elaborated eulogy. Of those who were present there are now few survivors; but which of them can forget the expression of Mr. Gladstone’s face, as he looked on with hooded eyes and tightened lips at this maladroit performance?
^h

Asquith wrote to Gladstone a day or two later, and was proud of the letter which he received in reply. “ The future is in my mind a clouded picture,” it ran: “ but I am glad that the prolongation of my political life has given me an opportunity of helping the arrangements under which you have taken your stand in political life. I well remember the impression made upon me by your speech at the Eighty Club, the first time I ever saw or heard you. It has since been, of course, deepened and confirmed. Great problems are before us: and I know no one more likely to face them, as I hope and believe, not only with a manly strength, but with a determined integrity of mind. I most earnestly hope that you may be enabled to fulfil your part, which will certainly be an arduous one.”
ⁱ

The succession was not a certain one. In spite of the naval estimates,

Gladstone, had he been asked, would have recommended the Queen to send for Lord Spencer. But he was not asked. And, indeed, biased and bitter though the Queen had been in most of her later dealings with him, this omission was neither unconstitutional nor unreasonable. It was not desirable that a Prime Minister who was in effect being forced out by colleagues who venerated his past, but no longer trusted his judgment, should be allowed to choose his own successor. Spencer would have been a most inadequate choice. The “ red earl ” as he was known (owing to the colour of his beard rather than the nature of his political views) had no great powers either of intellect or leadership, and no following in the Liberal Party. Spencer commended himself to Gladstone because he was an old Whig aristocrat whom he had known for many years, and one of the very few in this category who had not deserted him over Home Rule.

The more serious claimants were Harcourt and Rosebery. The former—the Great Gladiator as he was sometimes called in those enthusiastic days—was nearly twenty-five years Rosebery’s senior and had a much wider experience of office. Furthermore, he had the advantage of being in the Commons. A peer Prime Minister, as Salisbury showed, was then by no means impossible, but it was faintly ludicrous for the head of the Government to sit in a House in which he could muster only 41 supporters. In addition, Harcourt’s “ Little England ” views were more popular in the Liberal Party than Rosebery’s imperialism. For all these reasons, Harcourt would almost certainly have been the choice of a majority both of Liberal members of Parliament and of the party’s active supporters in the country. Against this Rosebery had three sources of strength, two of them useful and the third decisive. The Queen wanted him; the Liberal press was on the whole on his side; and his Cabinet colleagues, while not perhaps burning with enthusiasm at the prospect of his leadership, were clear that, as the head of a tottering Government, he was much preferable to Harcourt.
¹

¹
 _{The Queen sent for him on her own initiative, and would no doubt have done so in any event. But had the views of his fellow ministers been different he might have failed to form a Government.}

Asquith was one of the firmest of the “Roseberyites.” He was a friend, and was in close agreement with him on matters of foreign policy, though on home policy, he claimed, he sided as often as not with Harcourt. Asquith’s essential objection to Harcourt, like that of most of the other ministers, was based on temperament rather than 
policy. “ And yet, to tell the naked truth,” he wrote, “ he was an almost impossible colleague, and would have been a wholly impossible chief.Nevertheless, Asquith’s firmness of view did not make him as important an influence as is suggested by Harcourt’s biographer.
¹
It was Morley, co-lieutenant and close ally of Harcourt’s since the late ’eighties, who was the Brutus of the occasion, and who veered at the crucial moment toRosebery—although he was soon to veer back again. But not before the decision had been taken. The new Prime Minister kissed hands on March 4th, and was soon expressing his usual distaste for his new office.

He made few Cabinet changes, saying that the Government’s hold on life was hardly such as to make them worth-while. The most notable was the promotion of Lord Kimberley to the Foreign Office, an event which began John Morley’s process of switching back to the anti-Rosebery camp. Harcourt became leader of the House of Commons as well as Chancellor of the Exchequer, after making certain conditions about access to Foreign Office information. Asquith remained Home Secretary.

1
 
_{Gardiner,
op cit.,
11, p. 269, says that Asquith and Acland are said to be the only Commons members of the Cabinet who were against Harcourt}
.

Asquith’s first important act under the new Government was to re-marry. This he did at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on Wednesday, May 10th, 1894. His second wife was Margot Tennant, the daughter of a rich, partially self-made Liberal baronet, who had established himself as a territorial figure in the Scottish Border country, and whose numerous children had erupted into social prominence with unusual force.

This second wedding was very different from Asquith’s first, in Manchester, seventeen years previously. The Cabinet postponed its meeting in order not to clash with the ceremony. Apart from the bridegroom, three Prime Ministers, Gladstone representing the past, Rosebery the present, and Balfour the future, signed the register. The pavements from Grosvenor Square to Hanover Square, according to the memoirs of the bride, “ were blocked with excited and enthusiastic people.” Her old nurse was unsuccessfully offered first .£10 and then “ anything you like ” for a ticket of admission to the church by a gentleman with a gardenia. “ I must see Margot Tennant married,” he had said.
^a
Haldane, as best man, struck an almost pedestrian note.

Asquith had first met Miss Tennant, as has been mentioned, in 1891, a few months before the death of his first wife. She has left a vivid description of this first encounter:

The dinner where I was introduced to my husband was in the House of Commons and I sat next to him.
¹
I was deeply impressed by his conversation and his clear Cromwellian face. I thought then, as I do now, that lie had a way of putting you not only at your
ease but at your best when talking to him which is given to few men of note. He was different to the others and, although un-fashionably dressed, had so much personality that I made up my mind at once that this was the man who could help me and would understand everything.

After dinner we all walked on the Terrace and I was flattered to find my new friend at my side. Lord Battersea chaffed me in his noisy and flamboyant manner, trying to separate us, but with tact and determination his frontal attack was resisted and my new friend and I retired to the darkest part of the Terrace where, leaning over the parapet, we gazed into the river and talked far into the night.

Our host (Lord Battersea) and his party—thinking that I had gone home and that Mr. Asquith had returned to the House when the division bell rang—had disappeared; and when we finished our conversation the Terrace was deserted and the sky light.

It never occurred to me that he was married, nor would that have affected me in any way. . . . Mr. Asquith and I met a few days later dining with Sir Algernon West ... . and after this we saw each other constantly
.
^b