Asquith (89 page)

It is with great satisfaction that I have received your letter of the 20th inst., accepting in, if I may say so, such charming terms, the offer of a Peerage... Your Peerage will of course be an Earldom, and subject to the necessary references to the College of Arms which will at once be made, I shall be very glad that the historic title of Earl of Oxford should now be restored in your favour. I have informed the Prime Minister
^e

The tide of Oxford was, of course, somewhat "grand.” It might almost have been a royal one, in the category of Cambridge or Gloucester or York. Even apart from the University significance, it was a more imposing territorial designation than that chosen by any ennobled Prime Minister, or indeed by any politician, except for Lord Norwich (formerly Duff Cooper), in the past hundred years. Yet Asquith had a very good claim to it. He was the most distinguished Oxonian then alive and he had epitomised the methods and style of his University—or at least of a leading college within it. In addition, he had lived for much of the preceding fifteen years within striking distance of the city, and was a familiar figure in its streets and at its tables.

Many recognised this, and wrote with pleasure of his choice. The Bishop of Durham (Henson) stated: "There is no living statesman who has a better right to have his name thus closely bound to his University.” Maurice Baring wrote: "Many congratulations. It is a nice Shakespearean title.” The Master of Balliol (Lindsay), announced his pleasure
⁴⁴
that the College has at least some share in your title.” Lytton Strachey described it as
"
singularly suitable”; Max Beerbohm wrote to say how glad he was that it had been chosen; and Dean Inge apologised for not having written before "to congratulate you on your accession to the grandest of all English titles.” Gilbert Murray mingled congratulation with regret, but at the passing of Asquith’s commoner status and not at the new name:

My dear Mr. Asquith: I must write to you once more in the old name that I have learnt to love and honour and which I associate with so much kindness to myself. The new title is splendid; better than one could have expected. I hardly know why the change should make one sad.

The Bishop of Oxford (Burge) was so little worried by having to share his territorial name in the House of Lords that he wrote an enthusiastic letter beginning
"
My Lord Chieftain”; and Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, a former Scottish law officer, went one better with
"
My dear and revered Chief."
^f

Elsewhere, however, there were some mutterings and raised eyebrows. Such titles as Oxford, it was suggested, were not for radical leaders, however eminent, particularly if they were of non-patrician origin.

"
It is like a suburban villa calling itself Versailles,” the present Lady Salisbury, then a very young woman, took it upon herself to 
inform the new peer. Asquith found her letter funny rather than wounding and himself spread the story around.

Others suggested that the King ought to stop it. But the King, as has been seen, was in favour. The most sustained hostility came from some descendants of the Earls of Oxford of the second creation— Asquith’s was the third creation. J. R. H. Harley wrote from Herefordshire to ask Asquith not to take the title, and when he received no reply, wrote again in more offensive terms:

Sir,

I am sorry that you have not thought fit to answer my letter of the 27th ult. In writing to you as head of the Harley family and living at the home of the late Earls of Oxford, I should have thought that my letter would have had some consideration from you. However, I see that you have decided to ignore all requests. Perhaps you consider old traditions and sentiments to be of no account in these days.

Yours faithfully,

J. R
.
H. Harley
⁹

He still got no reply. Perhaps it was the syntax as much as the substance which made Asquith loath to supply one. Then came a similar letter from a Lady Duplin, who was also a Harley connection, but the effect of this was diminished by her cousin writing on the following day and begging Asquith to take no notice of “ a lot of rubbish.”

The College of Heralds, however, supported the Harley interest to the extent of insisting on the clumsier double title of
Oxford and Asquith.
This would not have been Asquith’s own choice, for he disliked complicated names.
¹
His peerage was gazetted on February 
10th and his status was changed “ for better or for worse, but at any rate for good and all.” Not taking his new rank too seriously, Asquith noted that his butler, Clouder, “ did his best to live up to the occasion, and his first ‘ My Lord ’ had an unmistakable tinge of delicate courtliness.”
^h
On February 17th, sponsored by Balfour and Beauchamp, he took his seat in the House of Lords.

Asquith became a moderately frequent attender and speaker in his new chamber: the demands were not heavy, for it sat only two days a week at the time. But, unlike some more recent political ennoblements, he never developed any respect for its deliberative quality. “The standard of speaking there is deplorably low,” he wrote on March 
26th: “ men like 
— 
and 
— 
and 
— 
would hardly be listened 
to in an average County Council. They mumble away a lot of spineless and disconnected platitudes.”
ⁱ
And again on June 30th: “It is an impossible audience: as Lowe said fifty years ago, it is like ‘ speaking by torchlight to corpses in a charnel-house
^j
 

In his first six weeks he thought that he listened to only one good speech, and that was “ poor Curzon’s last ” on March 4th. A fortnight later Curzon was dead, and Asquith made his own maiden speech during an afternoon of tributes. It was appropriate, moving and effective, as might have been expected. Even had bitterness still been there, Asquith would have allowed no trace of it to show on an occasion like this. But in fact it had long since disappeared. Curzon was an old friend, and Asquith, never a man for rancour, felt sadness at his going and a sense of his own increasing isolation.

“ Poor George Curzon died quietly at 5 this morning,” he wrote,

“ after a fortnight of pain and constant restlessness. It is exactly a fortnight since I heard him speak in the House of Lords, apparently in full vigour, excellent form and high spirits. He was seven years younger than I am, and I have known him ever since I examined him, as a schoolboy at Eton, very nearly fifty years ago. We entered the House of Commons in the same election in 1886. It makes one feel, as Browning says in the
Toccata
, ‘ chilly and grown old
^k

A few months before a much younger and closer friend of previous days had gone. In November, 1924, Edwin Montagu had died at the age of forty-five. A few days later Venetia Montagu wrote to Asquith —the first letter to pass between them for nearly ten years:

My dearest Mr. Asquith,

We found this letter for you amongst Edwin’s papers, written,

I think, just before he went to India. I know it is not necessary for me to tell you how deeply he loved you and what a real and lasting grief your political separation was. He always used to say that tho’ he was still absorbingly interested in his work after he left you, it was no longer any fun.

I feel I am terribly lucky to have had 9½ such happy years and that I was able, owing to my very unimaginative and unapprehensive frame of mind, to help him sometimes to cast off those great fears and glooms which used to torture him. Do you remember how we used to laugh at him in Sicily?

Thank you for all you did for him to make his life happy. He was always grateful to you.

All my love,

Venetia
^l

Then she wrote again, when Asquith was in Egypt:

My darling Mr. Asquith,

Edwin asked me to give you something of his and I finally thought you might like this Hamlet which I’d given him a long time ago. I’ve never thanked you for your divine letter, you know how dumb and inarticulate I am, but you do realise I hope how glad I was to get it. I hope I may see you sometime when you get back.

Much love always,

Venetia
^m

Thereafter there was an occasional interchange, both of letters and of visits.

The early months of 1925 were a time of accumulating evening honours for Asquith. In May, following his earldom, he accepted the Garter from Baldwin. And in June, with a typical combination of good sense and easy gratitude, he accepted the robes—free:

I have just had a noble offer from Lady Breadalbane—a widow—

—who proposes to give me her late husband’s (he was a K.G.) Garter robes as a present. I shall jump at this, as it will save me a lot of money.
ⁿ

Then the process faltered. Curzon’s death created a vacancy, not only in the Lord Presidency of the Council, which Balfour filled, but 
in the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford. Asquith was an obviously suitable candidate for this office, and there was immediately a move for his nomination. He would have greatly valued the honour, more than any which had come his way since 1908. He therefore accepted with alacrity, but with no misplaced optimism. “ The plot thickens around the Oxford Chancellorship,” he wrote at an early stage, “ and as it seems more than probable that the Tories will run a candidate . . . we will have an interesting contest, though with our friends the country clergy in full blast, the result is a foregone conclusion.”
⁰

At first there was a plan, fostered by Blakiston, the President of Trinity, to run Randall Davidson as a clerical candidate against Asquith, but the Archbishop refused and wrote to Asquith expressing the hope that he would be elected without a contest, although not failing to point out that his own support came from a “ rather big group.” Then Cave, the Lord Chancellor of the day, was enrolled as a substitute candidate. He was at once a friend of Asquith’s, the least distinguished occupant of the Woolsack of the first thirty years of this century, and an Oxonian of no great university fame. None of these considerations disqualified him from the support of the bulk of Oxford M.As. They were determined to pay off some party scores against Asquith, and perhaps to make a mild mockery of his title as well.

“ Lord Oxford,” Birkenhead wrote to
The Times
, “ is the greatest living Oxonian. If he were a Conservative he would be elected by acclamation. To reject him because he is a Liberal is to admit partisan prejudices as narrow as they are discreditable.” But the “ partisan prejudices ” were freely admitted. Asquith got much the more distinguished list of supporters, but, as he noted, “ unfortunately it is not the elect who form the big battalions of voters.” The “ cavemen ” also had their published lists of adherents, mostly the lesser known, but including a fair number of Heads of Houses and, “ of all people,” Lord Robert Cecil. Essentially, however their strength was inarticulate, hidden away in country rectories, and quiet manor houses. It showed itself on the days of the poll. Asquith was defeated by 987 votes to 441.

Although he had expected defeat, he felt it heavily. Desmond MacCarthy, who knew him well, wrote that it affected him “ more than any disappointment, save one, in his life after he ceased to be Prime Minister.” The successful candidate, Lord Cave, held the Chancellorship for only two years. Edward Grey (who left Balliol without a degree) was then elected without opposition.

Politics provided Asquith with little consolation. The two-headed leadership of the Liberal Party posed impossible problems. Asquith, in the Lords, exercised titular authority over the whole party. Lloyd George, in the Commons, was chairman of the small parliamentary party. The armies to be led, even had there been no question of sharing the command, were hardly adequate to the reputation and experience of either. But the command had to be shared: it was like appointing Field-Marshals Haig and French to the same infantry battalion and expecting the result to be a contented co-operation.

Asquith made some attempt to get back on to reasonable personal terms with Lloyd George. Margot and he even had him to luncheon at Bedford Square—with the Queen of Roumania, Desmond MacCarthy and Viola Tree—an event which would have seemed inconceivable five years before. But Asquith’s heart was hardly in this 
rapprochement;
and Lloyd George’s certainly was not. His position had perhaps become the more difficult of the two. His fall from power had been more recent and more precipitate. His international fame was unparalleled, and his energy, at this stage at least, not only appeared to be, but was much greater than Asquith’s. Yet he had to occupy the subordinate position.

There was one respect, however, in which his position was far from subordinate. He had the money. The Lloyd George Fund far exceeded any sums which the Liberal Party as such was able to command. Lloyd George was determined to preserve this position, and the power which it gave him. He argued that the terms on which the Fund had been raised made it illegal for him to hand it over to the Liberal Party. At one stage the Liberal Shadow Cabinet proposed that this should be tested before a Chancery lawyer, but it would have required more than counsel’s opinion to make Lloyd George hand over these resources to the Chief Whip.