LADY OXFORD’S MEMOIRS

Evening Star, Issue 21320, 26 January 1933, Page 14

LADY OXFORD’S MEMOIRS

GIFT FROM KING EDWARD LOST IN ROTTEN ROW When the Countess of Oxford and Asquith’s first volume of memoirs was published some years ago, it evoked general attention. She has now written a new book, full of witty and piquant observations on persons and events, which will certainly create the same widespread interest. Writing of Lord Knollys (King Edward’s private secretary) Lady Oxford says; “ i was twenty when he came to Olen on his way to Balmoral with Mr Christopher Sykes, a friend and butt of his master—King Edward. At the age of twenty everyone over forty appears old, and when Lord Knollys asked me to marry him I thought his great age must have alfected his reason. 1 am bound to confess that when I said * No,’ the expression on his face was one more of relief than disappointment.” Lady Oxford’s first meeting with King 'Edward (then Prince of Wales) was at Ascot. The Prince asked her to take lunch with him. She says: “ The Guards' tent was hot and full of fashionable people, and whether from the noise of the band, the length of the lunch, or the iced champagne —which 1 mistook for hock cup—l ielt rather tipsy as I stepped over the red cloth when we emerged from, the tent. But I recovered from this directly we were in the open air. » “ ’Hie day after the races, the Prince of Wales sent me a gold shark-skin cigarette case with a diamond and sapphire clasp, which thrilled me with pleasure. I was so anxious to show it to Peter Flower—an act of malice on my part—that I put it in the pocket of my riding habit. “After receiving the reluctant congratulations of my admirer we galloped down Botten How, and when 1 returned home i found my lovely present had fallen out of my pocket, and 1 never saw the cigarette case again.” Of Mr John Burns, the first Labour M.P. to attain Cabinet rank, Lady Oxford writes: “After his first visit to King Edward at Sandringham he came to 10 Downing street to tell us all about it. Fie said that he had, got on marvellously with their Majesties; had risen early in the morning, and visited overv farm and cottage on the Sandringham estate, and ended up by saying; '1 can tell you, my dear Prime Minister, I pulled out all the stops.’ “ The four most ambitious men that 1 have ever known have been Lord flosehcrv. Lord Beading, Mr Bonar Law, and Lord Balfour,” so declares the Countess. Lady Oxford has much of interest to say of the baffling personality of Lord Balfour, and her observation quoted above is her retort to the “ people of conventional opinion and little in sight ” who said of him that ho was “ too philosophical to care about poli tics.” She writes:— “I never remember meeting a famous man who was so difficult to pore in society as Arthur Balfour. Though he could listen to anyone who could tell him anything, he appeared equally attentive to people who could tell him nothing. “In the Flou.se of Commons set orations did not impress him, and, being the best debater in the FTouse he listened with spineless indifference to (he liighlv prepared speeches of his Cabinet colleagues. But in society he appeared equally cordial and animated with whomever ho was talking to. •• | have heard him discussing doctors drugs, chows, and motors with women to whom J would hardly have mentioned the weather.”