PREMIER'S ROMANCE

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 91, 16 April 1908, Page 2

PREMIER'S ROMANCE

MR ASQUITH'S COURTSHIP

The romance of Mr Asquith's career was when, as Home Secretary and a widower of. forty, with five children, he won for, his second wife one of the most brilliant, if the most peculiar, of English society women, the gifted and impulsive Miss Margot Tennant. " The most rapid of all young ladies, no one could regard her as fast. She lived intensely at a high ■degree of velocity, but fast, in'the ordinary society sense of the term, she was not. She enjoyed herself vastly, made friends with everybody, and enjoyed existence as much as any yoiing lady ever did." . Mr W. T. Stead, who is responsible for the above words, goes on to tepeak of the lawyer-politician suitor as follows : —

Mr Asquith was neither prince nor peer. He was a man of moderate means, and there was nothing about his person or his career that was calculated to captivate- the imagination of the girl before whom lovers, witli every qualification which he lacked, had knelt in;vain. Mr Asquith was, no doubt,' a rising man, but he was not rich. He had not won any of the. grea,t prizes of the Bar, although, no doubt, if he had remained there he might have ..ultimately;: become Lord,: Chancellor. Above all, he was already furnished with a famHy/offive^ And ■although society had accustomed itself to seeing Margot Tennant in almost every conceivable attitude or ■position, possible to mortal,' imagination* recoiled front seeing this Fenela-Di-Vernon of our day suddenly transformed into a bhlshing matron, with five stepchildren round her knee. Few enterprises, therefore, appeared more hopeless than the task to which, after .his wife's death, Mr Asquith devoted all the strength of his will, pursuing the quest with all the concentrated passion of a strongly-repressed nature, and ultimately triumphing to the astonishment and dismay of all his rivals. '

Fortune favours the brave, and everything comes to him who knows how to wait. But time and tide wait for no man, nor can the bravest and most patient of. suitors calculate upon the favour of fortune when engaged in wooing a young lady capricious,' impulsive, and capable of making up her mind and acting upon it with phenomenal velocity. When first Mr Asquith broached his suit she would hear nothing of it. '■ Friend 3, yes,. by all means; husband and wife, nonsense." And so she gaily laughed away his serious suit- But he wasnot to be gainsaid. and seriously he pleaded his cause, daunted by no rebuff, but condescending to no artifice or stratagem, not even to those which have always been regarded as the legitimate, tactics of these who woo fair ladies. Perhaps it was the very plainness and simplicity, of .his suit that was the secret of his success. ' Miss Margot, accustomed from her earliest teens to the flattery and homage and devotion of men, was like a child surfeited with cake, to whom plain brown bread gradually acquires an irresistible fasfascination. The more she shrank from the thought of becoming Mrs Asquith, the more did the solid, simple, serious virtues of Mr Asquith impress her imgaination. There was a certain attraction of -gravitation which asserted itself, as the massive placet sweeps the light aerolite ji.fo its bosom.

| One of the most familiar of folk lore tales is that in which the hand !of a princess smitten with incurable' gravity is offered to anyone who can make her laugh. In this cas\> ibe roks were reversed. The successful suitor was one who could sober the light-hearted and slightly featherI brained girl to whom all existence had hitherto been but one inc'swant switchback of thrills and sensations. And Mr Asquith did it. Kg. Solemn ' Sobersides that he was, would not say nay .\ When he was rebuffed, he began again humbly and porsist(iitly as ever. It was presumption, no doubt, but love was sufficient excuse. At last a sense of the superiority of the man who so patiently sued for her hand began to draw upon her mind. His prospects also began to brighten. Possibly that had nothing to do with it. More probably ,it aided rather converging tides of circumstances which were rapidly hurrying her'to her fake. For no one has ever said Miss Margot was free from the last infirmity of noble minds. And to. help a statesman to climb the steeps that lead to the Premiership of the Empire, was an enter-

prise sufficiently dazzling evan to fascinate the somewhat will-o'-the-wisp fancy of Miss Tennant. Whatever share this calculation may or may not have bad when matters came to a final decision—there is little doubt that the match, when it came off, was a genuine affair of the heart. .

To what extent Mrs Asquith will help or hinder Mr Asquith to climb that dangerous road remains to be seen. Men and women are busy discussing the question. But the best thing said on the subject came from a friend of both.

>*T have heard a good deal,", he said, " about both sides of that question, and have sometimes asked myself what Asquith would say about it. And I came to the conclusion that his answer would be that he did not care. Of course, he would like to be Prime Minister—who would not?—but he would much rather forfeit the Premiership than not have married Margot Tennant." A very pretty speech this, comments Mr Stead, and as true as pretty. •