LORD OXFORDS LETTERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19668, 9 December 1933, Page 3

LORD OXFORDS LETTERS

WIDOW FRIEND TELLS OF HIS SIMPLE TASTES. LONDON, November 25. The “Daily Mail” has revealed fur- | ther details about Mrs Hilda Harrisson, the friend of the late Lord Oxford and Asquith, the Liberal statesman, whose letters she has published in a volume with the consent of the Countess of Oxford and Asquith and other members of the family. The “Daily. Mail” says that Mrs Harrisson, who is the widow of Major Roland Harrisson, who was killed inaction In 1917, has a girl of seventeen and a boy of twenty-one, who is studying aflorestation at Oxford University.

Mrs Harrisson said she met Lord Oxford in 1915, and the friendship ripened into a "delightful companionship,” only after her husband's death. Lord Oxford liked informal week-ends, old clothes, the peace of the countryside, and he loved children.

“He bequeathed £2500 to educate my children,” she said. “We often discussed the publication of the letters, which I lent him to refresh his memory when he was writing “The War From Downing Street.” Mr Desmond M'Carthy, the editor of the book, quotes the dictum of the Hon. Cyril Asquith, the fourth son, of the late Lord Oxford, that his father had been more at ease with women than with men-; that he had required receptive female intelligence outside the family, to which he could communicate thought, humour, fancy and emotion, and that a whole succession of women had responded to this need.

Lady Oxford’s Comments. Lady Oxford, in a letter to “The Times,” says that Mrs Harrisson, an intimate friend, frequently stayed with her, both in London- and the country. “My only personal regret about the book is the inclusion of certain references to Mr Lloyd George and other public figures, which I do not think that my husband would have wished published,” she says.