END OF BOOK ONE

MARGOT ASQUITH

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BOOK TWO

PSALM XXXIX

5.  Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.

6.  Surely every man walketh in a vain shew:  surely they are disquieted in vain:  he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.

7.  And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee.

CHAPTER I

The souls—­lord CURZON’s poem and dinner party and who were there
—­MARGOT’S inventory of the group—­Tilt with the late lady
Londonderry—­visit to Tennyson; his contempt for critics; his
habit of living—­J.  K. S. Not A soul—­MARGOT’S friendship with
John Addington Symonds; his praise of Marie Bashkirtseff

No one ever knew how it came about that I and my particular friends were called “the Souls.”  The origin of our grouping together I have already explained:  we saw more of one another than we should probably have done had my sister Laura Lyttelton lived, because we were in mourning and did not care to go out in general society; but why we were called “Souls” I do not know.

The fashionable—­what was called the “smart set”—­of those days centred round the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, and had Newmarket for its head-quarters.  As far as I could see, there was more exclusiveness in the racing world than I had ever observed among the Souls; and the first and only time I went to Newmarket the welcome extended to me by the shrewd and select company there made me feel exactly like an alien.

We did not play bridge or baccarat and our rather intellectual and literary after-dinner games were looked upon as pretentious.

Arthur Balfour—­the most distinguished of the Souls and idolised by every set in society—­was the person who drew the enemy’s fire.  He had been well known before he came among us and it was considered an impertinence on our part to make him play pencil-games or be our intellectual guide and critic.  Nearly all the young men in my circle were clever and became famous; and the women, although not more intelligent, were less worldly than their fashionable contemporaries and many of them both good to be with and distinguished to look at.