Margot Asquith, an Autobiography - Two Volumes in One

Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
What? Have you not received powers, to the limits of which you will bear all that befalls? Have you not received magnanimity? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?— EPICTETUS
When I began this book I feared that its merit would depend upon how faithfully I could record my own impressions of people and events: when I had finished it I was certain of it. Had it been any other kind of book the judgment of those nearest me would have been invaluable, but, being what it is, it had to be entirely my own; since whoever writes as he speaks must take the whole responsibility, and to ask Do you think I may say this? or write that? is to shift a little of that responsibility on to someone else. This I could not bear to do, above all in the case of my husband, who sees these recollections for the first time now. My only literary asset is natural directness, and that faculty would have been paralysed if I thought anything that I have written here would implicate him. I would rather have made a hundred blunders of style or discretion than seem, even to myself, let alone the world at large, to have done that.
Unlike many memoirists, the list of people I have to thank in this preface is short: Lord Crewe and Mr. Texeira de Mattos—who alone saw my MS. before its completion—for their careful criticisms which in no way committed them to approving of all that I have written; Mr. Desmond MacCarthy, for valuable suggestions; and my typist, Miss Lea, for her silence and quickness.
There are not many then of whom I can truly say, Without their approval and encouragement this book would never have been written —but those who really love me will forgive me and know that what I owe them is deeper than thanks.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid wooed by incapacity. —Blake.
I was born in the country of Hogg and Scott between the Yarrow and the Tweed, in the year 1864.