Margot Asquith, an Autobiography - Two Volumes in One

by Margot Asquith

CHAPTER IV

MARGOT AT A GIRLS' SCHOOL—WHO SPILT THE INK?—THE ENGINE DRIVER'S MISTAKEN FLIRTATION—MARGOT LEAVES SCHOOL IN DISGUST— DECIDES TO GO TO GERMANY TO STUDY

Although I did not do much thinking over my education, others did it for me.

I had been well grounded by a series of short-stayed governesses in the Druids and woad, in Alfred and the cakes, Romulus and Remus and Bruce and the spider. I could speak French well and German a little; and I knew a great deal of every kind of literature from Tristram Shandy and The Antiquary to Under Two Flags and The Grammarian's Funeral; but the governesses had been failures and, when Lucy married, my mother decided that Laura and I should go to school.

Mademoiselle de Mennecy—a Frenchwoman of ill-temper and a lively mind—had opened a hyper-refined seminary in Gloucester Crescent, where she undertook to "finish" twelve young ladies. My father had a horror of girls' schools (and if he could "get through"—to use the orthodox expression of the spookists—he would find all his opinions on this subject more than justified by the manners, morals and learning of the young ladies of the present day) but as it was a question of only a few months he waived his objection.

No. 7 Gloucester Crescent looked down on the Great Western Railway; the lowing of cows, the bleating of sheep and sudden shrill whistles and other odd sounds kept me awake, and my bed rocked and trembled as the vigorous trains passed at uncertain intervals all through the night. This, combined with sticky food, was more than Laura could bear and she had no difficulty in persuading my papa that if she were to stay longer than one week her health would certainly suffer. I was much upset when she left me, but faintly consoled by receiving permission to ride in the Row three times a week; Mlle. de Mennecy thought my beautiful hack gave prestige to her front door and raised no objections.

Sitting alone in the horsehair schoolroom, with a French patent- leather Bible in my hands, surrounded by eleven young ladies, made my heart sink. "Et le roi David deplut a l' Eternel," I heard in a broad Scotch accent; and for the first time I looked closely at my stable companions.

Mlle. de Mennecy allowed no one to argue with her; and our first little brush took place after she informed me of this fact.

"But in that case, mademoiselle," said I, "how are any of us to learn anything? I don't know how much the others know, but I know nothing except what I've read; so, unless I ask questions, how am I to learn?"

MLLE. DE MENNECY: "Je ne vous ai jamais defendu de me questionner; vous n'ecoutez pas, mademoiselle. J'ai dit qu'il ne fallait pas discuter avec moi."

MARGOT (keenly): "But, mademoiselle, discussion is the only way of making lessons interesting."

MLLE. DE MENNECY (with violence): "Voulez-vous vous taire?"

To talk to a girl of nearly seventeen in this way was so unintelligent that I made up my mind I would waste neither time nor affection on her.

None of the girls were particularly clever, but we all liked each other and for the first time—and I may safely say the last—I was looked upon as a kind of heroine. It came about in this way: Mlle. de Mennecy was never wrong. To quote Miss Fowler's admirable saying a propos of her father, "She always let us have her own way." If the bottle of ink was upset, or the back of a book burst, she never waited to find out who had done it, but in a torrent of words crashed into the first girl she suspected, her face becoming a silly mauve and her bust heaving with passion. This made me so indignant that, one day when the ink was spilt and Mlle. de Mennecy as usual scolded the wrong girl, I determined I would stand it no longer. Meeting the victim of Mademoiselle's temper in the passage, I said to her:

"But why didn't you say you hadn't done it, ass!"

GIRL (catching her sob): "What was the good! She never listens; and I would only have had to tell her who really spilt the ink."

This did seem a little awkward, so I said to her:

"That would never have done! Very well, then, I will go and put the thing right for you, but tell the girls they must back me. She's a senseless woman and I can't think why you are all so frightened of her."

GIRL: "It's all very well for you! Madmozell is a howling snob, you should have heard her on you before you came! She said your father would very likely be made a peer and your sister Laura marry Sir Charles Dilke." (The thought of this overrated man marrying Laura was almost more than I could bear, but curiosity kept me silent, and she continued.) "You see, she is far nicer to you than to us, because she is afraid you may leave her."

Not having thought of this before, I said:

"Is that really true? What a horrible woman! Well, I had better go and square it up; but will you all back me? Now don't go fretting on and making yourself miserable."

GIRL: "I don't so much mind what you call her flux-de-bouche scolding, but, when she flounced out of the room, she said I was not to go home this Saturday."

MARGOT: "Oh, that'll be all right. Just you go off." (Exit girl, drying her eyes.)

It had never occurred to me that Mlle. de Mennecy was a snob: this knowledge was a great weapon in my hands and I determined upon my plan of action. I hunted about in my room till I found one of my linen overalls, heavily stained with dolly dyes. After putting it on, I went and knocked at Mlle. de Mennecy's door and opening it said:

"Mademoiselle, I'm afraid you'll be very angry, but it was I who spilt the ink and burst the back of your dictionary. I ought to have told you at once, I know, but I never thought any girl would be such an image as to let you scold her without telling you she had not done it." Seeing a look of suspicion on her sunless face, I added nonchalantly, "Of course, if you think my conduct sets a bad example in your school, I can easily go!"

I observed her eyelids flicker and I said:

"I think, before you scolded Sarah, you might have heard what she had to say."

MLLE. DE MENNECY: "Ce que vous dites me choque profondement; il m'est difficile de croire que vous avez fait une pareille lachete, mademoiselle!"

MARGOT (protesting with indignation): "Hardly lachete, Mademoiselle! I only knew a few moments ago that you had been so amazingly unjust. Directly I heard it, I came to you; but as I said before, I am quite prepared to leave."

MLLE. DE MENNECY (feeling her way to a change of front): "Sarah s'est conduite si heroiquement que pour le moment je n'insiste plus. Je vous felicite, mademoiselle, sur votre franchise; vous pouvez rejoindre vos camarades."

The Lord had delivered her into my hands.

One afternoon, when our instructress had gone to hear Princess Christian open a bazaar, I was smoking a cigarette on the schoolroom balcony which overlooked the railway line.

It was a beautiful evening, and a wave of depression came over me.
Our prettiest pupil, Ethel Brydson, said to me:

"Time is up! We had better go in and do our preparation. There would be the devil to pay if you were caught with that cigarette."

I leant over the balcony blowing smoke into the air in a vain attempt to make rings, but, failing, kissed my hand to the sky and with a parting gesture cursed the school and expressed a vivid desire to go home and leave Gloucester Crescent for ever.

ETHEL (pulling my dress): "Good gracious, Margot! Stop kissing your hand! Don't you see that man?"

I looked down and to my intense amusement saw an engine-driver leaning over the side of his tender, kissing his hand to me. I strained over the balcony and kissed both mine back to him, after which I returned to the school-room.

Our piano was placed in the window and, the next morning, while Ethel was arranging her music preparatory to practising, it appeared my friend the engine-driver began kissing his hand to her. It was eight o'clock and Mlle. de Mennecy was pinning on her twists in the window.

I had finished my toilette and was sitting in the reading-room, learning the passage chosen by our elocution master for the final competition in recitation.

My fingers were in my ears and I was murmuring in dramatic tones:

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, I come to bury
Caesar, not to praise him. …"

The girls came in and out, but I never noticed them; and when the breakfast bell rang, I shoved the book into my desk and ran downstairs to breakfast. I observed that Ethel's place was empty; none of the girls looked at me, but munched their bread and sipped their tepid tea while Mademoiselle made a few frigid general remarks and, after saying a French grace, left the room.

"Well," said I, "what's the row?"

Silence.

MARGOT (looking from face to face): "Ah! The mot d'ordre is that you are not to speak to me. Is that the idea?"

Silence.

MARGOT (vehemently, with bitterness): "This is exactly what I thought would happen at a girls' school—that I should find myself boycotted and betrayed."

FIRST GIRL (bursting out): "Oh, Margot, it's not that at all! It's because Ethel won't betray you that we are all to be punished to- day!"

MARGOT: "What! Collective punishment? And I am the only one to get off? How priceless! Well, I must say this is Mlle. de Mennecy's first act of justice. I've been so often punished for all of you that I'm sure you won't mind standing me this little outing! Where is Ethel? Why don't you answer? (Very slowly) Oh, all right! I have done with you! And I shall leave this very day, so help me God!"

On hearing that Mlle. de Mennecy had dismissed Ethel on the spot because the engine-driver had kissed his hand to her, I went immediately and told her the whole story; all she answered was that I was such a liar she did not believe a word I said.

I assured her that I was painfully truthful by nature, but her circular and senseless punishments had so frightened the girls that lying had become the custom of the place and I felt in honour bound to take my turn in the lies and the punishments. After which I left the room and the school.

On my arrival in Grosvenor Square I told my parents that I must go home to Glen, as I felt suffocated by the pettiness and conventionality of my late experience. The moderate teaching and general atmosphere of Gloucester Crescent had depressed me, and London feels airless when one is out of spirits: in any case it can never be quite a home to any one born in Scotland.

The only place I look upon as home which does not belong to me is Archerfield [Footnote: Archerfield belonged to Mrs. Hamilton Ogilvie, of Beale.]—a house near North Berwick, in which we lived for seven years. After Glen and my cottage in Berkshire, Archerfield is the place I love best in the world. I was both happier and more miserable there than I have ever been in my life. Just as William James has written on varieties of religious experience, so I could write on the varieties of my moral and domestic experiences at that wonderful place. If ever I were to be as unhappy again as I was there, I would fly to the shelter of those Rackham woods, seek isolation on those curving coasts where the gulls shriek and dive and be ultimately healed by the beauty of the anchored seas which bear their islands like the Christ Child on their breasts.

Unfortunately for me, my father had business which kept him in London. He was in treaty with Lord Gerard to buy his uninteresting house in an uninteresting square. The only thing that pleased me in Grosvenor Square was the iron gate. When I could not find the key of the square and wanted to sit out with my admirers, after leaving a ball early, I was in the habit of climbing over these gates in my tulle dress. This was a feat which was attended by more than one risk: if you did not give a prominent leap off the narrow space from the top of the gate, you would very likely be caught up by the tulle fountain of your dress, in which case you might easily lose your life; or, if you did not keep your eye on the time, you would very likely be caught by an early house-maid, in which case you might easily lose your reputation. No one is a good judge of her own reputation, but I like to think that those iron gates were the silent witnesses of my milder manner.

My father, however, loved Grosvenor Square and, being anxious that
Laura and I should come out together, bought the house in 1881.

No prodigal was ever given a warmer welcome than I was when I left the area of the Great Western Railway; but the problem of how to finish my education remained and I was determined that I would not make my debut till I was eighteen. What with reading, hunting and falling in love at Easton Grey, I was not at all happy and wanted to be alone.

I knew no girls and had no friends except my sisters and was not eager to talk to them about my affairs; I never could at any time put all of myself into discussion which degenerates into gossip. I had not formed the dangerous habit of writing good letters about myself, dramatizing the principal part. I shrank then, as I do now, from exposing the secrets and sensations of life. Reticence should guard the soul and only those who have compassion should be admitted to the shrine. When I peer among my dead or survey my living friends, I see hardly any one with this quality. For the moment my cousin Nan Tennant, Mrs. Arthur Sassoon, Mrs. James Rothschild, Antoine Bibesco, and my son and husband are the only people I can think of who possess it.

John Morley has, in carved letters of stone upon his chimney- piece, Bacon's fine words, "The nobler a soul, the more objects of compassion it hath."

When I first read them, I wondered where I could meet those souls and I have wondered ever since. To have compassion you need courage, you must fight for the objects of your pity and you must feel and express tenderness towards all men. You will not meet disinterested emotion, though you may seek it all your life, and you will seldom find enough pity for the pathos of life.

My husband is a man of disinterested emotion. One morning, when he and I were in Paris, where we had gone for a holiday, I found him sitting with his head in his hands and the newspaper on his knee. I saw he was deeply moved and, full of apprehension, I put my arm round him and asked if he had had bad news. He pointed to a paragraph in the paper and I read how some of the Eton boys had had to break the bars of their windows to escape from fire and others had been burnt to death. We knew neither a boy nor the parent of any boy at Eton at that time, but Henry's eyes were full of tears, and he could not speak.

I had the same experience with him over the wreck of the Titanic. When we read of that challenging, luxurious ship at bay in the ice-fields and the captain sending his unanswered signals to the stars, we could not sit through dinner.

I knew no one of this kind of sympathy in my youth, and my father was too busy and my mother too detached for me to have told them anything. I wanted to be alone and I wanted to learn. After endless talks it was decided that I should go to Germany for four or five months and thus settle the problem of an unbegun but finishing education.

Looking back on this decision, I think it was a remarkable one. I had a passion for dancing and my father wanted me to go to balls; I had a genius for horses and adored hunting; I had such a wonderful hack that every one collected at the Park rails when they saw me coming into the Row; but all this did not deflect me from my purpose and I went to Dresden alone with a stupid maid at a time when—if not in England, certainly in Germany—I might have passed as a moderate beauty.