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MARGOT ASQUITH
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY HUSBAND
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
PREFACE
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.
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