Asquith

 Once I had read Roy Jenkins's biography Gladstone, I wished to read any other biographies he might have written. About twenty years ago, he brought out Churchill, which I read and passed along. I was aware that he had written a biography of H.H. Asquith, but didn't suppose that I was likely to encounter it. Last month, it turned up on the Second Story Books Recent Arrivals page.

Asquith makes for less astonishing, perhaps less entertaining, reading than the other two, for Asquith lacked the extravagant streak in his character. It is hard to imagine him infuriating the US and embarrassing his cabinet with a speech such as Gladstone gave in 1863. He seems to have reached maturity without the boyish streak that Churchill long retained. But by all accounts he was a very good lawyer and a sound prime minister.

Much of the history of his premiership I had read of, in George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England: 1910-1914. The textual apparatus of Asquith is minimal, limited to end notes with title and author but not date or publisher; but the title of Chapter XVI, "Strange Ailments of Liberal England", seems to nod to Dangerfield's title. For the most part, the narrative and the evaluations are the same in both books. Dangerfield, having just those five years to cover, gives more detail.

Asquith had a thorough classical education at the City of London School and at Balliol College. He lacked the eccentricity to write long books on Homer, as Gladstone did. And clearly he did not restrict his reading to the classics, at least the ancient ones. Near the end of the book, Jenkins quotes Asquith's daughter on the return from his last (lost) election:

Groping wildly for a life-line that might draw me into the smooth waters by his side, I asked in as steady a voice as possible: "I suppose you haven't by any chance got an old P.G. Wodehouse in your bag that you could lend me?" A smile of instant response, mingled I thought with relief, lit up his face as he replied triumphantly: "Being a provident man I have got in my bag, not one, but four brand new ones."

In Larry McMurtry's memoir Books, he mentioned in passing meeting Jenkins, describing him (I recall) as "an amiable enough British pol." Not that far away, McMurtry wrote of having a fondness for British political biography. The conjunction surprised me, for at the time McMurtry wrote, Gladstone had been out for some years, Asquith (1961) for many years more. How did it not come up at their meeting that Jenkins wrote too?