A bed full of dewdrops
Frances Partridge
CYNTHIA ASQUITH by Nicola Beauman
Hamish Hamilton, f15.95
The addict of biographies, always eager to make a new friend and follow the dramatic course of his life from cradle to grave, may have as a secondary motive the desire to throw fresh light into the dark corners of a region already familiar from its richness in memoirs and letters. Such periods as the reign of Louis XIV or the 18th century seem almost inexhaustible, and another, nearer home, is the social and political sphere embracing the two Great Wars. This last was Cynthia Asquith's world — a flower-bed with an interesting soil from the points of view of both heredity and environment, and one that has been subjected to a great amount of analysis. For one thing it was made glamor- ous by the fertilisers of aristocracy and privilege. For another, the admiring young men who surrounded Cynthia were the brilliant but doomed generation that was decimated between 1914 and 1918.
`I love my love with a B because he was a Barrister and went to Balliol' — the childish game comes to mind as a sort of theme-song to Cynthia's love affairs, be- ginning with her husband, Beb Asquith, and continuing via Harold Baker, Lord Basil Blackwood, Prince Antoine Bibesco, Colin Brooks, and J. M. Barrie. I some- times wonder why conversation of the `didn't-his-aunt-marry-a-Wyndham?' vari- ety is nearly always deadly, whereas genealogy is so vital to history. Nicola Beauman's four clear tables are invaluable for an understanding of Cynthia Asquith's background, one in which birth and society held a supreme position (perhaps anala- gous to that of wealth today) which it was a duty to maintain at all costs, even through the stress of war. But the 'Children of the Souls' had many other values; they also prized learning and literature, good talk seasoned with wit and some frivolity. They had strong family feelings and a gift for friendship and fun. They called each other by absurd nicknames such as Oc, Cis, Squidge and Ca, and made use of a 'little language' wherein, for instance, 'a dew- drop' meant a not too brazen compliment.
Cynthia grew up, so she wrote later, 'as a free weed instead of a wired flower'. Two decisive events in her childhood were sitting for her portrait to Burne-Jones, and being taken to Egypt by her mother, who was then involved in a passionate affair with Wilfrid Blunt. It was a time of free sexual morals, and though A. J. Balfour's love for Mary Elcho was very different from Blunt's he figured more in the youth- ful Cynthia's life than her father did. Despite such unconventionality, she had to obey the rules of society, and undergo 'that awful bustling idleness', as she described `coming out'. At 22 she married Herbert (Beb) Asquith, and Nicola Beauman is surely right when she says that she 'was more in love with love than with her husband'. To the Charteris family it was a misalliance: the Prime Minister's son was after all the grandson of a worker in the wool trade. Also, as if typecast by Burne- Jones's portrait, Cynthia had grown up a striking pre-Raphaelite beauty, with tawny hair and slanting greenish eyes, and might have been expected to make a dazzling match. Beb was gentle, sweet-natured and original, if slightly ineffective: he soon sickened of the Bar and took to writing poetry.
Cynthia's character bloomed like her beauty. Intelligent, lively and amusing, her outgoing warmth brought her many long- lasting and deep friendships, while she had no vices worse than personal vanity. (D. H. Lawrence wrote that 'she loved her loveliness with obsession.') One gets the impression that she remained sexually im- mature, adoring being adored but worried by physical advances. It seems unlikely that she was technically unfaithful to Beb, but her biographer must have had a hard task to plot her amorous relationships accurately. Her friendship with Lawrence is the most interesting episode in the book.
There was real affection and sympathy between them. Of Beb and Cynthia's three sons the eldest, John, was probably the cause of her most acute unhappiness, for his freakish naughtiness as a little boy developed into what was later pronounced to be incurable mental abnormality. Law- rence took an interest in him, even offering to have him to stay; he ascribed his behaviour to his desperate longing for love, and jealousy of his younger brother, and wrote perceptively to Cynthia: 'Don't try to make him love you or obey you don't do it . . . Make no demands on him.' Cynthia's reaction was characteristic: 'Oh God, surely nothing so cruel can really have happened to me myself?'
It is for her war diaries that Cynthia Asquith is most often remembered. We read in them about the shattering effect of repeated deaths among her family and friends, and yet how she saw poor Beb off to the front 'with the most unaccountable, almost apathetic want of terror'. When they were published in 1968, cut by half, some critics were shocked by the speed with which the diarist's mind flitted from grief at her brother Yvo's death (for instance) to 'Mamma and I went to Self- ridges and bought hats.' But she probably gives a true picture of the prevailing schizophrenic mood of the day.
Armistice Day saw the beginning of a sentimental friendship with Desmond Mac- Carthy, and soon afterwards she was en- gaged as secretary by Barrie, who re- mained the platonic focus of her life until his death. Her last lap was dedicated to writing — first for the press and afterwards trying her hand at novels, royal lives, and children's books. Much the most in- teresting is her life of the Countess Tolstoy, barely mentioned in this biography.
Previous page
