I seemed now always to be discovering alien forces of character in
her. Her way of taking life diverged from me more and more. She
sounded amazing, independent notes. She bought some particularly
costly furs for the campaign that roused enthusiasm whenever she
appeared. She also made me a birthday present in November of a
heavily fur-trimmed coat and this she would make me remove as I went
on to the platform, and hold over her arm until I was ready to
resume it. It was fearfully heavy for her and she liked it to be
heavy for her. That act of servitude was in essence a towering
self-assertion. I would glance sideways while some chairman
floundered through his introduction and see the clear blue eye with
which she regarded the audience, which existed so far as she was
concerned merely to return me to Parliament. It was a friendly eye,
provided they were not silly or troublesome. But it kindled a
little at the hint of a hostile question. After we had come so far
and taken so much trouble!
She constituted herself the dragoman of our political travels. In
hotels she was serenely resolute for the quietest and the best, she
rejected all their proposals for meals and substituted a severely
nourishing dietary of her own, and even in private houses she
astonished me by her tranquil insistence upon special comforts and
sustenance. I can see her face now as it would confront a hostess,
a little intent, but sweetly resolute and assured.
Since our marriage she had read a number of political memoirs, and
she had been particularly impressed by the career of Mrs. Gladstone.
I don't think it occurred to her to compare and contrast my quality
with that of Mrs. Gladstone's husband. I suspect her of a
deliberate intention of achieving parallel results by parallel
methods. I was to be Gladstonised. Gladstone it appeared used to
lubricate his speeches with a mixture-if my memory serves me right-
of egg beaten up in sherry, and Margaret was very anxious I should
take a leaf from that celebrated book. She wanted, I know, to hold
the glass in her hand while I was speaking.
But here I was firm. "No," I said, very decisively, "simply I won't
stand that. It's a matter of conscience. I shouldn't feel-
democratic. I'll take my chance of the common water in the carafe
on the chairman's table."
"I DO wish you wouldn't," she said, distressed.
It was absurd to feel irritated; it was so admirable of her, a
little childish, infinitely womanly and devoted and fine-and I see
now how pathetic. But I could not afford to succumb to her. I
wanted to follow my own leading, to see things clearly, and this
reassuring pose of a high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient
pursuit of a fixed end when as a matter of fact I had a very
doubtful end and an aim as yet by no means fixed, was all too
seductive for dalliance…
4
And into all these things with the manner of a trifling and casual
incident comes the figure of Isabel Rivers. My first impressions of
her were of a rather ugly and ungainly, extraordinarily interesting
schoolgirl with a beautiful quick flush under her warm brown skin,
who said and did amusing and surprising things. When first I saw
her she was riding a very old bicycle downhill with her feet on the
fork of the frame-it seemed to me to the public danger, but
afterwards I came to understand the quality of her nerve better-and
on the third occasion she was for her own private satisfaction
climbing a tree. On the intervening occasion we had what seems now
to have been a long sustained conversation about the political
situation and the books and papers I had written.
I wonder if it was.
What a delightful mixture of child and grave woman she was at that
time, and how little I reckoned on the part she would play in my
life! And since she has played that part, how impossible it is to
tell now of those early days! Since I wrote that opening paragraph
to this section my idle pen has been, as it were, playing by itself
and sketching faces on the blotting pad-one impish wizened visage
is oddly like little Bailey-and I have been thinking cheek on fist
amidst a limitless wealth of memories. She sits below me on the low
wall under the olive trees with our little child in her arms. She
is now the central fact in my life. It still seems a little
incredible that that should be so. She has destroyed me as a
politician, brought me to this belated rebeginning of life. When I
sit down and try to make her a girl again, I feel like the Arabian
fisherman who tried to put the genius back into the pot from which
it had spread gigantic across the skies…
I have a very clear vision of her rush downhill past our labouring
ascendant car-my colours fluttered from handle-bar and shoulder-
knot-and her waving hand and the sharp note of her voice. She
cried out something, I don't know what, some greeting.
"What a pretty girl!" said Margaret.
Parvill, the cheap photographer, that industrious organiser for whom
by way of repayment I got those magic letters, that knighthood of
the underlings, "J. P." was in the car with us and explained her to
us. "One of the best workers you have," he said…
And then after a toilsome troubled morning we came, rather cross
from the strain of sustained amiability, to Sir Graham Rivers'