5 - HERBERT ASQUITH

Summary

Those who only knew Lord Oxford in his later life must find it hard to credit either the appearance or the reputation which are reported to have been his thirty or more years ago. The ability and the reticence were there to be recognised, but the somewhat tight features, the alleged coldness of the aspiring lawyer from Balliol, were entirely transformed in the noble Roman of the war and post-war years, who looked the part of Prime Minister as no one has since Mr Gladstone. His massive countenance and aspect of venerable strength were, in these later days, easily perceived to mask neither coldness nor egoism, but to clothe with an appropriate form a warm and tender heart easily touched to emotion, and a personal reserve which did not ask or claim anything for himself.

Lord Oxford possessed most of the needed gifts of a great statesman except ruthlessness towards others and insensitiveness for himself. One wonders whether in the conditions of the modern age a man so sensitive as he was will ever again be robust enough to expose himself to the outrages of public life. Lord Oxford protected his sensitiveness by silence, by totally refraining from retort or from complaint. He absolutely rejected the aid or the opportunities of the venal press. He could be the leader of a nation or of a party; he would hasten to protect a friend or a colleague; but he disdained to protect himself to a degree which was scarcely compatible with the actual conditions of contemporary life.