Much more important than Mrs. Asquith is Lady Bonham Carter. Certainly she is the most_ attrac. tive personality in the election, and fills the part of first lieutenant and right-hand woman to her father with great enthusiasm. She has the gift of speech, and her sprightly advocacy of her father's claims gives variety and piquancy to the heavy qualities of ordinary political oratory.
She possesses charm as well' as force; although a woman in public life can scarcely be described as "quiet," this does not tell against her in a constituency familiar with the ways and manners of mill-girls. Very slender and of average height, she has the strongly marked Asquith face, with her mother's quickness and not a little of ber father's solidity. Violet, as she used to be called, was married to Sir Maurice Bonham Carter, her father's one-time private secretary, in 1915, She has: two baby girls, and "I am told," she declares, "that the Liberal party is the best custodian of the interests of women and children."
I may add that a leading London news agency instructed their representative at the'election, "We want verbatim reports of Lady Bonham Carter's speeches." The only other person on their regular verbatim list at the present time is Mr. Lloyd George!
Wootxe tHe Woxey.
The women voters had a demonstration "all to their very own selves." To an old campaigner it was a remarkable spectacle. What a change from the not far distant days when at big political gatherings a few seats in one of the galleries were reserved to the voteless ones by way of. concession. The interest which the assembly tock in the platform was practi-y confined to the Asquith trio—with Mr. Asquith a bad third. "Margot" and "Violet," as the Paisley womenfolk spoke of them, completely threw the Ex-Premiet into the shade.
I may say, in supplement to a sentence earlier in this letter, that the dresses of these two ladies are fully chronicled in every Scottish newspaper, and a male cynic states that these details are the only paris of the campaign reports which are regularly read by the female portion of his household. That may or may not be, but this I can state that the petticoated audience at Paisley listened to Mr. Asquith and Sir Donald Maclean with courteous attention, and it was only when Lady Bonham Carter stood up that a buzz of excitement passed over the hall. She tossed aside her fur wrap, and appeared in "a black velvet gown with a fur collar, a vest of gold tissue, and a narrow girdle of jade rib-ben."
One point in her little. speech is worth repeating. Referring to what she described as her father's "backwardness" on the question of women's suffrage, she recalled that the methods adopted to convert him were not exactly persuasive. For three years, she said, he was surrounded by maniacs flourishing dog whips and other weapons; she had grown up in that setting: and she confessed that she sometimes wondered whether it would be safe
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.