Mrs. Asquith's Confidences Mrs, Asquith, in her recently published "Autobiography" gives some interesting facts about "My Husband"—the Ri. Hon. H. H. Asquith.
"My—husband's father was Joseph Dixon Asquith, a cloth merchant in Morley—at that time al small town outside Leeds. He was a man of high character who held Bible classes for young men. He married a daughter of William Willans, of Huddersfield, who sprang of an old Yorkshire Puritan stock.
"He died when he was 35 leaving four—children—William Willans, Herbert Henry, Emily Evelyn, and Lilian Josephine. They were brought up by their mother, who was @ woman of genius.
"My husband's mother, old Mrs. Asquith, I never knew. My friend} Mark Napier told me that she was a brilliantly clever woman, but a great invalid. She had delicate Jungs, which obliged her to live on the South Coast, and when her two sons went to the City of London School, they lived alone together li lodgings in Islington, and were both poor and industrious.
"Although Henry's mother was Tovalldl she bad 3 moral, religious, and intellectual influence over her family that cannot be exaggera ated, She was a profound reader, and a brilliant talker, and belonged to what was in those days called orthodox nonconformity, or Congregationalism.
Push axp Parronace.
"After my husband's first marriage he made money by writing, lecturing, and examining at Ux ford. When he was called to the Par success did not come to hin at once.
"Ho had no rich patron, and no one to push him forward. ' He had made for himself a great Oxford reputation; he was a fine scholar and lawyer, but socially was not! known by many people.
"It was said that Gladstone only promoted men by seniority and never before knowing with precision what they were like, but in my husband's case it was not so.
"Lord James of Hereford (then Sir Henry James) was the Attorney-General, overburdened with a large private practice at the Bar of his own; and when the great Bradlaugh case came on in 1883, it was suggested to him that young man living on the same Staircase might devil the A@firmation Bill for him. This was the beginning of Asquith's career. When Gladstone saw the brief for his speech he noted the fine handwriting, and asked who had writ ten it.
"Sir Henry James, the kindest! and most generous of men, was delighted at Gladstone's observation, and brought the young man; to him; from that moment both the! Attorney-General and the Prime! Minister marked him out for distinction; he rose without any inter-me diary step of an under-secretaryship from a back-bencher to a Cabinet Minister, and when we married in 1894 he was Home Secretary."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.