Plain, vain, and slain by Dorothy Parker
Or, in praise of Margot Asquith
“The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.” — Dorothy Parker, writing in the New Yorker in 1927
How cruel that the most cutting thing ever said about Emma Alice Margaret Asquith, Countess of Oxford & Asquith, is just about the only trace of her remembered today. And even that insult gets insulted: In her biography of Parker, Michelle Dean wrote that people like Asquith “are now forgotten by the larger public and thus often seen as beneath [Parker’s] notice.”
Witty British prime ministers are sixpence a dozen; Asquith (1864-1945) was certainly the wittiest British prime minister’s wife. She combined the catty political hostessing of Alice Roosevelt Longfellow with the dry British eccentricity of Edith Sitwell to powerful effect.
She first became known as socialite Margot Tennant, a charter member of a club called The Souls. This gang formed because they were fed up with everyone arguing about politics all the time (hmm!); they were a “group of men and women bent on pleasure, but pleasure of a superior kind, eschewing the vulgarities of racing and card-playing indulged in by the majority of the rich and noble, and looking for their excitement in romance and sentiment.” That meant plenty of talking about their souls, hence the name — and the the root of her self-obsession.
This salon seems to have set her up as a wit and social observer, and when she married politician H.H. Asquith (known as Squiffy due to his love of wine), she was deemed a “spur to his ambition.” Eventually, she was unfairly accused of siding with the Germans in the First World War and unfortunately overheard telling her shell-shocked stepson to sober up. The fact that she fought against the suffragettes didn’t help matters.
She described David Lloyd George, her husband’s nemesis, as someone who “could never see a belt without hitting below it,” and “if you were to shut him in a room and look through the keyhole there would be nobody there.” Lord Birkenhead was “very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.” Winston Churchill’s “vanity is septic. He would die of blood poisoning if it were not for a great deal of red blood which circulates freely through his heart and stomach." Sir Stafford Cripps “has a brilliant mind until he makes it up.” Lady Diana Cooper “spends her days powdering her face till she looks like a bled pig.” Of her own appearance, she said “I have the sort of face which bores me when I see it on other people.” And then there was her intricate and perhaps apocryphal putdown of starlet Jean Harlow, who made the mistake of pronouncing the “t” in Margot: “It’s silent, as in Harlow.”
After her husband was booted out of Parliament and things became tight (in both ways), she began selling these observations in bulk. Naturally, the quality dropped, making her easy prey for Dorothy Parker’s Constant Reader column.
The wit of Margot Asquith may yet rise again, thanks in large part to her many private writings. Her account of the war from within Downing Street will always be of interest to historians — even if the historians may not find Margot Asquith quite as interesting as Margot Asquith found herself.
And thus her most useful piece of advice: “Keep a diary, and perhaps one day it will keep you.”
Quick quips; lightning
“Rich men’s houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty.”
— Margot Asquith, accurately analyzing decor trends.
“Margot was a goose, but she was a hissing goose.”
— Ferdinand Mount, assessing her legacy in the London Review of Books.
“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”
— W.H. Auden, talking of literature but perhaps also of people.
So concludeth the 36th issue of Get Wit Quick, a weekly pleasure of a superior kind. In Parker’s sizzling words: “The Thames, I hear, remains as damp as ever in the face of these observations.” Ouch! Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting can be seen through all the better keyholes. The❤️ below is there to be tapped, and this email is perpetually chuffed to be forwarded.