Herbert Henry Asquith — Not Quite in the Gladstone Mould

Abstract

Gladstone without the passion, and without the religiosity. That would be an inadequate but not altogether misleading description of the last person to head a Liberal government. A complex personality, he himself attempted a somewhat tongue-in-cheek assessment of his own qualities in an idle moment at 10 Downing Street during a critical period of the First World War, in March 1915:

You were … almost a classical example of Luck. You were endowed at birth with brains above the average. You had, further, some qualities of temperament which are exceptionally useful for mundane success — energy under the guise of lethargy; a faculty for working quickly, which is more effective in the long run than plodding perseverance; patience (which is one of the rarest of human qualities); a temperate but persistent ambition; a clear mind, a certain quality and lucidity of speech; intellectual but not moral irritability; a natural tendency to understand & appreciate the opponent’s point of view; and, as time went on, & your nature matured, a growing sense of proportion, which had its effect both upon friends and foes, and which, coupled with detachment from any temptation to intrigue, and, in regard to material interests & profits, an unaffected indifference, secured for you the substantial advantage of personality and authority. The really great men of the world are the geniuses & the saints. You belonged to neither category. Your intellectual equipment (well cultivated and trained) still left you far short of the one; your spiritual limitations, and your endowment of the ‘Old Adam’, left you still shorter of the other. (Jenkins 1978, pp.334–5)