Henry James to Margot Asquith, 9 April 1915, thanking her for sending him her diary to read ('a few days ago'): 'I have absorbed every word of every page with the liveliest appreciation [...] I have read the thing intimately, and I take off my hat to you as the Balzac of diarists.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Codex
Margot Asquith in footnote to letter to her from Henry James of 9 April 1915, in praise of her diary, in Margot Asquith: An Autobiography (1922), 70-73: 'Out of all my diaries I have hardly been able to quote fifty pages, for on re-reading them I find they are not only full of Cabinet secrets but jerky, disjointed and dangerously frank.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margot Asquith Manuscript: Codex
'I've just been reading Mrs Asquith's book and I confess it leaves me bewildered. Unless my judgement has gone entirely astray, it is completely détraqué. She records conversations cleverly — as when Jowett says that his lady love was violent, very violent — but her maxims on life seem to me to be meaningless and her appreciations of people quite artificial. There must however be more in it than I can manage to extract. At any rate she is a human being though her experience which she holds to be so wide, seems to me to cover a very small area of existence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
