But no one could accuse Lady Oxford, universally fadaous as
" Margot Asquith," of stiffness or inability to chatter. In Places and Persons (Butterworth) she is vivacious, but discreet. The most interesting part of the book is her diary of a journey to Egypt in 1891. She is there so much more naive than later. Her impressions ions arc quicker, and we have also the interest of comparing the judgments she made with our subsequent knowledge. She reports, for example, "Colonel Kitchener is a man of energy and ambition, a little complacent over his defects ; but he has not got an interesting naind." Her impressions of America are not nearly so valuable; and she displays almost a prima donna's delight in the panegy- rics of the Press. She still keeps something of her naivete ; how else could she write such a passage as the following ?
" Have you read If -Wilder Comes?' I asked. He answered that he had ; and told me he had been deeply moved over it, but did I believe that such a man as Mark Sabre could ever exist ; did I not think he had emanated from a sensitive and creative power, but was not a real being ? I replied that it was just because Mark Sabre was so human and:made by God as well as Hutchinson that the book was great."
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