ASQUITHS LETTERS

Hokitika Guardian, 16 December 1933, Page 6

ASQUITHS LETTERS

AY OMAN CONFIDANT

AMAZING REVELATIONS,

LONDON, December 6,

The amazing letters which the late Lord Oxford and Asquith wrote to a woman confidant in the last years of his life are revealed in ,a book entitled “H.A.A.’s Letters to a Friend,” which will he published to-morrow. The earlier communications begin formally, while the last start with “Dearest Hilda,” Some pay .tribute to her “incomparable sweetness” as his salvation when he was “slandered and backbitten by unscrupulous enemies.”-

One letter criticises the late .Earl Balfour, for “jackalling” . for Mr Lloyd George, and another trounces “dunderhead Commoners” for visiting the Coalition Premier “Nicodemus fashion”

One of the most remarkable revelations is that Lord Oxford did not attend the Cenotaph ceremonies because “the ritual was not to my taste. The Sunday. Dispatch identifies the confidant. as Mrs Harrison, a war widow, residing at Barshill, Oxfoid. The correspondence began in 1920, when she was 27 and Lord Oxford 63. Desmond McCarthy* editor of the hook, writes: — “The friendship was a source of refreshment, rest and' delight to Lord Oxford, which his wife and family understood. Evidently -the confidant, was ' the intimate, woman friend that he needed.” Lord Oxford’s friend is a charming brunette, with grey eyes.- She told a Sunday Chronicle reporter that she was not attracted by his position or political power, but by his tremendous personality. _ “Nobody coukl fail to be interested in Lord Oxford as a man,” she said “I often conducted him to art gallevies, and we played cards'and chess together at mv home. When I realised what a oerfect companion he was, not a man able to think only in terms of politics, he was an inspiration to me.