The recent biography of Alfred Lyttelton--War Minister in Mr. Balfour's
latest Cabinet--skilfully and beautifully done by his second wife, has
conveyed to the public of thirty years later some idea of Laura's
imperishable charm. And I greatly hope that it may be followed some day
by a collection of her letters, for there are many in existence, and,
young as she was, they would, I believe, throw much light upon a crowded
moment in our national life. Laura was the fourth daughter of Sir
Charles Tennant, a rich Glasgow manufacturer, and the elder sister of
Mrs. Asquith. She and her sisters came upon the scene in the early
'eighties; and without any other extrinsic advantage but that of wealth,
which in this particular case would not have taken them very far, they
made a conquest--the younger two, Laura and Margot, in particular--of a
group of men and women who formed a kind of intellectual and social
_elite_; who were all of them accomplished; possessed, almost all of
them, of conspicuous good looks, or of the charm that counts as much;
and among whom there happened to be a remarkable proportion of men who
have since made their mark on English history. My generation knew them
as "The Souls." "The Souls" were envied, mocked at, caricatured, by
those who were not of them. They had their follies--why not? They were
young, and it was their golden day. Their dislike of convention and
routine had the effect on many--and those not fools--of making
convention and routine seem particularly desirable. But there was not, I
think, a young man or woman admitted to their inner ranks who did not
possess in some measure a certain quality very difficult to isolate and
define. Perhaps, to call it "disinterestedness" comes nearest. For they
were certainly no seekers after wealth, or courters of the great. It
might be said, of course, that they had no occasion; they had as much
birth and wealth as any one need want, among themselves. But that does
not explain it. For push and greed are among the commonest faults of an