Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1909-12-10

William Watson, the English poet,
whose last volume of verse has set all
England gossiping, principally on account
Of the poem, 1.-THE Woman With the Ser
pent's Tongue" quoted above, made the
signed statement, also quoted above, to
Times reporter yesterday, on his arrival
on the Lusitania with his wife for short
visit in this country.
Mr.. Watson, at the same time, gave
to the Times an account Of a visit he
made in June last to Mrs. Asquith, wife
Of the British premier, and her step
daughter, on whose personalities he says
in his statement he based his poem. This
account he prepared soon afterwards to
explain the circumstances under which
the poem was written and the incidents
which inspired II. The date on which this.
was written in June this year. Here
it is:
MR.. wATsoN's CALL IN DOWNING
STREET
Last Friday week I happened to meet
Mrs Asquith and her stepdaughter Miss
Violet Asquith at Stafford house. Miss
Asouith asked me to come to tea at 10
Downing street on the following Tuesday.
l came. She is, as all her friends know,
an extremely clever girl, remarkably we'll
educated, very brilliant and her talk was
very interesting-rather surprising in
some respects. When / arrived at the
house, Mrs. Asquith was apparently not
there. Miss Violet Asquith took me down.
stairs to a sort of little library of her own
looking on the garden, where l had tea,
and 1 suppose we talked for more than an
hour-anyhow quite an hour-on a va
riety of subjects.
NASH, WHO WROTE STATESMAN'S
SPEECHES.
while / was there, a man crossed the
garden I said, rs that one of the secre-
taries? Miss Violet Asquith said Yes;
that is Nash; that is the man who used
to write c. BIS speeches for him. &C.
b. was the late Sir Henry Campbell-Ban-
herman, Mr.. Asquith's predecessor as
prime minister
She said: Yes, and you know he appeared
to think, after my father became prime
minister. that the same sort of services
would still be expected of him..
II laughed, of course, and although
was very much surprised at such refer
ence to Mr.. Asquith's predecessor in the
premiership, / preserved the politest de-
inean6r possible, and said:
well, with all respect to Mr.. Nash,
I suppose even this British public of
ours would easily detect the difference
"She said: Yes; no doubt they would;
but 1 would like to tell you this: Shortly
after my father became prime minister
he was going down to Scotland Il for
get whether ii was she or her mother, or
both, who was with him) and Nash was
seeing him off at the station, and just as
the train was about to leave the platform
Mr. Nash bowed in a very respectful
manner and handed over to my father a
little scroll of paper neatly tied up, and
said in rather a subdued manner, "Per-
haps this will be of use to you" My
father put II aside at the time, and forgot
it, and then, some time after he said:
perhaps we had better look at this and
see what it is" so he opened it and
found that II was a speech prepared for
him by Mr.. Nash
IT said: Your father must have been
frightfully annoyed, surely?
''She said: We'll, what troubled him
most about IL was this, that he wanted
to make it quite clear to Nash that this
sort of thing was no longer necessary,
but he felt it would be difficult to say It
IN a way that would not hurt his feel
ings.'
$50 far Miss Asquith. do not remem-
Der the exact links between that part of
the conversation and what I am about to
record, out presently sue Sdlus
DO you know, have often wondered
whether some of those phrases of &C
BIS" that caught on so much, such as
methods of barbarism," and that sort of
nonsense, really came from &C. B." or
from Nash
ARCHBISHOPRICS GOT BY JOBBERY
LAS a matter of fact, it did not occur
to me Just at the moment that the phrase
methods Of barbarism' was used by c.
B. before he was a prime minister at ALL
and therefore before Nash was one of his
secretaries. Later on, / said You know
I rather expected that your father would
make the bishop of Hereford archbishop of
York She said: Yes; and 1 suppose
the bishop of Hereford thought so, too;
but don't you think that these things.
archbishoprics, and so forth, are not got
by trying to bring pressure to bear? They
are not got by jobbery, you know
i1 - sursa sA~'aiNsced in tha face of