III

On 25th July 1889 Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone celebrated their golden wedding, completing fifty years of a married life in which they had abundantly realised “all the unclouded blessings of the home.” The year before, on entering their fiftieth year of married life, colleagues and personal friends presented them with their portraits, that of Mr. Gladstone painted by Holl and of his wife by Herkomer, and three massive silver cups. In thanking them Mr. Gladstone said that it was difficult for him to give an adequate idea of the domestic happiness he had enjoyed during the fifty years of his married life. Other presentations were made on the wedding anniversary itself, both in London and at Hawarden, and again Mr. Gladstone said that no words he could use would ever suffice to express the debt he owed his wife in relation to all the offices she had discharged in his behalf during the long and happy period of their conjugal union.

Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister for a short time in 1886. From 1892 to 1894 he again held the office, and in the latter year retired for good from public life. Mrs. Gladstone was much disturbed by his decision and did everything in her power to persuade him to continue in office, but he stood firm as the rocks at Biarritz, where the discussion was held. It had always been his belief that men ought not to go on with official work after they had become really old. He was eighty-five, so that no one could say he had not done his share of the work of the world.

The nature of the pains in the face from which Gladstone suffered was recognised early in 1897. His wife went with him to Cannes in the hope that a more genial climate might be beneficial, but when it became certain that the malady was incurable, they returned to Hawarden. Though there was nothing she could do for him, she sat by his bedside till the end, only consenting with great reluctance to take a few hours’ rest. When, on 19th May 1898, all was over, and her lifelong companion had gone from her, even in her deep grief she thought of others, and before the remains of her beloved husband were taken from Hawarden to their last resting-place in the Abbey, she drove out to offer consolation to two Hawarden women whose husband and fiancé had been killed in a mine accident the day before. She and her sorrow were in every one’s hearts, and Lord Rosebery, speaking in the House of Lords, expressed in memorable words what all were feeling when he referred to the “solitary and pathetic figure who for sixty years shared all the sorrows and all the joys of Mr. Gladstone’s life, who received his every confidence and every aspiration, who shared his triumphs with him and cheered him under his defeats, and by her tender vigilance sustained and prolonged his years.”

Mr. Gladstone’s body was brought to London for burial in the Abbey. Mrs. Gladstone accompanied the mournful convoy, and stayed in London at the house of her niece, Lady Frederick Cavendish. She was present at the funeral, an impressive and touching scene, seated at the head of the grave, the group around which included, besides children and grandchildren, sons and daughters-in-law, princes, statesmen, high dignitaries and functionaries of every kind. When all was over the Prince of Wales[78] went up to the chief mourner and, bending down, kissed her hand, and said a word or two of sympathy; Prince George[79] did the same, thus reversing the usual attitude of sovereign and subject. The example so greatly set was followed by the other pall-bearers, and Mrs. Gladstone was so much revived by the wonderful tribute the whole funeral had been to her husband’s worth, that she was able to say to each the most suitable thing, reminding, for example, the aged Duke of Rutland that he had been Gladstone’s colleague at Newark when he had been returned for his first Parliamentary seat. Some one said that Mrs. Gladstone went into the Abbey a widow and walked out of it a bride.

The death of her eldest son in 1891 and the retirement of Gladstone in 1894 had seemed to break her spirit, and it was clear to all for the first time that she really showed signs of age. But after the great testimony of the Abbey her vitality in large measure returned, and she was almost her old self until her death, which occurred at Hawarden, 14th June 1900. A few days later she was buried near her husband in Westminster Abbey.

Although Mrs. Gladstone was never a great social force, her grace and charm of manner won her a large circle of attached friends. When the occasion called for it, she could be the grande dame, and could act with great dignity. Beneath her simplicity of manner lay great cleverness. She disliked bores, and showed peculiar skill in extricating herself from them without their perceiving her manœuvre. With importunity, however, she had no patience; she would then summon all her dignity, and would put the sinner in his place without ado. She scarcely practised the social arts in the technical sense of the term. She was indifferent in the choice of guests, and seldom troubled to make sure that they would amalgamate. The Thursday 10 a.m. breakfasts became deservedly famous, because they comprised most of the celebrities of the day—a prima donna, a popular actor, an editor, Mme de Novikoff, Canon Liddon, a great Whig peeress. Dinners would include a mixed company of Members of Parliament and a few non-political friends. At Hawarden the great Whig nobles of the party, like Lord Spencer, Lord Rosebery, and Lord Aberdeen, were chiefly entertained, at whose houses also the Gladstones stayed. Life at Hawarden, even with visitors in the house, was simple; food was good but plain, the hours regular and early. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone always attended the eight o’clock service at the parish church, a walk of three-quarters of a mile, returning to breakfast, which was enlivened with brilliant talk. It was with difficulty that in later years they could be persuaded to use a pony carriage for the early attendance at church, and at last to substitute attendance at evensong at five o’clock three times a week. Gladstone’s library was known as the “Temple of Peace,” and when the books overflowed into the adjoining lobby, that was christened the “Chapel of Ease.”

Punctuality was a rule of the house for all. Dinner was at 8 p.m., and no late-comer was waited for, unless he or she happened to be some distinguished stranger. As soon as three were assembled Mr. Gladstone would cry, “Quorum! Quorum!” and march into the dining-room.

Gladstone always notified where he himself wished to be entertained, and Mrs. Gladstone showed great dexterity and tact in arranging such invitations. She was similarly skilful in the general management of her husband. She secured that he should enjoy all his little peculiarities, such as eating slowly, and supplying him with the glass of good port he liked to drink after dinner, and allowing him to see the friends he preferred, both men and women—an excellent way, if wives in general would only believe and practise it, to keep husbands young and fresh.

They were both fond of walking, and very often walked home after dining out. Mrs. Gladstone was indifferent to dress, and her general untidiness and absence of method in minor matters occasionally got her into trouble. But she managed dexterously to escape it. Mr. Gladstone used to say, “My wife has a marvellous faculty for getting into scrapes, but also a marvellous faculty for getting out of them.” She had a regal carriage, and her movements were swift and light. Her eyes were of a deep sapphire blue, long in shape, set well apart, in expression according to her mood, merry or tender or mischievous. Abundant soft brown hair waved on her forehead.

After the first few years of married life, when children were born in quick succession and her health was therefore somewhat delicate, she enjoyed for the rest of her existence wonderfully fine health. She took a daily cold bath until the year of her death. One winter, when she was over eighty, a mission was held at Hawarden. As the service began at 4 a.m. she consented to sleep at the Rectory. Her son, the Rector, got up at three, made some water hot, and took it to his mother’s room. She opened her door fully dressed and ready, having taken her cold bath as usual.

One reason of Mrs. Gladstone’s ability to resist fatigue and to get through so large an amount of work was her practice of sleeping for short periods. She could lie down on a sofa and go to sleep at will for ten or fifteen minutes, and awake perfectly refreshed. Sometimes, too, in the House of Commons, during one of her husband’s long speeches, she would take a short nap, for as she always sat with her head bent and eyes looking down on Mr. Gladstone, her companions never detected that she was asleep, and indeed were lost in admiration at the rapt way in which she listened, and the manner in which she endured the fatigue of sitting there so many hours.

Amid all her activities she found time for much letter-writing, and corresponded with numbers of interesting people. With the slightest materials she contrived to get an atmosphere into her letters that made them delightful reading.

One who knew Mrs. Gladstone well writes:

“Helpfulness, that was the note of her character; in any difficulty, in the most impossible case, Mrs. Gladstone would plan, contrive, arrange, enlist others, and never rest until the difficulty was solved, and the persons put in the way of helping themselves—nay more, supported, befriended, encouraged, till they could stand alone. Perhaps few persons were so often consulted and appealed to as was Mrs. Gladstone. It might be young girls entering on life in the first joy of a marriage engagement, or young beauties to whom she would gently suggest thoughts that were unworldly. Very often it would be some hard-worked London priest toiling single-handed amongst his thousands, and thinking no one cared, who found in Mrs. Gladstone a listener not only sympathetic but suggestive, one who did not forget, but would forward his plans, and who had the rare gift of setting other people to work.

“Mrs. Gladstone had the genius of charity. Good or to be helped to be good, that was the essence of it all. Religion not forced, not obtruded, but as natural and vital as fresh air, was, not an adjunct of life, but life itself. In her own devotions, in the daily services of the Church, in many a Eucharist did Catherine Gladstone renew her soul’s life, and increase the charity and the delightful gaiety of her temperament, and from the spirit of wisdom learn those intuitions which so rarely failed her. It seemed but natural that her last spoken words were, ‘I must not be late for Church.’”

In these days of storm and stress and feverish excitement and unrest among women, it is well to recall the life of a woman like Mrs. Gladstone who, in a period when such mechanical aids to activity as motor-cars and telephones were non-existent, yet contrived to be a devoted wife, smoothing her husband’s path in every direction, accompanying him everywhere, an equally devoted mother, as well as a charming hostess of country-house parties at Hawarden and of the more formal entertainments in London consequent on her position as the wife of a great Minister of State. In addition to such domestic and social duties she engaged in philanthropic work, and in no dilettante spirit; she visited hospitals, founded convalescent homes, and refuges and orphanages; she played her part in the public political work then undertaken by women. She accomplished all these things without an idea that she was doing anything worthy of note or of record, and yet quietly, unostentatiously, and unconsciously leaving an ineffaceable mark on every phase of life with which she came in contact.

VII
LADY SALISBURY

Lord Salisbury was the last of Queen Victoria’s Prime Ministers, and she has left it on record that she thought him the ablest of them all. Lady Salisbury was Georgiana, daughter of Lord Alderson, Baron of the Exchequer. Lord Alderson was a man of great intellect, whose career, though honourable and useful, never quite fulfilled the expectations of his friends. At Cambridge University he was Senior Wrangler, Smith’s prizeman, and Senior Chancellor’s medallist, which is almost a unique record. The Aldersons belonged to what was called “the Norwich set,” a group of families living near that city who made it into an intellectual centre. It is curious to learn, in connection with the history of some of his descendants, that in his early days Lord Alderson was a Unitarian, and was descended from Mrs. Opie, the well-known Quaker. He himself, however, became a member of the Church of England, and the family were well known as advanced Tractarians.

Hollyer

LADY SALISBURY

After the portrait by Sir W. B. Richmond

Every year the Alderson family (which consisted of ten children besides Georgiana) used to spend their summer holidays at Lowestoft, where were other friends with young families, conspicuously the Palgraves. Of the Palgraves the best known was Francis, afterwards the editor of the Golden Treasury. There is in existence a little green-covered book called Lays of Lowestoft, which consists of parodies of mediæval ballads and heroic couplets something like the Ingoldsby Legends, though it is perhaps unfair to call into comparison these high-spirited, but naturally immature, productions with that brilliant collection of satirical verse. The jokes and allusions are rather obscure to the outsider, but the whole volume gives an impression of zest and great enjoyment. Georgiana opens the volume with a lively account of a cricket match, and there are descriptions of picnics and excursions of all sorts, to which the family drove in a donkey-cart, with tea, umbrellas, and “Tennyson’s poems our hearts to affect.” On another occasion they are all depicted as lying on the heather singing glees and part-songs (the Aldersons were very musical) while the sun went down. Two verses are sufficiently characteristic:

“Now sparkling hock and sparkling wit
Are vying with each other,
And one bright flash of repartee
Is followed by another.

And grave ecclesiastics too,
With lawyers shrewd and cunning,
Contend with squires and ladies fair
In the gay art of punning.”

The whole book is full of the atmosphere of the irresponsible years between childhood and maturity. One feels it must all have been great fun.

Georgiana “came out,” like other girls, when she grew up, and is generally believed to have enjoyed that also. Indeed, she might have taken as one of her secondary mottoes in life the old couplet:

“Pastime and good company
I love and shall until I die,”

with perhaps the rider that good company was the pastime best worth having. She had great vitality and a brilliant wit, and both made her such good company that a friend paraphrased Wilke’s famous boast on her behalf and said that, given ten minutes’ lead (to make up for her want of looks, for she was not considered pretty), she could be backed against the loveliest of her contemporaries. Undeniably some people found her formidable, for she was a person of very strong emotions and decided opinions, and was liable to come out suddenly with emphatic expression of her views in a way that less decisive natures found startling.

There are in existence some serious poems written by Miss Alderson at this date at which she used to laugh in later life, and which she was perhaps a little unreasonably proud of never having published. They are described as being characterised by a “sweet sentimental melancholy,” which was a quality no one would have suspected in her. But she probably had her “summer of green-sickness” like other people, and one of her daughters describes her as liking “to give lip-service to a pretty sentiment, though always ready to laugh at herself for the indulgence.”

Among Georgiana Alderson’s greatest friends was Mary, Lady Salisbury (later Lady Derby), and it was at her house she met Lord Robert Cecil, Lady Salisbury’s stepson. In appearance at any rate Lord Robert was very different from the massive figure familiar to the older of present-day politicians. Angular, thin, and rather ungainly, for the dozen years before he took office in 1866 he sat below the gangway in the House of Commons, the freest of free-lances, assailing his own leaders quite as often as the Liberal Government, with a bitterness and violence of language which rather scandalised his fellow-members. His elder brother, Lord Cranborne, being still alive, no one ever thought of his succeeding his father, while his constituency was one of the last of the pocket boroughs, so that he enjoyed every condition of irresponsibility and independence. Another element emphasised his detachment. The tendency of politics is to absorb the politician completely, and to shut out other interests and other questions. To Lord Robert politics was an occupation, while what old-fashioned people used to call philosophy—abstract thought on theology and science—was his abiding interest. He also was an advanced Tractarian, and this was probably the chief thing that first attracted him and Georgiana to each other.

The marriage was an extremely happy one. Both were deeply and devoutly religious; both were much interested in the philosophical questions that centred in religious controversy; both had keen, alert, and daring intelligences. Lady Robert, though a year or two older than her husband, was generally held to have the younger mind, and, if power to enjoy is the attribute of youth, then she certainly had a younger temperament. They were married in 1857, and lived in a little house in Half Moon Street. They were not at all well off, and Lord Robert supplemented a small income with his pen, writing in the Quarterly and the Saturday Review. Lady Robert also wrote in the Saturday, a fact considered more unusual then than it would be now. Owing to their both writing anonymously, rumour of course embellished the fact, and Lady Robert was credited with some of the political articles (of the type known as “trenchant”) which, as a matter of fact, were written by her husband, she having performed only the important rôle of critic. Lady Robert’s own articles, unfortunately never collected, were chiefly on literary subjects.

Their eldest son was not born till 1861, to be followed by a long family of four more sons and two daughters. The relations of the mother with her children were thoroughly characteristic. To outsiders she seemed to exercise very little restraint on them, and to give them a degree of liberty of action that most children do not get. They were also treated by both parents far more as equals than is usual, and allowed to take part and have their say in any discussion that was on foot, provided they put their points well and discussed fairly. But if she did not work her authority hard there could be no doubt of the strength of her influence, especially in the case of her sons. She was in their confidence, and her opinion had great weight with them to the end of her life. A very familiar sight in later years was Lady Salisbury driving in a high barouche with one or other of her sons, by that time grown men and public figures, absolutely absorbed in talk and both enjoying themselves.

The free-lance days came to an end in 1865, when Lord Robert’s elder brother, Lord Cranborne, died and put him in the direct succession for a great fortune and one of the historical peerages of England. Further, in 1866 the Liberal Government fell, and, when the Conservatives came in under Lord Derby, the new Lord Cranborne was made Secretary of State for India. It was an interesting Parliament, the outstanding subject of interest being Reform. The career of the Government might indeed be described as more exciting than dignified. They came in disposed to pass no Reform Bill; they rapidly discovered that the country was determined to have some Reform Bill. They started with timid and limited measures, and were hustled from one halting-place to another, until the Bill they finally passed, amid clamorous denunciations and acclamations alike, was as wide as any Liberal had ever dreamed of.

It was when one of these limitations was removed, which in his opinion made the franchise dangerously wide, that Lord Cranborne and two of his colleagues, Lord Carnarvon and General Peel, resigned in 1867. Every one sincerely respected them for their sacrifice to their principles, but it made and could make no difference to the Bill, there being only one Bill possible under the circumstances. On the other hand a comment of Lady Cranborne’s was felt to have some ground. She sat next Lord Derby at a dinner-party, and he asked her good-humouredly whether she was lying awake at night doing addition sums to see how many voters were coming in under the Bill, like her husband? “No; do you know, my sums are all subtraction,” was Lady Cranborne’s reply, “and I have come to the conclusion that three from twelve leaves nothing.” Twelve was the number of the Derby Cabinet which, after a jolting and precarious career and a change of leadership from Lord Derby to Mr. Disraeli, fell to cureless ruin in 1868 after the new election.

Lord Cranborne had hardly been a year in office, but he had greatly increased in reputation. He had shown that when he was given responsibility he could rise to it, and his Parliamentary manner was admirable. He shot up automatically from the position of a lone hand, about whose prospects men shook their heads, to that of a coming man and a coming leader, and many regretted profoundly when his father’s death in 1868 withdrew him from the House of Commons. One of the most interesting of minor political speculations is the consideration of what might have happened if his elder brother had lived and he had been compelled to pass his career in the comparative rough-and-tumble of the Commons. He was always of a very detached and aloof temperament, and might have absolutely refused to face the passion and blatancy of an ordinary contested election, as opposed to the foreseen “walks-over” of his elections at Stamford. But had he undergone it and been forced into more direct contact with the general mind of the people, it is impossible not to believe that this detachment might have been modified—and with advantage. As a leader he was always a good deal of an enigma even to his closest associates, and a complete puzzle to the rank and file of his party. In the House of Lords he seldom had to face real opposition, and the consciousness of a foregone conclusion to the discussions imparted a degree of languor to debate. Lord Salisbury himself complained that they were all too much of one mind. At any rate, for one reason or another, he grew more and more to despise public opinion because it was public opinion, an attitude very attractive to certain types of mind, but which is apt to leave a politician the dismal choice whether he will acquiesce or resign when overborne by a public opinion formed by some one else.

Lady Salisbury, as she now became, was very conscious of the drawbacks of this attitude, and set to work to try and modify them by taking on herself a large share of the duties of political hostess. The short sitting of the House of Commons in those days was on Wednesday, and she used to have parties in her house in Arlington Street on Wednesdays for members and their wives. She was a great believer in keeping in touch with members’ wives as a means of keeping their husbands politically “straight.” In addition, of course, she gave big garden-parties in the beautiful grounds at Hatfield, which were now her own, and these entertainments formed one of the outstanding social functions of each year. With only short intervals Lord Salisbury was in office for nearly thirty years, the intervals being, of course, 1880–85 and 1892–95, when Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister. Consequently the work of “keeping the party together” was continuous. Lady Salisbury played her part entirely by entertaining. So far as I can find out she never made a speech on a platform in her life, and did not look with any approval on the political associations for women which began to form in her later years. In the sense that “everybody who was anybody” always came to her parties, they were, of course, extremely successful. Yet she can hardly be described as a born political hostess. Political entertaining is inevitably a rather wholesale business, and demands a certain amount of facile amiability that did not suit her direct and decisive personality, and she was a person of strong preferences which she was not always successful in concealing from the people that she did not prefer. In addition, she was very easily led into any conversation that interested her, and it was not an uncommon sight to see her shaking hands with head averted, absorbed in a discussion going on at her other elbow. (It is interesting to note that although her husband was twice Prime Minister she never lived at the historic No. 10 Downing Street.)

Lord Salisbury himself was a decidedly reluctant partner in these activities. He hated indiscriminate sociabilities, partly because his eyesight was bad and he had a difficulty in remembering faces. “Why should I spend my evening being trampled on by the Conservative party,” he was heard to complain audibly one night while standing at the head of the stairs receiving his guests. Both were a great deal happier in their house-parties at Hatfield, where they could receive their personal friends. Here they could be in close touch with every one, and enjoy the play of minds which was the favourite entertainment of both. Lady Salisbury herself was a brilliant talker, quick, spontaneous, and epigrammatic, without any suggestion of premeditation. The element about her talk that most struck outsiders was perhaps its remorseless pressing home of her points, coupled with complete good temper when points were pressed equally hard against her. She never took offence at a shrewd hit, and greatly preferred a foeman worthy of her steel to a limp and unintelligent ally. One characteristic was very marked—gossip played small part in her talk, and “spicy” gossip none at all. The reason for this was not prudery. The terms are on record with which she rebuked some unlucky scandalmonger, and they are of an eighteenth-century plainness. She was fond of the saying that “nice” people are people with nasty minds, and altogether had a fine disgust for the prying censoriousness and debased curiosity which besets a certain form of conventional piety.

Convention, in fact, was her bane, and independence the prevailing colour of her mind. She was deeply and sincerely religious, and her religion was her touchstone for all conduct. But her inferences from her creed she held herself free to make independently, and she acted, approved, disapproved, and recommended on completely individual lines. Laid down as they were by a reckless and almost appallingly rational mind, they were no doubt sufficiently perplexing to many ordinary people. She saw no necessity to agree with every one she liked (nor, it may be added, to like every one with whom she agreed), and her friends were of every type and every shade of opinion. Dr. Liddon was one of the greatest, and with him she corresponded frequently, but she was also close friends with Dr. Tait, afterwards Primate, with Professor Tyndall, and with the late Duke of Devonshire, with all of whom Liddon probably disagreed as emphatically as possible. She had also many friends in the Liberal camp, notably Lady Rosebery. She had very strong affections, and her friendships went very deep.

Her last illness was long and harassing, lasting over two years. At first it was hoped that a change to the south of France, where Lord Salisbury had a villa, might cure her, and in 1898 she was operated on. But the dropsical symptoms recurred, and she was obliged to realise that medical skill could only modify her discomforts and not defer an inevitable end. She bore her illness with an unstinted courage that was characteristic, until she lapsed into an unconsciousness that lasted more or less all the last three weeks of her life. Perhaps in itself this was a merciful thing, for she was thus spared the knowledge that one of her sons, Lord Edward Cecil, was shut up in Mafeking, and that the family being unable to get news were in some anxiety about him. She died at Hatfield on 20th November 1899, and her death was a blow to her husband, from which it may be said that he never recovered. Her long illness had withdrawn her from her friends for some time before her death, but nevertheless the silencing of her vivid and positive personality came as a shock to many, and to a few with whom she had been intimate as one of the irreplaceable losses of their lives. She was buried at Hatfield, and four years later her husband was laid beside her.

L. M.

VIII
LADY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

“The speaker in his remarks on the previous toast implied that it was a good sign of a mother to have a good son. But he thought there was another relationship in life in which there was a good deal of sympathy. They would always find where they had a good sort of fellow—they might depend upon it—he had a good wife. At all events, he pitied the man with any interest in public events or any public duty to discharge who, when he goes home, finds a wife who knows nothing and cares nothing about it. That, he was glad to say, was not his case. He had a wife who was a keen politician; like most women, she was a keen partisan and had a very great appreciation of all who supported her husband, and, he was afraid, she was not without resentment against those who did not. He need hardly say that his wife shared the anxiety of these days and also the buoyancy of spirits and the elasticity of feeling which enabled them to survive the disappointment.”

Sarony

LADY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

Mr. Campbell, as he then was, made the speech from which these remarks are quoted in 1868. As a summary of his wife’s character they remained applicable all her life, except perhaps when the “buoyancy of spirits” flagged owing to her long and painful illness. The “keen politician” and “keen partisan” she remained to the end.

Sarah, Lady Campbell-Bannerman, was born Sarah Charlotte Bruce, daughter of Sir Charles Bruce, a well-known officer in his day. Throughout her life her attitude of mind partook of an almost military staunchness and simplicity. For her no trumpet gave forth an uncertain sound. It was either a command from allies or a challenge from the enemy. She was married in 1860, and at the time it was said, I do not know with what truth, that of the two the young bride was the more extreme in her political views. One of the first people to appreciate her qualities of mind and character was her father-in-law. He was diametrically opposed to her in politics, but he showed his appreciation of her qualities in a very practical manner, by a substantial increase in the provision he made for the young couple over and beyond the sum named in their original settlements.

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Campbell spent much of the early years of their marriage in foreign travel, for which they both had a great fondness. Continental journeys at that date were more adventurous than in the days of Messrs. Cook and Sir Henry Lunn, and the young couple had plenty of petty misfortunes and discomforts to laugh over in later days. France was their special favourite; they shared a great admiration for French art and French culture, and, it may be added, for French cooking.

In 1868 Mr. Campbell entered politics, fighting two elections in the same year for the same constituency, Stirling Burghs—the first unsuccessful, the second triumphant. Stirling Burghs remained his constituency throughout his life. The new member’s career followed the fortunes of his party. It is curious to consider, in the light of his attitude on the South African War, how much of his official life was spent at the War Office, where he was very much liked. He was Financial Secretary to that Department in 1871, and again in 1880. In 1892 he returned there as Secretary of State to tackle an extremely delicate and awkward affair, the retirement of the Duke of Cambridge from the position of Commander-in-Chief. The appointment was for five years only, but the Duke had treated it as an appointment for life, and had filled it for more than thirty years. Had he been a great soldier it would have mattered less, but in his prime he was no more than a hard-working and conscientious one, and now in his old age an immovable obstacle to a thousand necessary reforms. His experience dated from the time when promotion was entirely by purchase or by favour; he regarded any system of promotion by merit as a direct infringement of his privileges, both official and royal, with the result that the Staff College was deliberately shunned by ambitious officers, because it was known that “the Duke” would never promote any one who had been there. A more serious matter was the truncation and arrest of promotion right through the military hierarchy. “The worst thing the Duke did by the Army was to rob it of Wolseley’s best years,” was the comment of one who knew both men. A cartoon in Punch expressed this very aptly. It showed a slim, alert Lord Wolseley observing, “I have to relinquish my command in September.” To whom a coughing, lame, and corpulent Duke of Cambridge replied, “Dear me! I haven’t.” It was obvious he ought to retire, but he was Royal, a near relation to the Sovereign, a popular public figure, and quite unconscious of his own shortcomings, so it was difficult to bring about. But the quiet young Scotchman brought it about, and that in a manner which safeguarded the old gentleman’s public dignity, whatever may have been his private feelings. The Duke was succeeded by Lord Wolseley, greatly to the public satisfaction. The whole incident served to consolidate the reputation Mr. Campbell-Bannerman had made during a short bout of the intractable duties of Chief Secretary for Ireland, and on the advice of Lord Rosebery, then Prime Minister, the achievement was acknowledged by the bestowal of the Grand Cross of the Bath.

Lady Campbell-Bannerman[80] was a soldier’s daughter and took great interest in all military affairs. Circumstances combined to make the marriage a particularly close and affectionate relation. Sir Henry and his wife were childless; she was an only child, and he a member of a small family. All this tended to make them concentrate their affection upon each other and ask very little of outsiders, and when the long illness began of which Lady Campbell-Bannerman died, her husband’s daily and hourly devotion was touching to see. He relied implicitly on her judgment, having, as he said, so often found it reliable and shrewd. It was well for both that their mutual confidence was so close, for during and after the South African War a storm of abuse and unpopularity raged round Sir Henry, who was opposed both to the war itself and the manner in which it was conducted. No unpopularity, however, caused him to swerve in any degree, and it was often thought that his wife had a great deal to say in the maintenance of his uncompromising course. Certain it is that she shared his convictions to the full. In both they were founded in the deepest and most abiding sentiments.

They shared also the same taste in friends, with something like an oblivion of social standing and a great intolerance for pretension or pose or insincerity, more marked perhaps in the wife than in the husband. Lady Campbell-Bannerman was very proud of a strain of Dutch in her descent, but her every trait showed the influence of generations of severe Scotch ancestors.

It has sometimes been stated that Lady Campbell-Bannerman took a prominent part in the conciliatory movements which ended in the co-ordination of the Liberal party in 1906. But, as a matter of fact, she was a bad conciliator. She found it very difficult to believe that people who differed from her husband in opinion did so in good faith. She found it nearly impossible to believe this of a member of his own party, in whom she regarded it as something like evidence of a wilful perversity. Her resentments were, accordingly, immovable. To set against this degree of prejudice she displayed a singular shrewdness in affairs, which she did not allow to be deflected by personal considerations.

Only in certain matters did she allow her emotions to trouble her judgments. She was very ambitious for her husband, more so than he was for himself. It is characteristic of his genial, good-humoured, rather easy-going temperament that at one time his ambition was the Speakership. In controversy he would probably have been almost content to state his opinion or make his protest and then go off to his reading or travelling abroad or hunting up bargains in old furniture (of which he was a connoisseur). It was generally considered that it was his wife who kept him up to battle pitch. Yet it is almost a paradox that she could never reconcile herself to the extent to which the political life she did so much to encourage kept him away from her and away from home. She felt this so strongly that in the early days of her long illness there were not wanting people who believed her ill-health to be assumed as a pretext for keeping Sir Henry with her. It would probably be juster to believe that it was the beginnings of ill-health and the consequent sense of dependence which made the common-sense view of the necessities of the situation harder to achieve. Certain it was that she seldom seemed to realise how very severe a tax it might be on a man, who had been hard at work in a contentious atmosphere all day and all the evening, to sit up by a sick-bed or break his sleep to soothe an invalid. Yet by a curious contradiction if there was ever any occasion when Sir Henry was tempted to leave politics altogether, or there was some possibility that he might be defeated by a rival in the contest for leadership, no one was more stubborn than his wife in the determination that he should suffer no such thing.

The winter of 1905 saw the fall of the Conservative party and a Liberal triumph assured. But the Liberals were by no means united in a desire for Sir Henry’s leadership. It was doubted whether he would accept office when Mr. Balfour resigned, and many thought he would have been wiser to force the Conservatives to dissolve Parliament. Lady Campbell-Bannerman never wavered in pressing her husband to respond to the invitation of the King to form a government, with or without the support of those who might have preferred a Liberal Imperialist Prime Minister. After Sir Henry had kissed hands there were many who urged his retirement to the House of Lords. They were supported by those who were anxious about the unity of the party, and who found some of the right wing determined to refuse office except under this condition. It was even approved by some of Sir Henry’s faithful followers. They had seen his difficulties as leader of the Opposition against an overbearing Conservative majority, and failed to foresee the completeness of his ascendancy in the new House of Commons. Definite suggestions were made in responsible quarters to the Liberal Press that this course should be presented to their readers as a desirable step. One great Liberal newspaper was so perplexed by these recommendations that a special messenger was sent late at night to Sir Henry asking him if this really represented his own personal wishes. A reply was received scribbled on the letter of inquiry urging the paper to use every argument possible against the proposed policy. The hour was late, the Prime Minister had been disturbed in his sleep, and there was only just time to get the appropriate articles written before the paper went to Press.

The story runs that Sir Henry had been conducting negotiations on this subject all the afternoon and evening. As has been said, he was of an easy-going disposition, with no particular taste for domination or prominence for its own sake. He was, moreover, tired, no longer young, and anxious about his wife’s health—all of them inducements to indifference. It was agreed that he should go home to dine and talk it over with his wife, who had just arrived from Scotland. Had the negotiators been wise they would have clinched their bargain then. The Sir Henry who returned to them after dinner was a very different person. It is said that he came into the room crying, “No surrender!” and nothing would induce him to contemplate the course they pressed. When once he did make up his mind they knew it was no good arguing. They were conscious that behind his decision was the determination of a more implacable and more immovable personality than his own, and they were obliged to give way. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman became leader of the House of Commons, and led his party in the New Parliament with immense success.

It was a great triumph, but, like most human triumphs, spiced with bitterness. It was not that a few people who should have known better thought it clever and smart to gibe at the quiet, elderly Scotch couple. Lady Campbell-Bannerman was a dying woman, and those near her knew it. For twenty years she had struggled with a disease of which the end was certain from the beginning, and the end was now near. She dragged herself from her sick-bed to be present at the first reception given by Sir Henry at Downing Street, and stood by his side. She was unfashionably dressed, and, as a consequence of her illness, terribly stout, and for many the outstanding memory of the evening was Sir Henry’s manifest anxiety and preoccupation about her. All through the year 1906 she got steadily worse, her sufferings increased by the unusual heat. It was hoped that the change to Marienbad might do her good. She liked the place, and had visited it regularly for twenty-five consecutive years. She knew herself unfit to travel, but insisted on going, because “Henry would get no holiday if I don’t go. It is not sufficient change to go anywhere in Scotland or England” (a remark many harassed politicians can echo). She stood the journey well, and it was hoped the change might do her good. But the improvement was only a flicker. She died on 30th August. The preliminary funeral ceremony took place at Marienbad, and was attended by many notable people, including a representative of King Edward VII. The King was at Marienbad at the time, and made all the arrangements for the service his personal concern. There had always been a warm friendship between him and Sir Henry, a circumstance perhaps equally perplexing to the “unco” patriotic among the satellites of the one and the “unco guid” among the followers of the other. But Lady Campbell-Bannerman’s body, as befitted one who was Scotch in every fibre of her being, was taken to her home in Scotland and buried in Meigle kirkyard.

Courage, staunchness, humour—these are the three things that stand out in the recollections of one who knew her well (there were not many who did). During her last years, “even to her accepted friends,” is the testimony, “she was singularly silent and reserved, generally leaving all the talking to her husband, while she herself sat listening, her steady blue-grey eyes quietly observing the speaker, and gaining for herself the reputation of being a dull, heavy woman. I often wished that the people who so apostrophised her could have seen her a few moments afterwards, those same quiet eyes sparkling with humour, and those singularly silent lips making remarks showing a mental activity which very ill suggested a dull, heavy woman.” The same observer mentions her reminiscences of long journeys taken in early days—“delightful to listen to, as recalled by her in her even, low, sweet voice,” on account of her “sense of humour and her splendid memory.” She adds: “She had a wonderful knowledge of human nature, the more striking considering how little she really mixed and rubbed shoulders with her fellow-creatures.”

Nowadays, when the rights of small nations are the proclaimed preoccupation of both the Old World and the New, it is interesting to record Lady Campbell-Bannerman’s firm conviction of their value in the international atmosphere, creating, “through their determined endeavour to remain independent, a healthy, stimulating effect on the world and life in general”—a conviction cherished by her at a date when it was anything but fashionable. Another observer, a man, confesses to having been at first “put off” by her appearance—to which allusion has already been made—and being caused to forget it by an “impression of a very sensible and even powerful intelligence.” Many, it has to be confessed, never saw through the unattractive appearance. Mr. T. P. O’Connor noticed unfavourably the “nervous, fluttering eyelids” and “nervous, fluttering manner.”

Lady Campbell-Bannerman was as marked in her preferences and dislikes of places as of people. She enjoyed being abroad, as has been said. She was devoted to Scotland, and especially to Belmont, the Scottish castle Sir Henry had inherited. She entered with zest into every detail of the functions of a châtelaine, superintending the garden and orchard with great thoroughness. She spent great care and pains over the decoration, which was in the French manner, the doors being copied from the palace at Versailles. Her London table was always provided with flowers from Belmont, and even her London laundry done there. For London itself she had no affection, and for Downing Street an active dislike. After her death it was found that before going to Marienbad she had cleared Downing Street of all her personal belongings and sent them to Scotland.

It has been said, “Happy the woman that has no history.” It was never more than a half-truth, and in the face of a career like Lady Campbell-Bannerman’s it has an ironic sound. But for her long illness it can hardly be doubted that she would have used her very remarkable gifts in a way that would have left her personal impress on her generation. Hampered and exhausted by suffering, she was yet able to affect passing events by reason of the immense influence she exercised on her husband, who took no action without consulting her. It may perhaps be mentioned here that the rumours of his remarriage after her death, maliciously circulated at the time, never had the least foundation. On the contrary, he never recovered his loss, and only survived her by little more than a year.

L. M.

INDEX

[No reference is made in this Index to the wives of the Prime Ministers in the chapters specially devoted to them.]

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH

FOOTNOTES

[1] Lady Caroline Lamb died in 1828, and Lord Melbourne became Prime Minister in 1835.

[2] The second Lady Aberdeen died in 1833, and Lord Aberdeen became Prime Minister in 1852.

[3] Lady Rosebery died in 1890, and Lord Rosebery became Prime Minister in 1894.

[4] Her husband was William Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne. He was Prime Minister in 1834 and 1836–41.

[5] See [p. 101].

[6] Lord Melbourne died 24th November 1848.

[7] See [p. 40].

[8] The correspondence is printed in C. Kegan Paul’s Life of William Godwin.

[9] She told Lady Morgan she loved him chiefly because he stood by her when no one else did.

[10] Lady Melton in Dr. Lindsay; Lady Clara in Lionel Hastings; Lady Bellenden in Greville.

[11] 2nd August 1826.

[12] Disraeli describes Lady Caroline as Lady Monteagle in Venetia, and Mrs. Humphry Ward very skilfully uses Lady Caroline’s career as the motive of her novel, The Marriage of William Ashe.

[13] Printed in A. H. Markham’s Northward Ho!, 1879.

[14] He was under eight years old, and Miranda herself was barely nine.

[15] But his fatherly affection leads him to say, in regard to writing to him, “Write bad rather than not write at all.”

[16] Fuller died in 1841. His wife survived him until 23rd September 1869.

[17] He did not succeed to the Baronetcy until 1830.

[18] From lines by Mrs. Abdy, appended to an engraving of Lawrence’s portrait of Lady Peel.

[19] Louis-Philippe and Queen Amélie.

[20] In June 1831 Mrs. Bulwer Lytton heard a ragged newspaper boy cry:

“Good news for the poor! Great and glorious speech of His Most Gracious Majesty William the Fourth! The Reform Bill will pass. Then you’ll have your beef and mutton for a penny a pound. And then you’ll be as fine as peacocks for a mere trifle. To say nothing of ale at a penny a quart.”

[21] The Mintos belonged to the Scottish Presbyterian Church.

[22] Afterwards Lord Amberley.

[23] Lady Georgiana Peel.

[24] Known to later generations as Willis’s Rooms.

[25] In 1814.

[26] The poem appears in Weeds and Wildflowers, by E. G. L. B., a volume privately printed at Paris in 1826.

[27] 1881.

[28] In 1860.

[29] It is now at Broadlands. Although the background is unfinished it is a fine and characteristic piece of work.

[30] 3rd September 1847.

[31] Now the Naval and Military Club.

[32] 21st January 1868.

[33] 1868.

[34] 29th July 1837.

[35] Another time she writes of Disraeli as “our political pet.”

[36] Now 29 Park Lane.

[37] Afterwards Emperor Napoleon III.

[38] An allusion to the passing by the Commons of the Jews’ Oaths of Abjuration Bill on 3rd July.

[39] Of the Rothschilds.

[40] An allusion to the Whitebait Dinner at Greenwich.

[41] Anthony de Rothschild had been created a Baronet at the New Year.

[42] Wife of Baron James de Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild firm in Paris.

[43] Worth Park, Sussex, the seat of Mrs. Montefiore, Lady de Rothschild’s mother.

[44] The well-known business house of Messrs. Rothschild in the City of London.

[45] The late Lord Rothschild.

[46] In 1867.

[47] Cf. Lord Ronald Gower, Reminiscences.

[48] 24th January 1873.

[49] 9th January 1873.

[50] Headmaster of Eton.

[51] Queen Victoria.

[52] The Lord Chancellor.

[53] See [p. 56].

[54] A picture showing an unusual side of the stern disciplinarian. He was sixty-eight.

[55] Mr. Gladstone was Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint.

[56] By Samuel Warren.

[57] The Right Hon. Thomas Grenville (1755–1846), politician and book collector. His bequest of books to the British Museum forms the Grenville Library.

[58] Minister for War and the Colonies. Afterwards Lord Derby, and Prime Minister in 1852, 1858, and 1866.

[59] Frederick William IV.

[60] With whom Mrs. Gladstone soon formed a lasting friendship.

[61] The Duke of Sutherland’s London house, now the London Museum.

[62] 16th June 1842.

[63] She was appointed to the office in 1842, and held it until 1851.

[64] The Princess Royal, afterwards Empress Frederick of Germany.

[65] Her sister, Lady Lyttelton.

[66] Born 18th October 1842. Afterwards Mrs. Wickham.

[67] Born 1844.

[68] Born 1845.

[69] He had gone to London on the 16th.

[70] Nicholas I.

[71] Now Lord Gladstone.

[72] He visited and made notes concerning 5530 churches in England and Wales. Notes on the Churches of Kent, by Sir Stephen Glynne, Bart., 1877.

[73] 29th July 1864.

[74] Mr. Gladstone died three weeks after the letter was received.

[75] They consisted chiefly of boys whose father or mother had died in the London Hospital.

[76] Cf. her “Cry of the Children,” first printed in Blackwood’s Magazine, August 1843.

[77] 26th November 1879.

[78] Afterwards Edward VII.

[79] Now George V.

[80] The surname Bannerman was taken when her husband inherited, under his uncle’s will in 1872, a considerable fortune and the Castle Belmont property in Forfar.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Index not systematically checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references, but the following discrepancies were found: the index reference to “D’Orsay, Count, 132” was misprinted as “133” and has been changed here; “Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duke of” appears in the index, but the name does not appear anywhere else; and the index reference to “Villa Garbarius” is printed as “Villa Garbarino” on page [90].