Wives of the Prime Ministers, 1844-1906

by Elizabeth Lee; Lucy Masterman

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.