WIVES OF I Jib PRIME MINISTERS.* Tun scope of Miss
Lee's pleasant volume, as set forth on the title- page, is further defined and circumscribed in her Introduction. With one exception, her studies are of those wives who were alive when their husbands held the chief office in the State, and even • So the record is not complete ; there is no memoir of Lady Derby, as authoritative information "has not been obtainable from the only source whence it could be drawn." As a set-off, however, Miss Lee has been fortunate in securing permission to print extracts from Mrs. Cladetone's manuscript diary and from unpublished letters of Lady Palmerston and Mrs. Disraeli. Miss Lee justifies her inclusion of a memoir of Lady Caroline Lamb on the ground that, although she died before her husband became Prime Minister, "the facts of her picturesque and agitated career are not accessible in any one complete account, and throw a good deal of light on the social and domestic aspects of political life in the early nineteenth century." For the rest, the main aim of the book is to show the influence of women in political life, and to prove that, in the special
!Wives-of the Prime Ministers, 18444898. By Elizabeth Lee. With Contribn- Mous by Mrs. C. F. G. Maaterman. London : Nisbet. [12s. Od. net.] instances selected, it worked for good. Seven out of the eight Prime Ministers chosen were fortunate in their wives. These were often beautiful, always intelligent ; as con:fidantes and advisers they seldom abused their opportunities, and often turned them to good account, while as helpmeets they were above reproach.
Miss Lee's observation that "personality was their chief asset" Is true of her exception, Lady Caroline Lamb. She was let run wild in youth to avoid overpressure, and wild she remained. She had no systematic education, and her great natural gifts were never disciplined or cultivated. The fascination she exerted on William Lamb is perhaps to be explained on the principle of extremes meeting. But all through her chequered and tempestuous married life she never failed to recognize, and even reverence, his goodness and forbearance. Her first thoughts of Byron, that he was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," were best ; but curiosity triumphed. Byron comes badly out of the episode ; he was flattered by her admiration, but did not want to be monopolized, and his famous parting letter, which she reproduced without alteration in her auto- biographical novel dienarvon, is a monument of self-protective egotism. Lady Caroline's letters to Godwin are marked by lucid intervals of shrewd self-criticism. There is some doubt whether she received assistanoe in her novels ; but her best work was her own, and was marked by eloquence and vivacity. Some of her - verses are much more than mediocre. She had wit as well as charm, but was the victim of ungovernable impulse and a demon of unrest. The most interesting passages in the memoir of Lady Peel relate to the career of her father, Sir John Floyd, a fine old cavalry officer, whose soldiering began when he was a boy of twelve, and who was as gentle as-he was brave. Her beauty is attested by what is perhaps the finest of all Lawrence's portraits ; her happiness lay in the companionship of her husband and children. She was a gracious and dignified hostess, a devoted wife, but, by her own express admission," no politician." We are glad that Miss Lee has reprinted the noble letter in which she declined the offer of a peerage after Sir Robert's death. Lady John Russell, the next in the list, was perhaps the most independent and detached of all these wives. Highly educated, serious-minded, almost a bluestocking, she was just half Lord John's age when she became his second wife in 1841. Ill-health involved a good deal of separation from her husband, but they constantly corresponded, largely in rhymed nonsense letters. We should have liked to see some of these, for they suggest a side to her character not reveled in this record. She often differed from her husband ; she was an anti-Coercionist, a humanitarian, and a Pacificist, and never a. leader in political society, being more interested in measures than the means to procure their passage. After the death of Lord John, whom she survived for twenty years, her views became more pronounced. She was an ardent Home Ruler, and would have abolished the House of Lords twenty-five years ago. Lady Palmerston, sister of one Prime Minister and wife of another, affords a strong contrast. Handsome, genial, a great figure in society, and one of the Queens of Almack's in its palmy days, she was fifty-two, with grown-up and married children, when, two years after Lord Cowper's death, she became the wife of Lord Palmerston. She had already been his Egeria, and the marriage was a complete and unbroken success. To the gifts of perennial youth and good temper she united great astuteness and an immense pride in her husband. She acted ae a buffer and interpreter. She took much trouble "to please the wives of those whom it was politic to conciliate." Even her apparent indiscretions were the result of a carefully calculated policy. And she was a great, though terribly unpunctual, hostess. Miss Lee is perhaps overlavish in anecdotic illustrations of Mrs. Disraeli's lack of taste, tact, and reticence, but does full justice to her single- minded devotion to and heroic consideration for her husband. She quotes Disraeli's famous retort to the candid friend who remarked that Disraeli must be a man of extraordinary qualities never to be put out by the gauche things his wife said : "Not at all. 1 only possess one quality in which most men are deficient—gratitude." The retort was crushing, and it was true. Disraeli was a chivalrous as well as a grateful husband. With all her oddities of dress and talk, Mrs. Disraeli was a heroine. Mrs. Gladstone was related by birth to four Prime Ministers and the wife of a fifth. Apart from the full and moving account of her philanthropic activities given in this memoir, Miss Lee shows that, in spite of her untidy and unmethodical ways, she nobly fulfilled the high mission entrusted to her in Sir Francis Doyle's beautiful stanzas on the "Sister Brides," written for .her wedding. She was a "potent canvasser," but, better still, she never betrayed her husband's confidence, though she knew every political secret he ever had. "No one could ever extract anything from her." Yet she was seventy-five before she took any really active part in politics or made any speeches from a public platform. The passages now printed from her diary are full of interest, revealing inter ales her dislike of Mrs. Grote, and containing many curious anecdotes of eminent men. We notice, for instance, Lord Derby's antidote for sleeplessness. Mrs. Gladstone, like her husband, had the divine gift of sleep, and a wonderful constitution which enabled her to take cold baths till the year of her death. She "scarcely practised the social arts in the technical sense of the term," -but
she was at her ease in all societies. Helpfulness and charity were the leading notes of her character.
The volume is completed by two admirably written sketches of Lady Salisbury and Lady Campbell-Bannerman, contributed by Mrs. Masterman. Lady Salisbury's "direct and decisive personality," her mordant wit, which was combined with a fastidious distaste for gossip, her independence, her catholic gift of friendship, are brought out with a happy turn of phrase peculiarly adapted to the subject; The sketch of Lady Campbell- Bannerman is critical yet appreciative. In many ways she was a stronger character than her husband. He took no action without consulting her, and "it was generally considered that it was his wife who kept him up to battle pitch." She was" a bad conciliator," and "her resentments were immovable." But in her devotion to her husband and the Spartan fortitude she showed when exhausted by a mortal illness she equalled Mrs. Disraeli, though differing from her at all other points.
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