] and
his wife May--still my dear and faithful friends--I felt full of
apprehension. We dined with Sir Henry and Lady Lucy one night and
found Sir William and Lady Harcourt were of the company. I had no
opportunity of approaching either of them before dinner, but when
the men came out of the dining-room, Sir William made a bee-line
for me. Sitting down, he took my hand in both of his and said:
"My dear little friend, you need not mind any of the quarrels! The
Asquith evenings or the Rosebery afternoons, all these things will
pass; but your man is the man of the future!"
These were generous words, for, if Lord Morley, my husband and
others had backed Sir William Harcourt instead of Lord Rosebery
when Gladstone resigned, he would certainly have become Prime
Minister.
I never knew Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman well, but whenever we
did meet we had great laughs together. He was essentially a bon
vivant, a boulevardier and a humorist. At an official luncheon
given in honour of some foreign Minister, Campbell-Bannerman, in
an admirable speech in French--a language with which he was
familiar--described Arthur Balfour, who was on one side of him,
as l'enfant gate of English politics and Chamberlain, who was also
at the lunch, as l'enfant terrible.
On the opening day of Parliament, February the 14th, 1905, he made
an amusing and telling speech. It was a propos of the fiscal
controversy which was raging all over England and which was
destined to bring the Liberal party into power at the succeeding
two general elections.
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