Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/221

MRS. GLADSTONE as Peel and Brougham, and was hugely delighted when after a concert at the Palace the Duke of Wellington insisted on escorting her husband and herself to their carriage. "I was fearful lest he should catch cold, there was such a draught; he merely placed his cocked hat upon his head. How characteristic is all he says, and the honesty and peculiar straightforwardness of his character."

On 27th July 1845 a second daughter was born, Catherine Jessy, "a nice fat thing, with famous lungs to judge by her voice, the mouth so small with short upper lip, the hair darkish, very placid, and takes much notice for her age."

There were some interesting dinners at Sir Robert Peel's. One in March 1848 she thus describes:

"Anxiety and sorrow sat on many of the countenances assembled. There stood Guizot, with that piercing eye of fire, his whole appearance eagle-like, his countenance beaming with sagacity and a great intellect, in earnest conversation with Peel, full of gesture, and now and then his voice raised, as if bursting with feeling that would out. There were the poor Jarnacs, with full marks of sorrow for their King and Queen! The Princess Lieven; the Austrian 185