Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/259

LADY SALISBURY 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 221