Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/266

WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS touch with members' wives as a means of keeping their husbands politically "straight." In addition, of course, she gave big garden-parties in the beautiful grounds at Hatfield, which were now her own, and these entertainments formed one of the outstanding social functions of each year. With only short intervals Lord Salisbury was in office for nearly thirty years, the intervals being, of course, 1880–85 and 1892–95, when Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister. Consequently the work of "keeping the party together" was continuous. Lady Salisbury played her part entirely by entertaining. So far as I can find out she never made a speech on a platform in her life, and did not look with any approval on the political associations for women which began to form in her later years. In the sense that "everybody who was anybody" always came to her parties, they were, of course, extremely successful. Yet she can hardly be described as a born political hostess. Political entertaining is inevitably a rather wholesale business, and demands a certain amount of facile amiability that did not suit her direct and decisive personality, and she was a person of strong preferences which she was not always 228