Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/279

LADY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN the influence of generations of severe Scotch ancestors.

It has sometimes been stated that Lady Campbell-Bannerman took a prominent part in the conciliatory movements which ended in the co-ordination of the Liberal party in 1906. But, as a matter of fact, she was a bad conciliator. She found it very difficult to believe that people who differed from her husband in opinion did so in good faith. She found it nearly impossible to believe this of a member of his own party, in whom she regarded it as something like evidence of a wilful perversity. Her resentments were, accordingly, immovable. To set against this degree of prejudice she displayed a singular shrewdness in affairs, which she did not allow to be deflected by personal considerations.

Only in certain matters did she allow her emotions to trouble her judgments. She was very ambitious for her husband, more so than he was for himself. It is characteristic of his genial, good-humoured, rather easy-going temperament that at one time his ambition was the Speakership. In controversy he would probably have been almost content to state his opinion or make his protest and then go off to 239