Sir William ought to have lived in the eighteenth century.  To illustrate his sense of humour:  he told me that women should be played with like fish; only in the one case you angle to make them rise and in the other to make them fall.  He had a great deal of wit and nature, impulsive generosity of heart and a temperament that clouded his judgment.  He was a man to whom life had added nothing; he was perverse, unreasonable, brilliant, boisterous and kind when I knew him; but he must have been all these in the nursery.

At the time of the split in our party over the Boer War, when we were in opposition and the phrase “methods of barbarism” became famous, my personal friends were in a state of the greatest agitation.  Lord Spencer, who rode with me nearly every morning, deplored the attitude which my husband had taken up.  He said it would be fatal to his future, dissociating himself from the Pacifists and the Pro-Boers, and that he feared the Harcourts would never speak to us again.  As I was devoted to the latter, and to their son Lulu [Footnote:  The present Viscount Harcourt.] 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.  He said that Arthur Balfour was “like a general who, having given the command to his men to attack, found them attacking one another; when informed of this, he shrugs his shoulders and says that he can’t help it if they will misunderstand his orders!”

In spite of the serious split in the Liberal Party over the Boer War, involving the disaffection of my husband, Grey and Haldane, Campbell-Bannerman became Prime Minister in 1905.