Lady Salisbury, as she now became, was very conscious of the drawbacks of this attitude, and set to work to try and modify them by taking on herself a large share of the duties of political hostess. The short sitting of the House of Commons in those days was on Wednesday, and she used to have parties in her house in Arlington Street on Wednesdays for members and their wives. She was a great believer in keeping in 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 successful in concealing from the people that she did not prefer. In addition, she was very easily led into any conversation that interested her, and it was not an uncommon sight to see her shaking hands with head averted, absorbed in a discussion going on at her other elbow. (It is interesting to note that although her husband was twice Prime Minister she never lived at the historic No. 10 Downing Street.)