Her last illness was long and harassing, lasting over two years. At first it was hoped that a change to the south of France, where Lord Salisbury had a villa, might cure her, and in 1898 she was operated on. But the dropsical symptoms recurred, and she was obliged to realise that medical skill could only modify her discomforts and not defer an inevitable end. She bore her illness with an unstinted courage that was characteristic, until she lapsed into an unconsciousness that lasted more or less all the last three weeks of her life. Perhaps in itself this was a merciful thing, for she was thus spared the knowledge that one of her sons, Lord Edward Cecil, was shut up in Mafeking, and that the family being unable to get news were in some anxiety about him. She died at Hatfield on 20th November 1899, and her death was a blow to her husband, from which it may be said that he never recovered. Her long illness had withdrawn her from her friends for some time before her death, but nevertheless the silencing of her vivid and positive personality came as a shock to many, and to a few with whom she had been intimate as one of the irreplaceable losses of their lives. She was buried at Hatfield, and four years later her husband was laid beside her. L. M. VIII LADY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN “The speaker in his remarks on the previous toast implied that it was a good sign of a mother to have a good son. But he thought there was another relationship in life in which there was a good deal of sympathy. They would always find where they had a good sort of fellow--they might depend upon it--he had a good wife. At all events, he pitied the man with any interest in public events or any public duty to discharge who, when he goes home, finds a wife who knows nothing and cares nothing about it. That, he was glad to say, was not his case. He had a wife who was a keen politician; like most women, she was a keen partisan and had a very great appreciation of all who supported her husband, and, he was afraid, she was not without resentment against those who did not. He need hardly say that his wife shared the anxiety of these days and also the buoyancy of spirits and the elasticity of feeling which enabled them to survive the disappointment.” [Illustration: _Sarony_ LADY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN] Mr. Campbell, as he then was, made the speech from which these remarks are quoted in 1868. As a summary of his wife’s character they remained applicable all her life, except perhaps when the “buoyancy of spirits” flagged owing to her long and painful illness. The “keen politician” and “keen partisan” she remained to the end.