A Victorian Scotswoman of far-reaching ambition. Using her supposedly frail feminine wiles, she maneuvers her fatuous husband into a successful political career. He rises to a parliamentary seat, never quite realizing that he hasn't done it alone.

The story of the Marr family which is made up of a dominant mother who bates everyone, the vacillating son, his wife, and the blind son. Then a new maid arrives, a maid who has served a term in prison as an accessory to a murder.

After the assassination of President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth leaped to the stage below, his spur became entangled in the American flag draping the balcony causing Booth to break his leg.