THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: Scots in UK Politics (9)

Archibald Primrose, 5^th Earl of Rosebery, (1847-1929) famously stated he had three ambitions in life. Firstly, that his horse would win the Derby – his nags Ladas II, Sir Visto and Cicero all won the race in 1894, 1895 and 1905 respectively. Secondly that he should marry an heiress – in 1878 he married the most eligible heiress in England, Hannah Rothschild, sole issue of immensely rich Mayer Rothschild. Thirdly that he should be Prime Minister – Rosebery succeeded Gladstone and was Liberal Prime Minister from 1894 to 1895. Fortune had favoured Rosebery but he was in truth a political failure and had many sorrows in his initially charmed life.

Lord Rosebery

Rosebery was born into the purple of the Scottish aristocracy. His father was Lord Dalmeny, MP and heir to the Rosebery title with its 3,200 acre estate of Dalmeny outside Edinburgh. His father died when he was three, so Archibald used the courtesy title of Lord Dalmeny until his grandfather died in 1868 and he became the 5^th Earl of Rosebery with a seat in the House of Lords. He was on bad terms with his mother, Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope, who remarried the Duke of Cleveland, and although he had strong Scots connections, Rosebery became essentially a Metropolitan figure.

Rosebery was educated at Eton, 1860-65, where his rather effete manner caught the attention of the respected master and homoerotic “Uranian” poet, William Johnson Cory. Rosebery was nicknamed “Miss Prim” – there was an ambiguity about his sexual nature. At Eton he was a prominent debater and intellectual and when he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, he was reckoned one of the most well-read undergraduates of his generation. He left Oxford without taking his degree in 1869, having succeeded to his title in 1868. He had bought a racehorse contrary to university regulations and was given the choice of giving up his racehorse or giving up his studies; he chose the latter!

The Turf was to be one of Rosebery’s passions. He ran studs at Mentmore and at The Durdans, near Epsom. He was a hugely successful owner winning 11 Classics; he was much keener on horse-breeding rather than horse-racing but he became a familiar figure at race meetings and this appealed to the racing-mad British public; the blue-nosed Nonconformist Liberal wing was less impressed.

As a member of the House of Lords, initially uncommitted Rosebery was courted by both Tory Disraeli and Liberal Gladstone; he eventually favoured Gladstone. After three tours of the US in the 1870s he managed Gladstone’s barnstorming Midlothian Campaign in 1879, when WE addressed crowds from the back of trains and at whistle-stops in the American manner. Gladstone’s Liberals won the 1880 election triumphantly. He duly joined the administration as a middle-ranking undersecretary but resigned in 1883 when Gladstone took little interest in Scotland, for which Rosebery campaigned to have its own cabinet minister.

Meanwhile in 1878, he had married his heiress Hannah Rothschild; their marriage was a happy one, she was tactful and devoted, he admiring and grateful. She bore him two sons and two daughters. Hannah died early aged 39 in 1890 of typhoid aggravated by Bright’s Disease; Rosebery was devastated, fell into a depression, and left public life for two years. One might imagine that his grief became more supportable with his acquisition of majestic stately home Mentmore in Buckinghamshire and the remainder of her substantial Rothschild portion.

Hannah Primrose, nee Rothschild

In the 1880s Rosebery’s political career progressed. In Gladstone’s brief ministry of 1886, when his first Irish Home Rule Bill failed, Rosebery was Foreign Secretary. He won golden opinions for his handling of the cession of Eastern Roumelia to Bulgaria, an issue of such impenetrable obscurity that we can safely pass on! Rosebery became interested in local government and was an active chairman of the newly formed London County Council. Less formally he evinced an interest in sport and since 1878 had been president of the London Scottish Rugby Football Club. More surprisingly for an archetypical toff, Rosebery was an enthusiast for Association Football and sponsored a trophy in 1882 for East of Scotland football clubs, which ran for 60 years, and in time became president of the Scottish Football Association. For some years, the alternative strip for the Scottish football team, if the usual dark blue was inappropriate, was primrose and pink – Rosebery’s racing colours.

 When hypnotic and formidable Gladstone returned to office in 1892 he (and Queen Victoria) coaxed depressed and grieving Rosebery back into public life appointing him Foreign Secretary again, although WE’s main concern was making a second and doomed attempt to have the Commons pass an Irish Home Rule Bill. Rosebery irritated Gladstone by proclaiming a Protectorate over Uganda to frustrate the French, evidence of Rosebery’s growing Imperialist sympathies, at variance with many in the Liberal Party who were “Little Englanders”. Rosebery did finally succeed in his campaign to have a Cabinet Minister dedicated to Scotland and probably helped save the Union. Frustrated over Ireland and getting old, Gladstone retired in 1894 after a brilliant and transformational career. He chose Rosebery as his successor to the intense indignation of the liveliest Liberal in the Commons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir William Harcourt.

The Great Mr Gladstone

 

Sir William Harcourt

Rosebery’s ministry was not a success. Harcourt and he were at daggers drawn and the various splits in the Liberals only widened – over Ireland, over expanding the fleet and over developing the Empire. Rosebery's domestic legislation was obstructed by the Tory-dominated House of Lords. Rosebery was an excellent public speaker but he was unpersuasive – he stated his position clearly and did not much care what others thought. Really he was temperamentally unsuited to be Prime Minister; Cabinet criticisms upset him and he had no experience of the House of Commons rough and tumble. An insomniac, Rosebery would immure himself in Barnbougle Castle, a venerable tower house on the Dalmeny estate where he kept his library, and agonise over the issues of the day. 

There may have been another cause of Rosebery’s anxieties. He had been loyally served as private secretary by Francis Douglas, Lord Drumlanrig, eldest son of the unpopular Marquess of Queensberry, militant atheist, lover of pugilism and father too of Lord Alfred Douglas (“Bosie”), lover of Oscar Wilde. In 1893 Rosebery’s patronage rewarded Drumlanrig with a UK peerage ranking ahead of his father’s Scottish peerage. Father and son quarrelled; there were rumours that Rosebery and Drumlanrig’s relationship was homosexual. Drumlanrig died in a shooting “accident” (suicide?) in 1894. It is thought possible that Queensberry blackmailed Rosebery by threatening to expose the affair or call him as a witness in the squalid trial of Oscar Wilde, which Queensberry had provoked. In the event, Rosebery’s name was kept out of the case and the truth is not yet clear.

In 1895 Rosebery lost a Commons vote on a minor matter (the supply of cordite to the Army) and chose to call it a vote of confidence; his government resigned and the Tories under Lord Salisbury won the ensuing election decisively. Rosebery resigned with palpable relief as Liberal leader in 1896 to be succeeded by Harcourt. He remained a popular celebrity but his Liberal Imperialist and later Liberal Unionist opinions estranged him from his old Party. He supported the Boer War, the building of Dreadnoughts, the creation of a British Commonwealth and the suppression of socialism. His final breach with the Party came when, Gladstone now safely dead, he opposed Home Rule for Ireland. He thought the Peoples Budget ill-judged in 1909 but reluctantly supported the 1911 Parliament Act reducing the powers of the Lords.

His political career was effectively over. He immersed himself in his cherished books and wrote well-received biographies of Lord Randolph Churchill, Napoleon and Pitt the Younger (not unlike our own William Hague). He was grief-stricken when in 1917 his younger and favourite son Neil was killed in action in Gaza, Palestine during the Great War. A few days before the Armistice in 1918, he suffered a stroke and although his mental powers recovered he became immobile, requiring a bath chair, and was latterly deaf and almost blind. John Buchan, the Scots novelist and politician, commented on Rosebery’s sad state “crushed by bodily weakness”.

Rosebery died at his beloved house at The Durdans, Epsom in 1929. At his request a gramophone record of “The Eton Boating Song” was played continuously at his death-bed to give him comfort. He was buried at Dalmeny Church.

Thus lived and died a talented if enigmatic statesman. He had a highly privileged life. He was much the richest Prime minister ever, leaving the modern equivalent of £62m. Hardly a Victorian, his life had that fin de siècle flavour, of Arts and Crafts, of new attitudes. He did not achieve great things, but then few politicians do.

Rosebery's favourite house at The Durdans, Epsom

  

SMD

3.10.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013