To one who had filled so high a position as Lady Ossington had done in political and social life the descent in status involved by the adoption of the new title was not of much moment. She had been honoured by royalty and had done the honours to royalty, she had tasted all the pleasures that aristocratic Society could provide.
Like her brother, the eccentric Duke, Lady Ossington spent large sums of money, intended, directly or indirectly, to benefit the wage-earning classes.
In a spirit of philanthropy she built a coffee palace at Newark, Notts, a town nine miles from Ossington, at a cost of over £20,000. Her object was to provide a hostel where travellers of humble means could find accommodation for the night, at charges within their means, and that it should be a centre of meeting for Friendly Societies and other bodies in their business and social gatherings. The profits of the establishment she directed to be paid to the hospital.
Another coffee palace on similar lines she erected in Marylebone, London, involving an outlay of several thousands.
South African colonization found in her a sympathetic patroness in days when South Africa was little more than a name to the large majority of Englishmen. At her expense in 1886 a party of twenty-four families was sent to the Wolseley settlement, an estate acquired by purchase, about seventeen miles from King William's Town, where full preparations for their reception had been made by a committee. Within two years and a-half the settlement was closed, the cheapness of untaxed drink having changed the settlers from abstainers into drunkards.
The Viscountess was not daunted by this failure to realise her hopes, and in 1888 another attempt at colonization was made under her auspices. Twenty-five families, mostly from Hampshire, sailed for the Cape and formed a new settlement, called by the name of the poet Tennyson. This time the experience of the past was a warning, the enterprise was attended by fairer prospects of success and before her death she had the gratification of knowing that the settlers were contented and happy.
Another of the Duke's daughters was the Dowager Lady Howard de Walden, who became immensely rich on the death of Lady Ossington. Their father had so willed it that if the fifth Duke died without male heirs the London property was to pass to his daughters. Lady Ossington had no children and her rich dowry passed to her sister, who thereby had a double portion. Ossington Hall, after having been for so many years the home of a Duke's daughter, reverted to the Denison family.
From allusions made by Lord George Bentinck to his friends, when he had lost heavily on the turf, it was understood that his mother and sisters, especially Lady Charlotte, were always ready to help him over his difficulties. It is surmised that they knew more of his secrets and of the secrets of the Marquis of Titchfield than the old Farmer Duke who frowned upon betting transactions and was not known to have been involved in the excitements of a duel and gallantries to actresses, not to mention a nebulous secondary existence as Thomas Druce.
Ossington is within easy carriage distance of Welbeck, but the eccentric brother rarely saw his sister and the latter was astonished at the transformation of the Abbey and grounds brought about by him. Before the alteration of her ancestral home she made an interesting sketch of it, as it was in her father's lifetime.