Lord Rosebery married in 1878 Hannah de Rothschild, only child of Baron Meyer de Rothschild and his wife Juliana Cohen. She was an accomplished woman, loving art and music. She assisted her father in collecting objects of art for Mentmore, the house he began to build in 1857, and there she had unique opportunities for intercourse with the best minds in English and continental society. She learned to judge things in the large spirit usually associated with the masculine mind alone. She had always taken a great interest in politics, and at once set herself to assist and second her husband in his political interests. She instituted at Lansdowne House a salon for the Liberal party, which became the focus of social liberalism and an important element in the organisation of the party. Lansdowne House was also a general centre of hospitality, for Lady Rosebery believed in bringing together in social intercourse men of widely divergent views, so that the edges of their differences, so to speak, might gradually be rubbed smooth.
Her activities were not solely political. She was keen for the improvement of female industrial conditions, and took part in various public philanthropic enterprises to that end. Her private charities were at once generous and discriminating.
Lady Rosebery died of typhoid fever at Dalmeny Park, 19th November 1890.
It has not been possible to include any memoir of Lady Derby, wife of the “Rupert of debate.” Information, without which any sketch must perforce be inadequate, has not been obtainable from the only source whence it could be drawn. Lady Derby was the second daughter of the first Lord Skelmersdale, and was married on 31st May 1825. It was a romantic attachment on the part of young Stanley, who was only twenty-four years of age. His father did not approve, and sent him away for a year, hoping that absence might cure him of his affection, but on his return the young man went first to Miss Wilbraham, who was a girl of twenty, obtained her consent to be his wife, and then reported himself to his family. Lady Derby died on 26th April 1876; her husband pre-deceased her in 1869.
Sainte-Beuve has said that a woman “quand elle est restée femme par les qualités essentielles,” is, even after she is dead, “un peu notre contemporaine toujours.” This statement seems especially to apply to the women whose lives I have here attempted to sketch, and I venture to think that their share in shaping the history of their country, through the great men whose companions they were, claims from the present generation a grateful recognition of their qualities of head and heart. Women are expecting in the future to play a much more prominent and important part in public life. Therefore it is perhaps a fitting moment to put on record how their sisters of an earlier epoch performed their allotted part on life’s stage.
E. L.