Here was a voice crying in the wilderness—a prophet without honour in his own country! But how true are his words!
CHAPTER XIII
HOME LIFE—LADY ROSCOE—WOODCOTE LODGE—PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS—DEATH
In 1863 Roscoe married the lady whom he had first met in his aunt Crompton’s drawing-room in Hyde Park Square—Lucy, the youngest member of the family of Edmund Potter, Esq., M.P. for Carlisle, a well-known Manchester merchant and a friend and co-worker of Bright and Cobden.
Lady Roscoe was a strong and sincere character, of wide sympathies and generous impulses, with a rich fund of common sense, and a high standard of duty and performance. She had many intellectual interests and a cultivated taste; was well read, a good judge of literary work, and an assiduous collector of old rare and beautiful prints. In the early days of her married life, and at a time when she had to work with wet collodion or to prepare her own dry plates, she was recognized by experts as a clever photographer, and obtained medals from the Photographic Society for the technical excellence and artistic merit of her exhibits. She was an admirable hostess, and all who have had the privilege of partaking of her hospitality cherish an unfading memory of her kindly manner, her quiet dignity, and unfailing tact. Time dealt tenderly with her; the additional years brought an added charm, a widened sympathy, and a larger measure of gentleness and pity. With her healthful, smiling face and beautiful white hair, her characteristically simple dress and the rare lace she draped about her head and shoulders, no woman was ever more successful in the art of growing old gracefully. She died in 1910. Of this union it was said by one who had the best opportunities of judging: “Of the forty-seven years of married life one who looked on can say there never were two more of one heart and mind.” The one sorrow of their lives—and it was a profound sorrow, a grief that changed the whole current of their aspirations—was the death of their only son when an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, just as he was entering on manhood. He was a young man of great charm of manner, of high ideals, and a strong sense of duty and responsibility, and with the ambition to serve in a career of public usefulness or in some position in which his well-marked powers of literary expression might be turned to account. Two daughters were also born of this marriage, the elder of whom married Mr. Charles E. Mallet, formerly M.P. for Plymouth and Under-Secretary for War in the last Liberal Government.
Nowhere did Roscoe appear to greater advantage than in his home. His domestic life was singularly unclouded save for the one great sorrow “that failed the bright promise of an early day.” He had no great anxieties and few cares—only the passing ones that attend the work of one who strives to do with all his might whatsoever his hand findeth to do. He was
Blessed with a temper whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day.
This happy condition of mind was, no doubt, largely temperamental; it was based upon a calm and equable disposition that would have taken Fortune’s buffets and rewards with equal thanks. That there were more rewards than buffets was due less to Fortune than to himself, for he was the architect of his own career, and used his opportunities wisely. It is true he started with advantages—a handsome presence, a well-knit, manly frame, a frank, ingenuous manner, good social connections, and, after his marriage, no anxieties as to the res angusta domi.