During the earlier portion of his Parliamentary career he lived in Mrs. Potter’s town house in Queen’s Gate, until he moved to Bramham Gardens, South Kensington, which continued to be his London house until a short time before his death.
Although he always regarded his thirty years at Owens as his chief work, the thirty years of his London life were hardly less busy than the time he spent in Manchester. The occupation might not be so continuous, but it was certainly more multifarious. Ten years of Parliamentary and active political life had brought with them new activities and fresh demands upon his time and energy, and except for occasional periods of enforced idleness due to attacks of gout—the only constitutional weakness from which he suffered, and which, as he used ruefully to observe, he had done nothing to deserve—he was always busy. He had a serious attack of pneumonia in the winter of 1902, which left him enfeebled for a time, but eventually, after a summer in Mürren and Burgenstock and a winter in Algiers and Sicily, he seemed to have completely shaken off its ill effects. Otherwise his sound and vigorous constitution kept him free from even passing ailments, and his fourscore years were passed with few interruptions to his activity from illness.
Shortly after Roscoe took up his residence in London he sought for some pied-à-terre in the country for the sake of rest and change of scene, and relief from the physical and mental strain of continuous life in town. In 1892 he was able to obtain a delightful place on Lord Lovelace’s property in Surrey, some two dozen miles from London. It was beautifully situated on the North Downs, between Guildford and Dorking, amidst some of the loveliest scenery in the South of England. He and Lady Roscoe altered it to suit their requirements: he to build a spacious study and to provide room for his many books, and she to house her own collection which was even more numerous, and to accommodate the many works of art with which she had surrounded herself. Roscoe has given a charming word-picture in his autobiography of this ideal retreat, to which as the years increased they became more and more attached. Here they had
An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labour.
Here Lady Roscoe could indulge to the full her taste in gardening, and the cultivation of flowers and flowering shrubs became her main outdoor occupation. She worked at her hobby with all the enthusiasm and skill she had formerly displayed in photography, and with equal success, for she made Woodcote noted throughout the country-side for the choiceness and richness of its floral wealth. One who knew her well wrote of her:
Flowers were named after her not so much as a criterion of her horticultural knowledge, as a recognition of an almost lavish generosity to the seedsmen and nursery gardeners, many of whom were her personal friends.
Attached to the property was a home-farm of some seventy acres, which had been allowed to get into a very backward state. Roscoe, with no previous experience of farming, resolved to bring it into better condition, and with the help of his Westmoreland bailiff he gradually succeeded in doing so. The business was a constant interest to him. He was proud of his cart-horses which gained commendation and prizes at the local shows; of his well-bred Jersey cows; of his breed of Berkshire pigs—the little pigs were a constant source of amusement—and of his poultry. He records with much satisfaction that “our” field—(he always associated his bailiff with these agricultural triumphs, as he always associated his co-workers with his scientific achievements)—“our field of swedes on several occasions received the first prize for the best show twenty miles round Guildford.” He went round his farm as he used to go round his laboratory, and seemed to be on the same genial terms with every animal on it as he had been with his students. The affectionate regard with which he used to contemplate an old sow—a most prolific creature by the way—was a source of much fun to his friends. If she did not wholly succeed in “paying the rint,” she doubtless did her best towards it, and so merited and received commendation.
The hospitality of Woodcote is a treasured memory to numbers of Roscoe’s friends. Few week-ends passed without one or more of them sharing its pleasures with him. Sometimes it would be one of his old associates in scientific work, or a political acquaintance, or a literary friend, or some distinguished man of science from abroad. Indeed, few foreign scientific men of any note passed through London without finding their way to Roscoe’s hospitable board.