Hannah Primrose, Countess Of Rosebery

Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery (''née'' de Rothschild; 27 July 1851 – 19 November 1890) was the daughter of Baron Mayer de Rothschild and his wife Juliana (''née'' Cohen). After inheriting her father's fortune in 1874, she became the richest woman in Britain. In 1878, Hannah de Rothschild married Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, and was thereafter known as the Countess of Rosebery.

During the final quarter of the 19th century her husband, the Earl of Rosebery, was one of the most celebrated figures in Britain, an influential millionaire and politician, whose charm, wit, charisma and public popularity gave him such standing that he "almost eclipsed that of Royalty".McKinstry, p. 1. Yet his Jewish wife, during her lifetime regarded as dull, overweight and lacking in beauty, remains an enigmatic figure and often regarded as notable only for financing her husband's three ambitions: to marry an heiress, win The Derby, and become Prime Minister (the second and third of these possibly apocryphal ambitions were achieved after her death). In truth, she was her husband's driving force and motivation.

Her marriage into the aristocracy, while controversial at the time, gave her the social cachet in an antisemitic society that her vast fortune could not. She subsequently became a political hostess and philanthropist. Her charitable work was principally in the sphere of public health and causes associated with the welfare of working-class Jewish women living in the poorer districts of London.

Having firmly assisted and supported her husband on his path, she suddenly died in 1890, aged 39, leaving him, distraught and bereft of her support, to achieve the political destiny which she had planned. His premiership of the United Kingdom lasted barely a year.

Early years

Hannah de Rothschild was born in 1851 into a world of great wealth and luxury. She was the granddaughter of Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who had founded N M Rothschild & Sons, the English branch of the Rothschilds' banking empire. Niall Ferguson states in his ''History of the House of Rothschild'' that by the mid-19th century the Rothschilds regarded themselves as the nearest thing the Jews of Europe had to a royal family, and the equals of royalty. Whether or not this was strictly true, the many Rothschild homes and their art collections, in England, Austria, France and Germany, certainly rivalled those of the crowned heads of Europe, Mentmore in particular being one of the most outstanding art collections of its kind anywhere in the world.

Hannah de Rothschild's father Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild married his cousin Juliana Cohen in 1850. The marriage provided the impetus for Meyer to create what he described as "an enduring monument",Robinson, p. 5. a country house of monumental proportions. His daughter Hannah, aged just five months, helped lay the foundation stone on 31 December 1851.

Within a few years of the mansion's completion, attracted by the good hunting and proximity to London, Hannah's relatives began to build estates nearby, all within a carriage drive of each other; thus, Hannah grew up in an almost private world of unimaginable splendour and security. Pevsner has described this enclave of Rothschild properties as "the most conspicuous and significant aspect of Victorian architecture in Buckinghamshire". In addition to Mentmore, Baron and Baroness Meyer de Rothschild had a large house in London, 107 Piccadilly, and ''The Zenaide'', a luxurious yacht, upon which Hanna's mother died in 1877, the year before her marriage.

As an only child growing up in what were, in all but name, palaces, her childhood appears to have been lonely. She was a companion to her hypochondriac mother and, in later life, a hostess with her father during her mother's long periods of indisposition. She was indulged by both parents and her formal education was neglected in favour of music and singing lessons, subjects in which she was 'skilled' and had a 'decided gift'. Her parents were very protective of her, attempting to ensure that she was never exposed to the risk of sickness or even the sight of poverty. As a result, she was never allowed to enter the cottages on the Rothschilds' estates. Lady Battersea claimed that Hannah was so sheltered that the phrase "'the poor'" was "merely a phraseology for her". Whatever the faults of her education, she possessed great confidence, impressing her Rothschild relations, who noted her poise and competence when she hosted a large house party at Mentmore for the Prince of Wales while only 17 years of age. A year later, in 1869, Hannah made her formal entrance into society as a debutante, when she was presented to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace by her mother.

Mayer Amschel de Rothschild died in 1874, leaving his daughter not only Mentmore (with its priceless art collection), his London mansion, and innumerable investments, but also the sum of two million pounds sterling in cash (equivalent to £ in present-day terms). Thus, Hannah de Rothschild became the wealthiest woman in England.Cowles, p. 145

Betrothal

Hannah de Rothschild was first introduced to her future husband, the 28-year-old Earl of Rosebery, by Lady Beaconsfield, the wife of Benjamin Disraeli, at Newmarket Racecourse. The Disraelis were close friends and neighbours of the Rothschilds in Buckinghamshire. In 1901 Rosebery, in an interview with the '' Daily Mail'', claimed to have met Hannah when their carriages crashed and he 'sprang out and saved her'; however, this version of their meeting is believed to be a romanticised fabrication of Rosebery's.

Archibald, 5th Earl of Rosebery, born in 1847, had inherited his title from his grandfather in 1868, aged 21, together with an income of £30,000 a year. He owned 40,000 acres (160 km²) in Scotland, and land in Norfolk, Hertfordshire, and Kent. His father had died when he was eight and he had been brought up by his mother, who had subsequently married Harry Powlett, 4th Duke of Cleveland. His mother was a distant figure, and their relationship was always strained. The Earls of Rosebery, whose family name was Primrose, were old, if undistinguished, members of the Scottish aristocracy. Rosebery was considered to be strikingly handsome and immensely cultivated. He was highly intelligent, and a brilliant future was forecast for him by his tutors at both Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.

As early as 1876, there were rumours of an engagement.Crewe, Vol 1, p. 119. However, several hurdles had to be overcome before a marriage could take place. While the Jewish Rothschilds were accepted into society, and indeed were close friends of some members of the royal family including the Prince of Wales, as elsewhere in Europe, antisemitic feelings were prevalent in the upper echelons of society; particularly so among those closest to the Queen at court, where following the death of the Prince Consort in 1861 the Rothschilds became pointedly excluded.Ferguson, p. 772. The Queen's equerry Arthur Edward Hardinge referred to the Rothschilds' dining tables as "resplendent with the Hebrew gold" going so far as to say a visiting Russian royal needed a "corrective" visit to Westminster Abbey following acceptance of Rothschild hospitality. Queen Victoria herself expressed antisemitic views in 1873 when it was proposed that Lionel de Rothschild be elevated to the peerage; the Queen refused, and expressed a reluctance to make a Jew a peer, saying that "to make a Jew a peer is a step she could not consent to" and furthermore stating that to give "a title and mark of her approbation to a Jew" was something she would not do. Lord Spencer advised the Prince and Princess of Wales against attending a Rothschild ball with the words "The Prince ought only to visit those of undoubted position in Society." However, this did not prevent the Prince from accepting Rothschild's invitations and gifts privately. While one could be friends with Jews and accept their hospitality, their social status was still not sufficiently elevated to include marriage into the peerage without unfavourable comment.

Rosebery's own mother was horrified at the thought of a Jewish woman, even a Rothschild, in the family.Young, p. 17. Rosebery too felt there was an impassable barrier of faith;Crewe, Vol 1, p. 118. at this time, it was inconceivable that any children could be reared as Jews.

This factor also worked in reverse; while Hannah de Rothschild was keen to marry Rosebery, she was also aware of many obstacles, the foremost being that she was devoted to her faith, and to leave it would be a severe moral wrench.Crewe, Vol 1, p. 116. Another obstacle was the Rothschild family itself: it was their custom to marry cousins to keep their fortune within the family. Ironically, Hannah herself had opposed the marriage of her cousin Annie de Rothschild to the Christian Eliot Yorke, the son of the Earl of Hardwicke, in 1866.Ferguson, p. 765. In fact, she was to be the third daughter of the family's English branch to marry outside of the Jewish faith, but such was the fame of the bridegroom and the resultant publicity that the Jewish elders and press felt an example needed to be made. The '' Jewish Chronicle'' announced its "most poignant grief" at the prospect, and cryptically added, "If the flame seize on the cedars, how will fare the hyssop on the wall: if the leviathan is brought up with a hook, how will the minnows escape," demonstrating what a threat to the social fabric of the Jewish faith the Jewish elders saw in the prospect of such a marriage. The quotation, originally from the Babylonian Talmud, can be taken to mean that the elders, respected, and more notable Jews should set a good example by strictly following the teachings of the Jewish articles of faith, which forbid marriage to members of other religions.

The formal engagement of marriage was announced on 3 January 1878, a day Rosebery forever afterwards regarded as sacred. Writing to a friend in January 1878, Rosebery described his wife as "very simple, very unspoilt, very clever, very warm-hearted and very shy... I never knew such a beautiful character." The marriage was celebrated in London on 20 March 1878 at the Board Room of Guardians in Mount Street, and also in a Christian ceremony at Christ Church in Down Street, Piccadilly. To show "official" disapproval, no male member of the Rothschild family attended the ceremonies. However, any shortcomings in the guest list were compensated for by the guest of honour—the Prince of Wales—and Disraeli, who gave the bride away.

Marriage

For the first few years following their marriage, the Roseberys resided in London in the Piccadilly house Lady Rosebery had inherited from her father. As the couple's social and political interests increased from 1882, they leased the larger Lansdowne House. Lansdowne House was one of the finest of the aristocratic palaces in London, well suited to be the home of the political salon which Hannah Rosebery was to establish. Here political and social leaders of the day mixed with royalty, authors such as Henry James and Oscar Wilde, and other prominent social and intellectual figures of the time. Henry James, an occasional guest in the Roseberys' homes, delivered one of the most unflattering condemnations of Lady Rosebery describing her as "... large, coarse, Hebrew-looking with hair of no particular colour and personally unattractive".

The Roseberys divided their year among their various homes: London for the social season and parliament, Mentmore at weekends to entertain both political and shooting house-parties. In August the household would move north to Dalmeny for the grouse shooting. In between, occasional days and the weeklong Derby meeting would be spent at their home "The Durdans" in Epsom. Though small by comparison to their other homes, this mansion was described by Henry James as the most homely and comfortable of the Roseberys' many homes and as a delightful house full of books and sporting pictures, with just a few Gainsboroughs and Watteaux. Together the Earl and Countess of Rosebery added greatly to not only the Mentmore collection but also to that housed at Dalmeny House, Rosebery's Scottish seat, amassing a great library of rare and continental volumes and a collection of artefacts formerly belonging to the Emperor Napoleon I.

Relationship with Rosebery

Published commentators on the Roseberys claim their marriage was happy, and there is no known evidence that Hannah was anything other than happy in her marriage, and quite a lot to suggest she was indeed blissfully happy. However, much evidence suggests that Rosebery, while professing to be happy, was at times irritated and bored by Hannah, who was always keen to accommodate his every whim.McKinstry, p. 75.

There were times when Lady Rosebery's devotion to her husband was tested. Rosebery may have not been antisemitic before his marriage; however, the acerbic wit for which he was famous led him to make remarks that could have been taken in such a way, once his marriage had secured the Rothschild fortune. Rosebery seems to have disliked his first son, who he claimed looked "Jewish." On seeing his son for the first time he remarked "''Le Jew est fait, rien ne vas plus''," which must have been disconcerting for the child's Jewish mother. Rosebery, who has been described as febrile and supercilious, replied in a letter of congratulations on the birth of his heir from Mary Gladstone: "I cannot pretend to be much excited by an event which occurs to almost every human being and which may cause me a great deal of annoyance." Rosebery then left his newborn child and wife (who was again pregnant) for a year-long tour of Australia. On another occasion, when the Roseberys were travelling in India, Rosebery is reported to have announced "I will travel ahead, Hannah and the rest of the heavy baggage will follow the next day."

While the marriage was based on warmth and esteem on Rosebery's side and adoration on Hannah's, it seems that Rosebery often found his wife's devotion irritating, and this sometimes caused him to be impatient with her. He was often abrupt with her in public.Crewe, Vol. 2, p. 372. She, by contrast, was completely enraptured by him, and would frequently ignore her neighbours at a dinner party to listen to her husband's conversation further down the table, a faux pas almost considered a crime in Victorian society. Those who saw the couple alone at home "could not doubt the affection as well as the comprehension that united them".

Rosebery's behaviour could be eccentric. Gladstone remarked that Rosebery was, perhaps, rather too concerned with his health. Early in the marriage Rosebery decided to renovate the small ruined Barnbougle Castle (the original Rosebery family seat), close to, and within sight of, Dalmeny House. Once renovation was complete in 1882, Rosebery used it as a private retreat from his family, and began to spend his nights there alone. Always an insomniac, he claimed that the "stillness of the waters" he_nearby_Firth_of_Forth.html" ;"title="Firth_of_Forth.html" ;"title="he nearby Firth of Forth">he nearby Firth of Forth">Firth_of_Forth.html" ;"title="he nearby Firth of Forth">he nearby Firth of Forth"were conducive to sleep".

During their marriage the Roseberys travelled extensively, usually without their children. In September 1883, the couple left their children in the care of the nannies and nursery maids, supervised by Rosebery's sister Lady Leconfield, for a long tour of America and Australia. Lady Rosebery owned large investments in North America, including ranches in Texas and mines in Montana. Their arrival in New York was widely reported, and a full and flattering description of Lady Rosebery was reported in ''The Herald (Glasgow), The Herald''. The newspaper went on to describe Rosebery as looking like a prosperous farmer. Lady Rosebery was very taken with California, from where she wrote: "The inhabitants are very entertaining ... the women are very handsome, think nothing of dresses costing £80, "fix up" their faces very frequently and are generally divorced." Having toured and been fêted in America, the party moved on to Australia via Honolulu. In Australia, Rosebery chose to indulge his habit of solitude, installing his wife in a hotel in Sydney, while he went off alone to tour the outback.

Rosebery's frequent absences from his wife fuelled gossip that he was a secret homosexual. It has been claimed that the inscrutable air that Rosebery wore was a mask to disguise his secret homosexual life. The worry of this illegal secret, it was claimed, and fear of exposure, caused his insomnia and bouts of depression. It was even whispered that his Barnbougle Castle retreat was really a venue for clandestine assignations with young men. Rosebery's possible homosexuality has been much discussed in recent times. Nothing conclusive has ever been found one way or the other, but it is possible that he had homosexual experiences while in the care of a paedophile housemaster at Eton in his youth. No evidence exists that his wife was aware of these rumours against her husband, or even that she would have understood them, bearing in mind her sheltered upbringing and limited education. Sex education was not part of a 19th-century upper-class girl's schooling. The more public and precise accusations of Rosebery's homosexuality by the Marquess of Queensberry, following the Cleveland Street scandal, did not occur until three years after Lady Rosebery's death.

The relationship between the couple appears at times to have been almost that of a mother and child. Rosebery, a self-centred, reserved man, prone to depression, pessimism and insecurity, had a difficult relationship with his mother, who had been distant and openly preferred his younger brother. Lady Rosebery, an orphan and only child, appears to have been desperate to lavish affection. Once upon entering a book shop she told her children they were entering a toy shop, and when the disappointed children pointed out the obvious she replied "to your father this is a toy shop." Lord Rosebery's friend Edward Hamilton recorded her "notable faculty of getting other people to work and quickening their energies".Ferguson, p. 766. It seems she was the driving force of the relationship, with her feet firmly on the ground. She made herself the link between the world and her "thin skinned and neurotic" husband. While her husband sulked or withdrew with hurt pride from a situation, she came to the forefront to plead his case or cause. If she was aware of his faults she gave no indication of it.

Children

The marriage produced four children: Lady Sybil Primrose, born in 1879; Lady Margaret Primrose, born in 1881; the heir Harry Primrose, Lord Dalmeny (later 6th Earl of Rosebery), born in 1882; and finally the Honourable Neil Primrose, born the same year as his elder brother.

As a mother, Lady Rosebery was presented with a dilemma: she was in fact already practically a mother to her husband who had no great feeling for a proximity to small babies. This was particularly evident in June 1880 when shortly after the birth of their first child Sybil, Rosebery wished to visit Germany for three months, to take a cure at a German spa (he was recovering from what is now thought to have been a nervous breakdown).McKinstry, p. 90. His wife dutifully accompanied him. However, Rosebery, clearly aware of his wife's frustrated maternal instincts, reported that Hannah savoured every detail of the daily letters from London concerning the baby, and that she never complained at the forced separation.

More revealing is a comment Lady Rosebery herself made to her husband, "I sometimes think it is wrong that I have thought less of the children in comparison to you" shortly before her death in 1890, suggesting that when a choice between her children and husband was forced on her, she always chose her husband. However, the same comment also hints that she was not unaware that her choice was at the cost of her children.

When assessing Lady Rosebery's behaviour to her children it should be remembered that she lived in an era of plentiful nannies, wet nurses, nursemaids and governesses which the upper classes employed as the norm. These people were employed regardless of the mother's affection towards her children; it was inconceivable that a countess would nurse her own children, and to do so would have been breaking social conventions. Hence her seeming lack of attention to her children was not unusual – she was following the upper class conventions and "stiff upper lip

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