Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Howard, Rosalind Frances
HOWARD, ROSALIND FRANCES, Countess of Carlisle (1845–1921), promoter of women's political rights and of temperance reform, was born 20 February 1845. She was the youngest daughter of Edward John, second Baron Stanley of Alderley [q.v.], the whig statesman, who between 1855 and 1866 held office as president of the Board of Trade and postmaster-general. Her mother, Henrietta Maria [q.v.], eldest daughter of Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee, thirteenth Viscount Dillon [q.v.], was one of the founders of Girton College, Cambridge. Her marriage in her twentieth year (1864) with George James Howard [q.v.], who in 1889 became the ninth Earl of Carlisle, brought her at first into an artistic circle; for her husband was a landscape painter of distinction in the pre-Raphaelite tradition, and Burne-Jones and William Morris were among their friends. Politics made larger demands on them when, in 1879, George Howard was called to take the place of his dead father in the parliamentary representation of East Cumberland. In the early 'eighties his house at Palace Green, Kensington, became a political centre where the Howards foregathered with Sir George Trevelyan, John Morley, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, and Joseph Chamberlain in his radical days. But the liberal party schism over Home Rule divided the family also. George Howard followed his cousin the Duke of Devonshire into liberal unionism. His wife, never forgetting the Irish blood in her veins, was fervently for Home Rule. She would not be silent about convictions held with the intensity of a religion, and in early womanhood she had moved in thought from the whig traditions of her family to the radical left. She left London, and henceforth her life lay in her country homes at Naworth and Castle Howard. She became an active member of local governing bodies, and she found scope in the discharge of local responsibilities, in varied plans for improving the housing, education, and social conditions of her neighbourhood, and in political work through the two women's organizations of which she became president. To the last task she brought a ready flow of emotional eloquence, a musically trained voice, and a keen instinct for debate polished by the conversational battles in which she delighted. These gifts made her unquestionably the foremost woman speaker of her day.
Had she played no part in politics Lady Carlisle would have been marked out as a business woman with a real talent for administration. Her husband cared more for his art than for the management of landed property, and left the family estates mainly in her control. For the latter half of her life she was her own land agent and architect, picking her farmers with a keen eye for character, and planning the rebuilding of farmsteads and cottages, with the minute love of detail on which she prided herself. The estate finances were controlled with method and economy. Hereditary debts, including some of Charles James Fox's gambling debts, were cleared away. Froude the historian, who told her that she was born to be an empress, said that her character and actions were in diametric opposition to her political theories, of which he disapproved.
Divided in politics, the Howard family remained united in its support of total abstinence. Licensed houses were suppressed on the Howard estates. The family crusade for teetotalism left its mark for good on the hard-drinking habits of the north. As president, from 1903, of the National British Women's Temperance Association, Lady Carlisle became an ardent leader of the political temperance party; but the aims of that party were frustrated.
Fortune was kinder to Lady Carlisle's other object, the winning of the vote for women; in this cause was made her main contribution to the nation's life. The daughter of a liberal chief whip, as she often remembered, she gave unswerving support to the principles of the party as she saw them. It was difficult fighting ground; before the European War all the parties were divided on women's suffrage. She had organized many women's liberal associations in the country, primarily for aid in the Home Rule struggle. But the union of these bodies, the Women's Liberal Federation (of which she was president from 1891 to 1901 and from 1906 to 1914), was not to be the meek handmaid of the party. Lady Carlisle had the balanced task, which became delicate at by-elections, of supporting her party while pressing her claim for the vote. She saw the blunder of aiming at the enfranchisement of a limited class of propertied women; and it was her circle that demanded the broader and more democratic franchise ultimately adopted. She would have nothing to do with the phase of suffragette violence which, in spite of the self-delusion of the fanatics, was throwing back the movement before the War. The suffrage came in the end as the outcome or recognition of the war-services of womanhood; but Lady Carlisle's initiative and leadership within her own party counted along with the working of other causes and the efforts of other women in the result.
The European War in its strange reactions solved for her what seemed an insoluble problem; but, for her as for other social reformers, it shattered political ideals. She had believed in the possibilities of international arbitration; but when the War came she had no doubts as to the part England had to play. The last years of her life were overclouded. Her husband died in 1911. Five of her six sons predeceased her, the last of the five falling in the War. Broken health handicapped her in the latter part of her life, but she was capable to the end of surprising physical and mental exertions. She died in London of encephalitis lethargica 12 August 1921.
[Personal knowledge.]