Queen of the castle
Peter Quennell
THE ARTIST AND THE AUTOCRAT: GEORGE AND ROSALIND HOWARD, EARL AND COUNTESS OF CARLISLE by Virginia Surtees Michael Russell, £12.95, pp. 191 Quarrelling for some families is so essential to their domestic existence that it becomes at last a source of pride. Thus Lyulph Stanley, who plays a minor part among Virginia Surtees's dramatis perso- nae, declared Strife to be 'the most beauti- ful of all the goddesses', adding that he felt sure she had a temple at Alderley, his old ancestral home, 'if perpetual argument is one form of worship'; while his sister Rosalind, who eventually became Lady Carlisle and, towards the end of her life, an indefatigable philanthropist, was con- vinced that it 'kept one alive and sprightly', and, despite her middle-aged preoccupa- tion with good works, seems never to have changed her mind.
She seldom ceased contending with any of her numerous sons, who usually dis- appointed her, or bullying her patient and sweet-tempered husband, until, after 20 years of marriage, her inability to tolerate his political opinions — he had joined the Liberal Unionists — provoked so alarming a crisis that her mother, Lady Stanley, suggested that she should be 'taken away . . . and placed on a high mountain', where she might possibly achieve a somewhat calmer point of view.
The Artist and the Autocrat has a deeply interesting main subject — the gradual exaggeration and distortion of a character who, in her youth, had shown many admir- able qualities. She had loved and respected her 'passive and adoring' spouse, though she did not wholly share his lifelong affection for the arts; and in her diary she admitted that she herself had many failings — 'I am so brusque and aggressive . . . fault-finding and pugnacious.' She confes- sed, moreover, that by nature she was inordinately ambitious, 'with a desire to be in the place of the great men of all ages who have done so much for the world'.
It is not a likeable portrait that Virginia Surtees presents, whereas George Ho- ward, latterly ninth Earl of Carlisle and master of Castle Howard, holds our sym- pathy in every chapter. He was a born artist, despite the fact that, as his wife wrote, he had 'not any inventive genius'. But the chief trouble, she complained, was that he grew 'more and more engrossed by painting. He thinks and talks of nothing else now'. At the same time, he cared less and less about politics. 'All the friends he seeks out and cares to talk to, if they are not artists, are people who care to talk art.'
Yet some executive talent he certainly possessed, as several of the landscapes reproduced here indicate; and his concern with art was by no means self-centred. For 30 years he remained a conscientious trus- tee of the National Gallery; and the artistic friends he sought out, and entertained at his splendid northern strongholds, in- cluded Rossetti, Burne-Jones and William Morris, and the gifted architect Philip Webb. He had few social prejudices. Lady Carlisle, on the other hand, was one of those high-born hostesses who occasionally draw a sharp patrician line between them- selves and those they entertain. Her daughter Mary had recently married the renowned classicist Professor Gilbert Mur- ray; and we learn of a family dinner-party where Rosalind, having risen from the table to lead the women out, and then noticed that her male guests did not immediately quit their chairs, turned back from the door exclaiming indignantly: 'Stand up, my middle-class sons-in-law!'
The basic problems of any marriage, happy or unhappy, are very often worth analysis; and, if the Goddess Strife should step in, that may be because one partner's strong inherited tendencies exhibit signs of developing beyond control. It was Rosa- lind's natural ambition, her love of power and thirst for authority, that overcast her later life. Her determination to do good, and thus join the Sacred Band of great men who have done so much for mankind, gave her a prodigious energy; and her efforts ranged from organising a Society for the Protection of Barmaids to leading a Women's Christian Temperance Union, patronising peace movements, preaching female suffrage and superintending the affairs of the Castle Howard Cow Club.
She had nevertheless a deeply emotional nature, and did not lack romantic feelings; and in 1890, when she had already passed middle age, her old dancing and riding companion, the adventurous poet and arch-seducer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, gave a revealing impression of her character, now that she was no longer young and pretty, but had become, alas, a `woman's dele- gate', distributing temperance pamphlets at church-doors. The truth was, decided the experienced roué, that she had always been 'a woman of strong animal passions which she has not indulged fully . . .' And elsewhere he remarks that 'she would have been less hard a woman if she had ever quite sinned . .
The Artist and the Autocrat not only con- tains an absorbing account of the Carlisles
and their strangely chequered partnership, but provides many fascinating glimpses of the contemporary world of art and letters, in which they had long preferred to move. Most of the Pre-Raphaelites were close friends, especially the Burne-Joneses; and the Carlisles sympathised with dear Ned Burne-Jones — at least the Artist did when Ned's unruly mistress and model, the red-headed Greek beauty Mary Zambaco, for whose sake he had refused to leave his wife, made a scandalous public scene.
Of Rossetti they were also very real friends. William Morris Rosalind described as being 'full of vigour, a blessing to us all'; while, among writers, they became warmly attached to George Eliot, despite her irregular domestic situation. Matthew Arnold was another favourite — 'he is the very essence of sweetness and light' and 'so fresh and enthusiastic', beside being, un- like some writers, a perfect modern 'man of the world'. Virginia Surtees, though she has not set out to review the period's whole complex history, in her pursuit of charac- ters throws many illuminating and enter- taining sidelights on the morals and man- ners of the age.
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