The Right Honourable Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe P.C., D.C.L., F.R.S.: A Biographical SketchThorpe, T. E. (Thomas Edward)
Science
The Right Honourable Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe P.C., D.C.L., F.R.S.: A Biographical Sketch
Thorpe, T. E. (Thomas Edward)
Roscoe, Henry E. (Henry Enfield), 1833-1915
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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