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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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