Rose Sophia Mary Weigall

David Weigall, ‘Weigall , Lady Rose Sophia Mary (1834–1921)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/55695, accessed 30 Aug 2017]

Lady Rose Sophia Mary Weigall (1834–1921): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55695

Weigall [née Fane], Lady Rose Sophia Mary (1834–1921), literary editor and social worker, was born on 5 September 1834 at Hyde Park Terrace, London. She was the youngest of the nine children of John Fane, Lord Burghersh (1784–1859), soldier and diplomat, later the eleventh earl of Westmorland, and his wife, Priscilla Anne Fane, née Wellesley-Pole (1793–1879), political hostess, youngest daughter of William Wellesley-Pole, third earl of Mornington (1763–1845), and niece of Arthur Wellesley, first duke of Wellington (1769–1852). In 1841 her father was appointed minister in Berlin, where he and his family remained for ten years. He was subsequently, between 1851 and 1855, ambassador in Vienna. Lady Rose's education was entrusted to Swiss and German tutors. In Berlin she witnessed the revolution of 1848 and established a lifelong friendship with Princess Luise of Prussia, later grand duchess of Baden (1838–1923), with whom she corresponded until the end of her life. She was in Vienna at the time of the Crimean War, and in both capitals came to meet a number of the leading figures of the day.

After her father's death Lady Rose and her mother lived in London and had a large circle of prominent acquaintances and friends, including Gladstone and Palmerston. In 1866 Lady Rose met, sat for, and married (15 August) the society painter Henry Weigall (1829–1925), whose subjects had included the duke of Wellington. They had six sons, one of whom, Sir Archibald Weigall (1874–1952), was subsequently governor of South Australia, and one daughter.

Lady Rose's diary reveals a widely read and serious-minded woman, watchful for any signs of personal ‘intellectual deterioration’. She combined literary and historical interests with active social and educational concerns. An article, ‘Our friends in the village’, published in Macmillan's Magazine in October 1869, describes her experiences of the rural poor in the neighbourhood of Apethorpe, Northamptonshire, the Westmorlands' country seat, the ‘decline of the old feudal feeling’, and the duties of the advantaged towards the poor. A great admirer of Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, Lady Rose published her A Brief Memoir of the Princess Charlotte of Wales in 1874: the princess's husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (1790–1865), had been a close friend of her father. The book was dedicated to Queen Victoria (1819–1901), who had originally encouraged her to write it.

After the death of her mother in 1879 Lady Rose and her family moved to Southwood, an eighteenth-century mansion on the outskirts of Ramsgate, Thanet. She and her husband became prominently involved in social and educational work. She was a member of the board of guardians and a frequent workhouse visitor, and the Weigalls arranged the construction in their garden of a holiday home for London children.

There is a sharp contrast between the court social life of Lady Rose's youth and the essentially local involvement of her later years. The very different circumstances of her youth were kept before her as she published three volumes of her mother's correspondence: The Letters of Lady Burghersh ... from Germany and France during the Campaign of 1813–14 (1893), Correspondence of Lady Burghersh with the Duke of Wellington (1903) (with her husband's portrait of the duke), and The Correspondence of Priscilla, Countess of Westmorland, 1813–1870 (1909). Lady Rose never travelled abroad again after her marriage. She frequently corresponded with her continental friends, however, working hard for improved Anglo-German relations before the First World War. During the war she conducted a considerable correspondence over the treatment of prisoners of war in the two countries. Southwood was severely damaged by bombardment from a Zeppelin in 1917 and her family were forced to evacuate to Wimbledon until the following year. Lady Rose died at Southwood after a stroke on 14 February 1921, and was buried three days later in Ramsgate.

David Weigall