Liberal Hearts and Coronets: The Lives and Times of Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon and John Campbell Gordon, the Aberdeens 9781442616493

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Family Trees
Introduction
Chapter One. The Making of a Responsible Man: John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon to 1877
Chapter Two. The Dutiful Daughter: Ishbel Maria Hogg Marjoribanks to 1877
Chapter Three. Forging a Partnership, 1877–1886
Chapter Four. Extending the Field of Labour, 1886–1898
Chapter Five. From Hope to Heartache, 1899–1915
Chapter Six. Faithful unto Death, 1915–1939
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

LIBERAL HEARTS AND CORONETS The Lives and Times of Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon and John Campbell Gordon, the Aberdeens

Scottish aristocrats John Campbell Gordon (1847–1934) and Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon (1857–1939), known as the Aberdeens, rejected both revolution and reaction in their political careers. The aristocratic progressivism and egalitarian marriage of these fervent liberals confounded both contemporaries and historians. John, as viceroy of Ireland and governor-general of Canada, was a notable ally of feminists, workers, and Irish Home Rulers. Ishbel, his viceregal companion and the long-time president of the International Council of Women, was a liberal feminist and Home Ruler whose commitments stirred up even more controversy. Superbly written and informed by decades of research, Liberal Hearts and Coronets is the first biography to treat John Campbell Gordon as seriously as his better-known wife. Examining the Aberdeens’ remarkable careers as landlords, philanthropists, and international progressives, Veronica Strong-Boag casts the twilight of the British aristocracy in an entirely new light. veronica strong-boag

is a professor emerita at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice and the Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia.

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Liberal Hearts and Coronets The Lives and Times of Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon and John Campbell Gordon, the Aberdeens

VERONICA STRONG-BOAG

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

©  University of Toronto Press 2015 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-4827-2 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-2602-7 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper with vegetable-based inks

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Strong-Boag, Veronica, 1947–, author   Liberal hearts and coronets : the lives and times of Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon and John Campbell Gordon, the Aberdeens / Veronica Strong-Boag. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4827-2 (bound)   ISBN 978-1-4426-2602-7 (pbk.) 1.  Aberdeen and Temair, Ishbel Gordon, Marchioness of, 1857–1939.  2.  Aberdeen and Temair, Ishbel Gordon, Marchioness of, 1857–1939 – Political and social views.  3.  Aberdeen and Temair, John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, Marquess of, 1847–1934.  4.  Aberdeen and Temair, John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, Marquess of, 1847–1934 – Political and social views.  5.  Social reformers – Great Britain – Biography.  6.  Politicians – Great Britain – Biography.  7.  Governors general – Canada – Biography.  8.  Viceroys – Ireland – Biography.  9.  Politicians’ spouses – Great Britain – Biography.  10.  Governors general’s spouses – Canada – Biography.  11.  Viceroys’ spouses – Ireland – Biography.  I.  Title. DA565.A15S77 2015     941.081092ʹ2     C2014-905919-1

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments  vii Family Trees  x Introduction 3 1 The Making of a Responsible Man: John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon to 1877  17 2 The Dutiful Daughter: Ishbel Maria Hogg Marjoribanks to 1877  44 3 Forging a Partnership, 1877–1886  76 4 Extending the Field of Labour, 1886–1898  116 5 From Hope to Heartache, 1899–1915  162 6 Faithful unto Death, 1915–1939  199 Conclusion 235 Notes 239 Bibliography 321 Index 361 Illustrations follow page 16

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Preface and Acknowledgments

All books involve wrestling with oneself. If you are fortunate, you dance at completion. I am now contemplating tentative dance steps. It didn’t start out that way. First, I twisted myself into knots. Liberal Hearts and Coronets did not escape unscathed. The snarl originated in my embedment in early twenty-first century feminist politics. Important questions are many but one surely asks what is the role of elite women and men? This cannot be taken for granted. Those who have been “epistemologically privileged” by reason of class or race or other markers of social and economic inferiority have always been rightly suspicious of the powerful. So it is today and so it was in the time of the Lord and Lady Aberdeen. Elite allies may nevertheless be invaluable. And just as disadvantaged women and men may defy their circumstances, so too sometimes may the privileged. The Aberdeens, both of whom I argue were feminists, wrestled with consciousness and conscience. As evangelical Christians, they subjected their own lives to relentless examination and accepted the biblical admonition that the “meek shall inherit the earth.” In particular, to bring into being a better world, they believed that aristocrats in the greatest empire the world had ever known were obliged to lead. Only this could justify good fortune. Their aristocratic liberal vanguardism should open doors for the less privileged, among whom they included most women. Obviously, as these pages demonstrate, such presumption was self-interested and naïve. It was nevertheless also sometimes courageous and valuable. Ishbel Marjoribanks and John Campbell Gordon attempted to construct scaffolding to be climbed by deserving subaltern subjects. The results inevitably were mixed. While their efforts to do good always helped justify the powerful, they also improved many lives. Without their contributions, prospects for justice and equality would have been still dimmer. As I contemplated this couple, I wondered about the lessons for today’s feminists. Surely, it is ultimately better

viii  Preface and Acknowledgments

to have imperfect feminist activists than mere bystanders in life? Such conclusions were never far from my thoughts as I strove to offer a fair assessment of these liberal reformers. Since prefaces are likely to supply multiple confessions, this also acknowledges the great good fortune that led me to this volume. My investigation of the past and its meaning for the present has been immeasurably aided by feminist scholars and friends. They are found all around the world in libraries, archives, universities, communities, and families. My debts are many. Research benefited from the support of Alexander Gordon, the seventh Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, who granted me free access to the family archives, the staff of the Haddo House Estate, and the librarians of the University of Waterloo’s Library’s Lady Aberdeen Collection and the University of British Columbia in particular. In Scotland, I was fortunate enough to be hosted by Jenny Beattie, soon a friend, who proved a fount of knowledge about Tarves and the history of the region. In Weston-super-Mare, my mother’s old home, my cousins Lesley and Charles McCann offered unstinting welcome as I foraged through the Liberal Party archives at the University of Bristol. In Ottawa, my former student and now good friend, Susan Walsh, her partner Patrick Mooney, and daughter Kelsey, provided laughter, food, and a comfortable bed. In the same city, Jennifer Stoddart, my friend since our undergraduate days, reminded me of our shared enthusiasms and battles over good red wine. In Toronto, as I worked in the Robarts Library, Bettina Bradbury and I shared many dinners and conversations about dogs, kids, and history. Trevor Martin also deserves thanks for his careful reproduction of photographs and the present Marquess of Aberdeen for his kind permission to republish family pictures. Four generous scholars also read an early draft of this manuscript in its entirety. Hard questions from Jack Little, Angus McLaren, Christopher Bridges Ross, and Joan Sangster made it far better. My thanks as well to Cameron Duder who compiled the index. No account of the making of Liberal Hearts and Coronets would be complete without mention of the generous assistance of the Jules and Gabrielle Leger Scholarship in governor-general studies and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Such funding deserves more support as a guarantee of independent scholarship. I should say as well that I have been regularly appalled by the systematic under- and sometimes de-funding of Canada’s historical heritage, notably but not only its archival collections, by current governments. To take just one example, Library and Archives Canada provides far poorer service to scholars than it did in the 1970s and 1980s. Paeans to the War of 1812 are no substitute for the real work of history. I also thank the Aid to Scholarly Publishing Program, which agreed to fund this project in early summer 2012, and Kate Baltais who skilfully copy edited the manuscript in the early summer of 2014.

Preface and Acknowledgments  ix

In this volume, as with all others, my family has been essential. My mother, Daphne Bridges Strong-Boag, an English war bride who arrived to work in Canada as a mother, a waitress, and a teacher, has remained a continuing inspiration. My three sons, as always, have been inimitable. From the vantage-point of imperial history, Christopher attempted to keep this Canadianist up-to-date. Dominic offered a critical perspective on why it all mattered. Gabriel investigated French Canadian newspapers. My daughter-in-law, Jude, brought the incomparable benefit of another female perspective to our family. Thank you all! In closing, this book is dedicated, not, as many would guess, to Emma, whose tousled ten pounds was never far from my computer and who suffered my absences with injured canine dignity but to dear friends who regularly listened with patience and always reminded me why it is all worthwhile: a special thank you this time to Bettina Bradbury, Gillian Creese, Jan Hare, Tineke Hellwig, Andrée Levesque, and Joan Sangster.

George Gordon [3rd Earl of Aberdeen] (1722-1801)

George Gordon [Lord Haddo] (1764-1791)

Catherine Elizabeth Hanson [Countess of Aberdeen] (1733-1817)

Charlotte Baird [Lady Haddo] (?-1795)

George HamiltonGordon [4th Earl of Aberdeen] (1784-1860)

Harriet Douglas [Countess of Aberdeen] (1792-1833)

George John James Hamilton-Gordon [5th Earl of Aberdeen] (1816-1864)

[3] Mary Baillie [Countess of Aberdeen] (1814-1900)

John "Johnny" Campbell HamiltonGordon [1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1847-1934)

George Gordon [2nd Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1879-1965)

David George Ian Alexander Gordon [4th Marquess of Abderdeen and Temair] (1908-1974)

Catherine Elizabeth Hamilton [Countess of Aberdeen] (1784-1812)

Arthur HamiltonGordon [1st Baron Stanmore] (1829-1912)

[4] Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks [Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair] (1857-1939)

Dorothea Mary Gordon (1882-1882)

Beatrice Mary June Boissier [Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair] (1913-2009)

George HamiltonGordon [6th Earl of Aberdeen] (1841-1870)

Dudley Gladstone Gordon [3rd Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1883-1972)

Jessamine Cécile Marjorie Gordon (1910-1994)

Mary Gordon [Lady Polwarth] (1844-1914)

Cécile Elizabeth Drummond [Marchioness of Aberdeen] (1878-1948)

Archibald Victor Dudley Gordon [5th Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1913-1984)

Extended Family Chart for John “Johnny” Hamilton-Gordon [1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1847–1934)

Note: Dashed boxes with numbers indicate family members who appear on parallel family charts.

Walter Hugh Hepburne-Scott [8th Lord Polwarth]

James "Jem" Henry Hamilton-Gordon (1845-1868)

Archibald Ian Gordon (1884-1909)

Michael James Andrew Gordon (1918-1943)

Harriet Gordon (1849-1942)

Marjorie Adeline Gordon [Baroness Pentland] (1880-1970)

Alastair Ninian John Gordon [6th Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1920-2002)

Katherine Eliza Gordon [Lady Balfour of Burleigh] (1852-1931)

Sir Alexander Hugh Bruce [6th Lord Balfour of Burleigh] (1849-1921)

John Sinclair [1st Baron Pentland] (1860-1925)

Margaret Ishbel Sinclair (1906-1970)

Henry John Sinclair [2nd Baron Pentland] (1907-1984)

Extended Family Chart for John “Johnny” Hamilton-Gordon [1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1847–1934) Family Chart for Ishbel Maria Majoribanks [Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair]

Edward Marjoribanks (1735-1815)

Edward Marjoribanks (1776-1868)

Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks [1st Baron Tweedmouth] (1820-1894)

[4] Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks [Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair] (1857-1939)

Isabel Weir Hogg (1827-1908)

Edward Marjoribanks [2nd Baron Tweedmouth] (1849-1909)

[1] Georgiana Latour (d. 1849)

James MacNaghten McGarel-Hogg [1st Baron Magheramorne] (1823-1890)

Fanny Octavia Louise Spencer-Churchill (Baroness Tweedmouth) (1853-1904)

Dudley Churchill Marjoribanks [3rd Baron Tweedmouth] (1874-1935)

Grizel Stewart (?-1817)

Sir John Marjoribanks [1st Baronet] (1763-1833)

Charles Swinton Hogg (1824-1870)

Mary "Polly" Georgiana Marjoribanks [Viscountess Ridley] (1850-1909)

William Hogg (1754-1824)

Sir James Weir Hogg [1st Baronet] (1790-1876)

Stuart Saunders Hogg (1833-1921)

Matthew White [1st Viscount Ridley] (1842-1904)

Mary Dickey (1764-1856)

[2] Mary Claudine Swinton [Lady Hogg] (d. 1874)

Frederic Russell Hogg (1836-1923)

Stewart Marjoribanks (1852-1864)

Clara Hogg (1795-1874)

Quintin "Piggy" Hogg (1845-1903)

Annie Grizel Marjoribanks (1855-1856)

Coutts Marjoribanks (1860-1924)

Note: Dashed boxes with numbers indicate family members who appear on parallel family charts.

Alexander Jaffrey Nicholson (d. 1832)

John Nicholson (1822-1857)

Archibald John Marjoribanks (1861-1900)

Extended Family Chart for John “Johnny” Hamilton-Gordon [1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair] (1847–1934) Family charts for the mother of John Hamilton-Gordon and the grandmothers of Ishbel Majoribanks.

George Baillie of Jerviswoode and Mellerstain (1763-1841)

[3] Mary Baillie [Countess of Aberdeen] (1814-1900)

George BaillieHamilton [10th Earl of Haddington] (1802-1870)

Mary Pringle (1786-1865)

John Baillie (1810-1888)

Thomas Baillie (1811-1889)

Louis Francis Latour (?-?)

?

Samuel Swinton (?-?)

[1] Georgiana Latour (d. 1849)

Charles Baillie [Lord Jerviswoode] (1804-1879)

?

[2] Mary Claudine Swinton [Lady Hogg] (d. 1874)

Grisell Baillie (1822-1891)

Note: Dashed boxes with numbers indicate family members who appear on parallel family charts.

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LIBERAL HEARTS AND CORONETS The Lives and Times of Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon and John Campbell Gordon, the Aberdeens

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Introduction

Ladies and lords are rarely in fashion for critical scholars or democratic activists. This is unfortunate. British aristocrats John Campbell (originally Hamilton-) Gordon (1847–1934) and Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks Gordon (1857–1939), colloquially known as the Aberdeens, constituted a force for both conservatism and improvement in the Atlantic world of their day. They merit our attention.1 By setting out self-consciously as reformers, they suggested that Britain’s traditional rulers still had essential duties in a democratizing age and that greater equality was a common good. Ishbel Marjoribanks and John Gordon rejected both revolution and reaction for the embrace of a liberal evolutionary politics that emphasized caution, consensus building, and responsible leadership as the surest route to human progress. Their search for a middle ground of transcendence discomforted many contemporaries and challenged biographers. More radical critics of the couple have seen only conservatism and privilege at work, while reactionary opponents spied treason to the establishment. Both perspectives were at least somewhat true as Liberal Hearts and Coronets attests. That contradictory assessment lies at the heart of the story told in these pages. Products of a rich history of influences, the Aberdeens were never simple subjects. They negotiated gender, class, race, and other identities in ways that variously puzzled, enraged, and inspired. The labelling of Ishbel a “democrat-autocrat” or “democrat-aristocrat” captures the uncertainty of reception.2 Both she and John stepped beyond expected pathways in their attempt to construct a liberal politics of conciliation, toleration, and inclusion, what might even be termed “appeasement” before that word incurred its negative connotation at the end of the 1930s. Building connections among actually or potentially warring factions was central to their agenda. The Scottish earl, later marquess, became well known for his sympathetic response to tenants, children, workers, and Irish nationalists. His wife similarly possessed, as her daughter

4  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

emphasized, “a lively feeling for all other human beings and for their different points of view. To many she brought both new prospects for themselves and new friendships with others all over the world.”3 Both interpreted the duty of responsible elites to include building political and social community domestically as well as internationally. Women and men at the top of society, notably, but not only good Christians, owed real understanding and practical help to those at the bottom, who in turn ought to work hard and join in the mutual task of individual and collective improvement. This essentially moral contract promised to legitimate both moderate reform and dutiful elites and to obviate a divisive politics of gender, class, and race. When their vision of a middle path, with its eschewal of both advanced and reactionary politics, faltered and failed in the decades before the Second World War, they slipped largely into oblivion. In fact, their practical demonstration of a seemingly responsible aristocracy willing to forge alliances among classes and different cultural groups and between the sexes is arguably one of a range of influences that contributed to Britain’s largely peaceful progress to modern democracy. Like the Methodist contribution to English stability described by historian Élie Halévy decades ago, the welfare monarchs so effectively assessed by Frank Prochaska, and the female philanthropists recovered by Andrea Geddes Poole more recently,4 these aristocrats fostered community cohesion, invoking the possibility of cooperation and advancement under responsible elite guidance. That hopeful, often romantic, vision helps suggest why the group so effectively lampooned by David Cannadine in The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990) never quite hit the ground. Ultimately, the Aberdeens’ embodiment of what has been termed “ornamentalism,” “welfare monarchism,” and “maternal feminism,” shored up investment in traditional authority as a source of public good.5 Resulting social stability owed much to the trust that someone, whether a patriarch or a matriarch, in higher circles actually cared, whatever the evidence to the contrary. This is just the faith that Ishbel tried to invoke in her The House of Windsor: A Book of Portraits (1937), with its curious sidestepping of the shortcomings of Edward VIII and the Abdication Crisis. The close domestic partnership of John and Ishbel was essential to the image of caring and responsible aristocrats at home and abroad. They and their children helped familiarize or naturalize gendered relations of authority in their promise, as post-colonial scholars have reminded us, of “safety and security.”6 Like George VI and his consort Elizabeth, and their successors, Elizabeth II and Philip, the Aberdeens soothed by suggesting collaboration in a common, essentially kin-based, project of benefit to all. Their practice drew on powerful inspirations beyond the pragmatic calculation of prestige and power. In return for the advantages of rank, the Aberdeens developed a deep sense of a duty

Introduction 5

of aristocratic leadership, an evangelical and ecumenical Christian faith that required its followers to share good fortune, and a feminist sensibility that credited women with special maternal responsibilities to society at large. To be sure, their fidelity to these principles inevitably ebbed and flowed. The exigencies of life, from babies and deaths to ill health and financial reverses, and the selfinterest of power, from dress, travel, and house building to hobnobbing with the high and mighty, regularly got in the way. As one observer remembered: “the Aberdeens were kindly and democratic, but they had a clear concept of the dignity attached to their rank.”7 Aristocratic, Christian, and maternal obligations variously informed and extended the liberal standard by which the Aberdeens attempted to live and to lead. Just as with many of the royal dispensers of bounty considered by Frank Prochaska, it is sometimes difficult to discern whether John or Ishbel took the first step in thought or action. In many ways, their 1877 wedding created a single entity. Their authorship of often alternating chapters in joint memoirs, We Twa (1925), fed uncertainty in its deference to their shared principles and projects. Like some accounts of earlier and later Canadian viceregal couples – notably the Lornes and the Vaniers – this volume describes a collective enterprise.8 Liberal Hearts and Coronets nevertheless endeavours to supply a critical biography of two distinct individuals. As the early chapters suggest, antecedents are essential in understanding the trajectories of both husband and wife. Although the lines between the Aberdeens sometimes blur, as their joint inclusion in the entry under John’s name in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) attests,9 each ultimately brought something important to their cooperative enterprise. Despite the authority of the ODNB, any appreciation of Ishbel and John has to confront the considerably greater attention she received from contemporaries and scholars. Her evident intelligence, industry, and humanity were judged remarkable and press-worthy soon after their union. Her close identification with major institutional representations of the first women’s movement – particularly the Women’s Liberal Federations, the International Council of Women, the National Council of Women of Canada, and the Victorian Order of Nurses – like her high profile in Ireland’s early public health movement, has regularly inspired biographers, beginning with their daughter, Marjorie Sinclair (1880–1970), Lady Pentland, in 1953. The latter’s study, with its provocative title, A Bonnie Fechter, roughly translated “a beautiful fighter,” was loving and remarkably fair as it centred her mother in the family history of activism. Other important accounts, notably John T. Saywell’s introduction to The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 1893–1898 (1960), definitively singled out Ishbel as a significant force in the politics of the age. The treatment of the young countess in my 1975 doctoral dissertation, The Parliament of Women: The National

6  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

Council of Women of Canada, 1893–1929, similarly accorded her a central role in mobilizing the first Canadian women’s movement. As women’s history gained more popular and scholarly traction in the late twentieth century, Ishbel attracted growing interest. Doris French Shackleton’s Ishbel and the Empire: A Biography of Lady Aberdeen (1988) resurrected many caricatures but also pointed in important directions, its very title properly invoking the key political stage.10 Another popular writer, Maureen Keane, focused a sympathetic eye on the Irish viceroyalties and documented her subject’s sustained contribution to public health.11 By then, as well, American scholars Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor recognized Ishbel and John as the model couple of their day’s global women’s movement.12 A few years later, Val McLeish and Amanda Andrews further confirmed the value of feminist and post-colonial scholarship for the interpretation of the countess’s transnational career.13 When I left Lady Aberdeen behind in 1975, I remained dissatisfied by my interpretation but much else other than visiting aristocrats absorbed me for the next four decades. She did, however, make an occasional appearance in my work as with her patronage of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake, 1861–1913), Canada’s best-known Indigenous writer and performer. Ishbel’s relationship with Johnson appeared only to confirm imperialists’ general disregard for those they pushed aside.14 As I became more experienced in history and in feminist politics, I nevertheless grew more curious about why and how a British aristocrat attempted to build a broad, if always incomplete, alliance of women, an ambition that has regularly tested and often thwarted my own generation. While her tardy public endorsement of women suffrage in the International Council of Women had thoroughly irritated me when I was in my twenties, and her limited support for Johnson damned her decades later, Ishbel’s strategies of conciliation and caution came to appear increasingly comprehensible, as did her insistence on individual responsibility. Re-evaluation was encouraged by American scholar Marilyn Boxer’s important reminder that the designation of early elite activists as merely self-interested and reactionary or “bourgeois” by critics on the left was, whatever its frequent truth, a political act designed to “squelch any potential for unity among women’s movements.”15 While research confirms the very real privilege that John Campbell Gordon and Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon brought to reform endeavours, it also admits courage, empathy, and generosity in aiding others. Democracy and feminism sometimes benefited from elite allies. Not surprisingly, this monograph, like much of today’s scholarship,16 favours a broad definition of feminism – not itself a term current in the early days of the Aberdeen union – that situates it firmly in time and place. Since imperfection is the human lot, feminists, whether women or men, have rarely shed all

Introduction 7

prejudices. While they share awareness that women and girls are variously disadvantaged relative to men and boys and a determination to impose restraints on male power, few anywhere question all class, race, and other hierarchies. They may also reach different conclusions about the nature of the sexes, the possibility of alliances, the need to recognize difference, and the merits of individual remedies. Feminism thus includes a great middle ground as well as radical outposts.17 This volume’s subjects stand squarely in the former. Like most feminists, the Aberdeens believed that female nature was at least somewhat unique and notably more altruistic than men’s, in other words, more maternal. That inspiration contributed to the emergence “of a distinct women’s public sphere”18 as a major manifestation of the first feminist wave among aristocrats, as well as the middle-class activists more commonly described by such scholars as Megan Smitley.19 Such maternalist politics have sometimes been contrasted with feminist faith in justice and equal rights and the essential similarity of women and men. In fact, feminists in Britain, as in Canada and the United States – the political terrain of the Aberdeens – slipped pragmatically back and forth among justifications in their struggle against intransigent opponents. Inevitably, activists disputed many specifics as they considered strategy. Women suffrage was a case in point. The “suffragists,” the favoured Aberdeen camp, endorsed constitutional or peaceful methods, while “suffragettes” championed militancy or direct action. Despite such disagreement, maternalism and equal rights beliefs infused both camps. And so it was with Ishbel and John. The last half of the nineteenth century was a period “of immense achievement for the Victorian women’s movement,” with gains proffered by male legislators, and so initial hopes were high.20 When British activists confronted the expanded male franchise after the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1885, aristocratic women, cognizant of their long history of “political clout in unreformed Britain,”21 were tempted to trust male power-brokers, men of their own standing and often families, to take up their cause. Some, such as Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon, much like her mentor Lucy (Lady Frederick) Cavendish (1841–1925),22 were also acutely conscious of the inadequate instruction in citizenship and government offered the girls and women of their class. They prioritized better training and education as critical preparation, even a prerequisite, for the parliamentary franchise. Whatever awareness they had of their own limitations, however, Britain’s elite women frequently took for granted their share in national and imperial leadership. Some Liberal aristocrats, such as the “great ornamentals” described by Amanda Andrews,23 foresaw joining fathers, brothers, and husbands as responsible supervisors of a peaceful and orderly transition to a greater but still manageable democracy. A dutiful elite, they would do well by their sex and the population at large and, in the process, justify their own

8  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

existence. As scholars have demonstrated, this contingent readily envisioned an Empire that demonstrated both the moral pre-eminence of the British “race” and female capacity.24 For liberal feminists like the Aberdeens, superiority was nonetheless never entirely sure: it always needed monitoring. In addition, most peoples – often referred to as races – of the world, were credited with potential for civilization. Worthy imperialists had duties both to monitor and to inspire such prospects. Few scholars have shown much interest in John Campbell Gordon whether as a liberal, an imperialist, or a feminist. For all his prominence in Scottish Liberal politics and his terms as lord lieutenant of Ireland and governor general of Canada, recurring fascination with an extraordinary woman left him largely in the shade. The Aberdeen narrative of dutiful leadership belongs, however, fully to him as well. Incorporating him as an equal partner in Liberal Hearts and Coronets has been made much easier by Rupp and Taylor’s insights and by today’s studies of masculinities.25 John challenged his own time and still challenges ours to appreciate that masculinity is never a fixed endeavour and that it is central “to political activity.”26 Like femininity and feminism, masculinity is forged in precise contexts and is a product of many choices. Although he had the ancestry for it, John Campbell Gordon was never recognized as a great imperial proconsul. Hailed as the successor to the Victorian philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury, and an ally of feminists, workers, and Irish nationalists, he faced repeated doubts about his manliness, doubts that grew in direct proportion to Ishbel’s rising star. Such reception was not, of course, unique. Many contemporaries harboured similar doubts about the artistically inclined Marquess of Lorne (1845–1914), yet another Scottish aristocrat, Canadian governor general, and husband to Princess Louise, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria.27 The homosexual panic of an age that crucified the Anglo-Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) sometimes had the Aberdeens within its sights as well.28 The combination of John and Ishbel continually startled observers, who often interpreted their apparently egalitarian relationship as a gender-bending performance that called into question legitimate masculinity and femininity and threatened the sanctity of conventional rule. Such prejudice distorted many contemporary observations, and subsequent commentaries have been vulnerable to the same misstep. Liberal Hearts and Coronets breaks that cake of custom by beginning with Lord Aberdeen and treating him seriously as an aristocrat sympathetic to the furtherance of democracy and a man committed to equality with women. In the course of research and writing, I have incurred numerous debts to diverse literatures, some of them mentioned above, as I sought to locate the

Introduction 9

Aberdeens fully in the context of their times and places. Most central has been the overall contribution of feminist scholarship with its reminder that gender always matters in understanding both women and men. The insights of intersectional theory, which requires consideration of the ways that class, ethnicity and race, sexuality, and other sources of identity interact with gender to produce both privilege and disadvantage, have been especially important.29 Feminist and post-colonial scholars have provided ample reminders, as Leila Rupp, a prominent historian of feminist internationalism in this period, has argued, of “competing discourses, the dissolution of binary oppositions, and attention to the ways that meaning is constructed in specific historic contexts.”30 The worlds of liberalism, imperialism, and feminism in which the Aberdeens moved never ignored the full reality of who they were, and nor should we. This volume has also drawn on a diverse and rich scholarship that focuses on the various landscapes that shaped and inspired John and Ishbel. I have tried to make sense of how Scotland, England, Ireland, Canada, and the imperial world more generally informed their experiences. In particular, for Scotland, I have sought out authors who have addressed aristocratic landlordism, the relationship of liberalism to the Whig aristocracy, Scottish nationalism and imperialism, Presbyterian internecine conflicts, the politics of emigration and reform, and home-grown feminism. It was always significant that the Aberdeens shared in the imaginative and practical embrace of what Maureen Martin has rightly termed “the Mighty Scot.”31 Alvin Jackson’s The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707–2007 (2011) especially illuminated how Scotland’s challenge to the union differed in significant ways from Ireland’s, a difference that the Aberdeens, and many others, could not bridge. I have been further intrigued by debates over the role of liberalism in Scottish affairs and confirmed in my views when I.G.C. Hutchison, in a rare treatment, concluded that there was indeed “an Aberdeen group” composed of the Gordons, the Marjoribanks, and their relatives and supporters, who were significant in determining Liberal fortunes at the end of the nineteenth century.32 Marjory Harper’s many volumes emphasizing emigration from northeast Scotland and the contributions of the Aberdeens in sponsoring departures to Canada have supplied a similarly rich vein of interpretation.33 Leah Leneman’s invaluable The Scottish Suffragettes (2000) and A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland (1995), like Megan Smitley’s The Feminine Public Sphere: Middle-Class Women in Civic Life in Scotland (2009), helped me resist the biographer’s temptation to overestimate Ishbel Gordon’s significance. London and England more generally provided another critical venue for relevant scholarship. Liberal Hearts and Coronets has endeavoured to interpret its

10  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

subjects within the context of what we know as Victorian family and gender politics, especially among the aristocracy. The role of aristocratic and other elites, both in the House of Lords and in the Commons, but also in settlement houses and reform causes more generally, provided an essential backdrop. Unfortunately, it is still true, as Andrew Adonis concluded some time ago, that we know “little of the mass of peers [such as the Aberdeens] who were far less favourably placed, suffered real financial difficulties, but whose tenacity and continued sense of purpose were crucial to the peers’ ability to survive.”34 David Cannadine’s masterful assessment, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, was often persuasive and frequently entertaining, but I ultimately concluded that the Aberdeens were among exceptions to his argument. They were, as their mentor William E. Gladstone opined, “edifying,” far more useful and industrious than the majority of Cannadine’s unenlightened coterie. The Aberdeens represented the aristocratic equivalent of what Frank Prochaska has observed of British monarchs and their kin in his inspirational Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (1995). I also noted the omission of women from Cannadine’s work. They, he suggested, lacked the “wealth, status, power, and class consciousness, which in this period were predominantly masculine assets and attributes.”35 Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon does not fit that picture; her inclusion here demonstrates why women matter if you want to get the story right. London-born Ishbel could herself only be fully comprehended against the backdrop of possibilities for talented and reform-minded elite women living in the heart of Empire during an evangelical age. Despite some wonderful studies, such as Patricia Jalland’s Women, Marriage, and Politics, 1860–1914 (1986), K.D. Reynolds’ Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (1998), Amanda Vickery’s Women, Privilege, and Power: British Politics, 1750 to the Present (2001), and Angela Geddes Poole’s Philanthropy and the Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship (2014), aristocratic activists still merit further study. Fortunately, a few autobiographies, popular biographies, and diverse references survive to tell the tale of some of Ishbel’s extraordinary contemporaries, notably, Frances Balfour (1858–1931), Rosalind Howard (1845–1921), and Isabella Somerset (1851–1921). The British women’s movements and suffrage politics among the middle and, to some extent, working classes also did much to make the Aberdeens who they were. Superb studies, some mentioned above for Scotland, as well as those by Heloise Brown, Laura E.N. Mayhall, Martin Pugh, Claire Hirshfield, and Philippa Levine, generally support the broad definition of feminism that fits my findings as well. Although she neglects the Aberdeens, Hirshfield’s careful discussion of the feminism of the Women’s Liberal Federations has been especially valuable.36

Introduction 11

Fortunately, as well, scholars are now adding significantly to our understanding of Irish women and their relations to the public sphere and nationalism more generally. Very recently, D.A.J. MacPherson has illuminated the multiclass construction of women’s counter-publics in the United Irishwomen, the Gaelic League, and Sinn Féin. His work points to the important personal and ideological connections among both opponents and champions of Irish and feminist politics.37 As the broad recovery of Irish women’s history now underway has repeatedly reminded me,38 Ishbel Gordon was prominent but she was never alone nor necessarily a key figure in the construction of female activism. It is nonetheless true that the relations of imperial, national, and feminist politics overseen by the Aberdeens during the longest and arguably the most productive of Irish viceroyalties deserve closer attention.39 Aristocrats and women joined in the debates ushering in the “new liberalism,” which, as Andrew Vincent has reminded us, was so critical a force in Britain, and indeed the English-speaking world, in the early twentieth century.40 This doctrine’s theoretical embrace of a more inclusionary politics and the national good, and at least intermittent resistance to sectional and class prejudice, kept the Aberdeens in thrall to the end of their lives.41 They joined other advanced liberals in favouring state intervention on the side of the disadvantaged, including old age pensions and unemployment insurance, and alliances with workers and women. Their preference was the “big tent” political alliance of classes endorsed by the feminist liberal philanthropists described so well by Andrea Geddes Poole.42 They rejected both the Conservative and the Labour parties for setting classes against one another and remained hopeful about compromise and state action on behalf of the larger community. Even in its evolved form, liberalism nevertheless remained a far from inclusive ideology, as the essays in Eugenio Biagini’s Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals, and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (2002) very clearly attest.43 Ben Griffin’s brilliant appraisal of the contortions of parliamentary Liberals and others when confronting the possibility of legislative equality has also helped me better appreciate the resistance that destroyed so many hopes.44 Ireland offered a special dilemma for the couple and British politics more generally. Eugenio Biagini’s British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906 (2007) encouraged me to consider the Aberdeens in the context of the relationship of British liberalism and Home Rule. Post-colonial scholars, such as Catherine Hall, have also done much to illuminate the disheartening story of oppression that characterized London’s relationship with its western colony.45 In 1886, Home Rule and Irish well-being moved to the centre of Ishbel and John’s vision of a better world, superseding much else, including suffrage. In time, republicans eclipsed Aberdeen allies in the Irish Parliamentary Party but

12  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

neither group was notably sympathetic to feminism, whether Irish or AngloScottish. In contrast to their limited visibility in Irish scholarship, the Aberdeens have often figured relatively prominently in Canadian scholarly and popular histories of the period before the First World War. John Saywell rightly made the case many years ago that Ishbel’s Canadian diary constituted a major source on the politics of the 1890s. Another Canadian, historian John Kendle, proved very helpful in documenting the powerful influence of imperial federalism and Home Rule for both Canada and Ireland.46 This study also benefited from Phillip Buckner’s determined insistence on the significance of the colonies of settlement, notably Canada, to the British imperial project.47 James Belich’s broadranging Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939 (2009) very much invoked the drama of “explosive colonization” or “recolonization” that enthralled this imperial couple.48 In particular, the Aberdeens championed the centrality of the Anglo-Atlantic world. Canada, never India, was the real jewel in their crown. As further important reminders by David Wilson’s biography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Canada’s only assassinated politician, T.M. Devine’s history of the northern kingdom’s “global diaspora,” and Duncan Bell’s and Christian Paul Champion’s discussions of Greater Britain and British Canada have only further confirmed, this North American nation was intricately bound and rebound to the “homeland” isles in diverse and important ways.49 Like many others of their age, the Aberdeens identified Catholic-Protestant, ethnic, especially French-English but also Irish, and regional conflicts as the major threats to Canadian nationhood after Confederation in 1867. In conjuring up solutions, the Aberdeens found kindred spirits in Canadians such as the Liberal Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbiniére.50 As did that Protestant Quebecer, the Aberdeens banked on a French-English and Catholic-Protestant partnership, in which Scots had a key role and Indigenous people were to disappear, to challenge the American behemoth. Asian and African settlers formed no part of the imagined settlement. The possibility of a “Canadian” solution to political discord at home and in the Empire always inspired the Aberdeens who, as ranchers in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, delighted in naming themselves Canadians even as they ignored the very mixed-race families they helped to displace. The countess has, moreover, been credited with a major influence on Canadian women. Few interpreters of first wave feminism have failed to acknowledge her power, notably, in the National Council of Women of Canada and the Victorian Order of Nurses, although most, including my earlier self, have not always known entirely what to do with her. Scholars examining Lady Aber-

Introduction 13

deen’s viceregal efforts at historical commemoration and handicraft renewal in the Dominion and Ireland have, however, usefully dissected her enactment of gendered, raced, and classed tropes of domination.51 Despite those reservations, Ishbel Gordon has largely survived in public memory as representative of a heritage of public duty that later feminist governors general such as Adrienne Clarkson could proudly embrace.52 Such figures, like the queens they might represent, confirmed women’s right to public space and sometimes helped to make the Crown seem better than elected politicians. Studies of the imperial world more generally have also made their way into these pages, as my agreement with Belich’s perspective attests. London was the centre of an Empire that supplied much of the financial capital and power of Ishbel’s kin, while it set the diplomatic and military stage for many Gordons. Always drawing distinctions based on supposed class, race, or gender, imperialism has been a shifting force. Even as the Aberdeens abhorred brutality in imperial relations and championed anti-slavery53 and anti-lynching campaigns, they often took for granted the at least short-term deficiencies of peoples they deemed less civilized and trusted that the best Britain had to offer was the appropriate antidote to failings elsewhere. Hopes rooted in the Christianity and the science of the day provided a stern requirement that the British live up to the highest ideals and shamed them when they failed. Just as central was the faith so well described by Amanda Andrews and others that elite women had a special job to perform in ensuring British rectitude.54 As Andrews properly concluded, Ishbel was the epitome of the “new” viceregal women: she was “never merely ornamental.”55 Current understanding of international feminism, sometimes effectively another form of imperialism, owes much to post-colonial and anti-racist scholarship. The global feminist politics, which engaged the Aberdeens, routinely privileged European and elite perspectives and interests over those on the periphery.56 The International Council of Women, which figures significantly here, has been identified as particularly conservative regarding race and class.57 In their frequent presumption of superiority, its activists proved often, hardly surprisingly, akin to the “new” interwar internationalists associated with the League of Nations, which has been effectively summed up by Mark Mazower as “no enchanted place.”58 Such reservations are often persuasive but recurring recognition by feminist scholars that global feminism, for all its manifest failings, forged unequalled networks in opposition to pervasive misogyny and denial of equality has been influential here.59 Early internationalists’ frequent espousal of a shared women’s culture, predicated on maternal feeling, provided a significant, if always contingent, tool for improving lives. Ultimately, Liberal Hearts and Coronets agrees with a recent conclusion that global feminism in all

14  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

its forms “is perhaps the world’s most widespread, long-standing, persistent and effective movement for social and cultural change – a fact that goes far to explain the virulent hostility that it often evokes.”60 Liberal Hearts and Coronets takes up the Aberdeen story in six substantive chapters. The first ushers in John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, the unexpected heir to a historic earldom in northeastern Scotland. The young Johnny inherited a powerful aristocratic ancestry and evangelical concerns and sympathies that set the terms of his entire life. His grandfather, the “premier earl,” George Hamilton-Gordon (1784–1860), cast a long heroic shadow as a devoted, often tragic, husband and father and much-maligned prime minister. Athletic prowess and an Oxford degree set out a conventional path to power, but family influences and religious faith counselled otherwise for this book’s subject. By the time John married Ishbel, in a society wedding, he was searching for a role that would express his broadening sympathies as a progressive landlord and critic of foreign adventuring and domestic distress. His early years laid the foundations of a man determined to live up to principles of service. Chapter 2 brings the younger Ishbel Maria Hogg Marjoribanks, the daughter of a wealthy banking and brewing family, into the picture. Backed by fortunes made in the course of Empire, notably in India, her relatives took the stage as influential Liberals and reformers. Intimate ties with the Conservative Party nevertheless made them, much like the Gordons, a family with influential political networks at the highest level of British power. Like her future spouse, Ishbel dealt with male kin whose lives failed to confirm preferred masculine scripts. Her own intellect, energy, and body – statuesque since puberty – similarly suggested the uncertainty of conventionally gendered lives. As a girl and an adult, she would not be easily contained by stays or by men. Any prospect of immediate liberation was, however, cut short when, as a teenager, she lost her heart. A young earl with a sorrowful history offered a socially advantageous match to an ambitious family even as his evangelical sympathies and good looks captured a teenager. Chapter 3 considers the foundations of the Gordon-Marjoribanks partnership and its opportunities for mutual education. From their honeymoon in Egypt with their rescue of young slaves until their first Irish viceroyalty in 1886, the couple secured their dynastic future with the birth of five children and built on family traditions of advanced landlordism and urban reform. As sympathies evolved notably, but not only, under the influence of Scottish evolutionary theologian Henry Drummond (1851–1897), John moved from the Conservative to the Liberal benches in the House of Lords and proved a sensitive lord high commissioner to the Church of Scotland and Irish viceroy, while Ishbel initiated her career as an energetic and reform-minded countess in

Introduction 15

Scotland, England, and Ireland. Mentored by Liberal leader and family friend William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), they remained devoted partisans even as the mass of Scottish Whigs rejected Home Rule for Ireland and embraced a Unionism that eventually drew many into the Conservative Party. By 1886, loyal Liberal aristocrats with a growing reputation for progressive convictions, not to mention seemingly deep pockets, were invaluable. Chapter 4 considers the Aberdeens in the wider imperial world from 1886 to 1898. During these years, beginning with a world tour and then extended visits to Canada, they became ardent apostles of imperial federalism, “home rule all round,” or what their friend, the Scottish Liberal leader Lord Rosebery (1847–1929), hailed as a “commonwealth of nations.” From the first viceroyalty, a reformed partnership with Ireland always lay at the heart of their politics. A Canadian governor generalship (from 1893 to 1898) furthered their commitment to the possibilities of a liberal Empire in which self-governing member states, at least in the case of the white dominions, would lead humanity. Ishbel Gordon’s education on the executives of the Women’s Liberal Federations, the International Council of Women, and the National Council of Women of Canada further convinced her of the continuing benefits of elite leadership and the necessity of compromise and conciliation if social improvement, in general, and greater equality for women, in particular, were to be won. Her caution then and later irritated activists enraged by fitful progress and by misogynists determined to resist every advance. It nevertheless also reassured more conservative and fearful communities of women and men. Chapter 5 begins with the Aberdeens’ return to the United Kingdom to help restore the Liberal Party fractured as it was over Ireland, foreign affairs, and social and industrial policy. Negative characterizations of the couple grew more frequent as gossip spread stories of rule by servants and wives and even of homosexual intrigue. Recurring hostility reinforced caution even as the couple resumed philanthropic and reform initiatives and sought to craft a Liberal response to the South African War. Lady Aberdeen encouraged the Scottish and English Women’s Liberal Federations and the ICW into conciliatory paths. The result frequently subordinated the suffrage cause, to Home Rule in the case of the former and to the ideal of a membership inclusive of progressive and conservative women in the latter. A tidal wave of family tragedy darkened lives even as John and Ishbel grasped the prized nettle of the Irish viceroyalty from 1905 to 1915. During those years, their demonstration of “welfare monarchism” and “ornamentalism” collided with growing republicanism and a Celtic renaissance. The First World War precipitated their departure from the Emerald Isle, their retreat to the United States, and the near-collapse of the

16  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

Liberal Party. Home Rule for Ireland and suffrage for women came too late to rescue political reputations. Chapter 6 treats the years from 1915 to 1939, when these disappointed Liberal reformers, and John in particular, were past their prime. He died in 1934 and Ishbel five years later. In their retirement retreat at the House of Cromar, north of their traditional Haddo estates, they were invisible in many key domestic issues of the period, such as the 1926 general strike. John Campbell Gordon seemed a lonely Liberal outpost in the Lords and Ishbel played but little role in Britain’s interwar feminist debates. Increasingly celebrated as aging exemplars, near-icons, in effect, of marital bliss, progressive liberalism, feminist heterosexuality, and internationalism, they nevertheless lent their name and sometimes their shoulder to the wheel of good causes. Their publicly celebrated golden wedding anniversary in 1927 again made the case for elite devotion to duty, as did the countess’s testimonial, The Windsors, ten years later. The new League of Nations joined the International Council of Women in representing the Aberdeens’ hopes for global peace and arbitration under moral leadership. Even as energy seeped away with old age, economic collapse and the rise of fascism threatened all their values. The failure of the Liberal Party to heal divisions and to regain power, and the threat of reaction at home and abroad, dampened even determined optimism. By the mid-1930s, Lady Aberdeen contemplated allies in popular fronts and was outraged by fascism. At her death in 1939, even as she continued to try to rally the ICW, she stood with the opponents of Hitler. In that dirty decade, liberal hearts and coronets proved no match for realpolitik. The Conclusion then returns to the overarching question: why are the Aberdeens, this atypical lord and lady worth recollecting?

John Campbell Gordon, the Earl of Aberdeen, c. 1877. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Ishbel Marjoribanks at age three, painted by Eden Upton Eddis, from the Haddo House Collection. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Ishbel Marjoribanks, about 17. (Earl of Aberdeen)

John Gordon and Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon, shortly after their wedding, 1877. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Ishbel in her presentation gown, 1879. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Rt. Hon. W.E. Gladstone and Mrs Gladstone and Professor Henry Drummond, with the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen at Dollis Hill, Willesden, 1885. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Ishbel with her three older children, Marjorie, George (Lord Haddo), and Dudley, early 1884. (Earl of Aberdeen)

National Council of Women of Canada with Ishbel in the centre, mid-1890s. (Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN 3366135)

King George and Queen Mary with the Aberdeens, Garden Party, Viceregal Lodge, Ireland, 1911. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Aberdeens in the kitchen at Cromar in the 1920s, helping to mix the Christmas pudding. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Earl of Athlone; Col. Farquaharson of Invercauld; H.H. Princess Maud of Fife; H.R.H. The Princess Royal, Duchess of Fife; H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone; Lady May Cambridge; H.R.H. The Duke of York; H.RH. Prince Henry; H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: Lord Aberdeen, 1921. (Earl of Aberdeen)

The Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temai, 1925. (Earl of Aberdeen)

Chapter One

The Making of a Responsible Man: John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon to 1877

John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 3 August 1847.1 He was the fourth of six children and youngest of the three sons of George Hamilton-Gordon, fifth Earl of Aberdeen, and Mary Baillie Hamilton-Gordon (1814–1900). He was not expected to inherit the title. In his early twenties, however, his prospects changed dramatically. By 1872, he was legally acknowledged as the Earl of Aberdeen. Five years later, he married Ishbel Maria Hogg Marjoribanks. The years from birth to marriage set the course for the making of a man, whose claims for leadership rested on conciliation and inclusion. Not for nothing did his family nickname him “Gentle Johnny.” Such characterizations do not readily fit the profile for male leadership in his day or later. Leaders are expected to have the “right stuff.” That essential ingredient is highly gendered. In particular, “the best men” ideally mobilize a range of preferred qualities – commonly “industry, self-denial, independence, virility, physicality”2 – that are likely to be particularly associated with certain classes and ethnic and racial communities. Such paragons’ supposed nearmonopoly of favoured traits confirms a right to rule over women and lesser men. As an adult, John Campbell Gordon was a fine athlete, active Christian, devoted husband and father of five, and ardent railway enthusiast, as well as Earl (later Marquess) of Aberdeen (and Temair), high commissioner to the Church of Scotland (1881–86; 1915), twice lord lieutenant of Ireland (1886; 1905–15), governor general of Canada (1893–98), and holder of a multitude of lesser offices. As the aristocratic representative of a fabled warrior race – the Scots – who promised to save the British Empire from the emasculating dangers of modernity,3 and scion of a storied Scottish family that included a British prime minister, he appeared especially favoured when it came to the gifts of hegemonic masculinity.

18  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

In the distribution of imperial posts and titles, Aberdeen’s obvious credentials, not to mention his kinship with leading Tories and Liberals, gained him clear preferment in the years before the First World War. Yet, for all his tenure of important offices during critical shifts in the governance of the British Empire and in the relations of women and men and other citizens, he has lacked a biographer. In fact, his contributions have been readily ignored. This chapter sets out to explore his origins and begin to explain how he emerged to become a prominent Liberal and an attractive consort for one of the era’s leading female activists. John Campbell Gordon was a far more complicated figure than has been commonly appreciated. Like his clansman, Charles George Gordon (1833– 1885), the imperial “hero” who died melodramatically at Khartoum in 1885,4 this “mighty Scot” proved an uncomfortable reminder to both contemporaries and subsequent observers that masculinity is fluid and unpredictable. While Johnny’s reputation, unlike the other Gordon’s, was never complicated by a predilection for bathing boys, it was dogged by the implication that he did not pass his era’s “trials of masculinity.”5 During the middle part of his life, critics increasingly damned him as lacking “a masculine hand,”6 while later scholars have seemed hard put to appraise him, other than as less colourful and dynamic than the woman with whom he elected to share his life.7 That slighting is closely connected to observers’ difficulties with his negotiation of masculinity and his penchant for affiliations and alliances that called into question monopolies of power. This chapter first points to the value of recent masculinities’ studies in coming to terms with John Campbell Gordon and then chronicles the Aberdeen heritage and his life before marriage to the dynamic Ishbel Marjoribanks. By the time John wed, he was already a man distinguished by ancestry and conviction. Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinities Masculinities are multiple and relational, forged in specific and often highly contested contexts: their “meanings can be understood only if we consider them in relation to femininity, other masculinities, and the ambiguous category of effeminacy.”8 Such relationships were all invoked as John Campbell Gordon tried to sort out what it meant to be a good man in an imperial age. Historians, such as John Tosh, have reminded us that individuals are gendered in ways that are essential to the imaginary and the practice of nations and transnational communities. It very much mattered that Gordon was a Scot and an aristocrat mustered in the forces of imperial governance in the late nineteenth and early

The Making of a Responsible Man  19

twentieth centuries. In obvious ways, his cultural and class position offered him the prospect of what masculinities scholar R.A.J. Connell has termed “culturally exalted” or hegemonic masculinity.9 His rank, his wealth, and his high offices, with their associated gender regimes, gave him claim of dominance over both women and subordinated (or marginalized) masculinities, notably, his Scottish tenants, the urban poor, Irish peasants, and Canadian colonials. While many men in every period do not conform to the prescription of hegemonic masculinity, many are, as Connell has noted, effectively “complicit” in its ideology and practice of power.10 John Campbell Gordon stands out, however, as someone seen to compromise conventional gender and other hierarchies, a predilection that was commonly regarded as potentially or actually unmanly. As Demetrakis Z. Demetriou has reminded us in his critique of Connell, dominant masculinity is far from “a closed and unified totality that incorporates no otherness.”11 Various versions of what it means to be an elite man exist. Gordon came to maturity in a period when a significant part of the British aristocracy, including his own father, rejected the profligacy associated with the Regency period to seek salvation in the evangelical virtues of restraint, domesticity, and hard work often linked to the rise of the middle class.12 Good men were disciplined, home-building, and industrious patriarchs, whose rule would be tempered by their respect and love for maternally inclined but similarly responsible and hard-working partners. Those dreams of domestic but still superior men remained vibrant in many British communities throughout Gordon’s lifetime.13 They too, however, met serious challenge. A nineteenthcentury counter-narrative dismissed domesticity, in particular, as “unglamorous, unfulfilling and – ultimately – unmasculine.”14 A “generation of permanent bachelors – men such as [Cecil] Rhodes, [Herbert] Kitchener, or [Charles George] Gordon – who eschewed family life in favour of the attractions of overseas adventure” offered rival claims for masculine authority.15 The rise of such men to public prominence, like the “playboys” of the 1950s and beyond,16 readily made male domesticity and alliances with women appear somehow less virile and their male advocates less suited to dominion. Nor were muscular imperialists the only contenders for “alpha male” in John Gordon’s period. An elite group commonly known as “the Souls,” one of whose leaders was Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930), John’s “best man” at his wedding to Ishbel, later again Britain’s Conservative prime minister from 1902 to 1905 and still another Scot astride the Empire, mounted their own version of “what constituted meritorious performance in government” and much else.17 The Souls’ preference for scepticism, self-conscious cleverness, and aestheticism, not to mention sometimes a penchant for sexual promiscuity, invoked in its turn echoes of a masculinist order reminiscent of Regency rakes, although

20  Liberal Hearts and Coronets

Balfour himself sometimes faced innuendos about his own masculinity.18 Panics over homosexuality, from long-haired men to short-haired women, and the particular association of the former with aristocratic vice, more generally, in figures such as Lord Byron (George Gordon, a distant relative of John’s; 1788–1824), Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), and “Prince Eddy” (christened “Albert Victor,” the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; 1864–1892), further complicated the choice of masculine scripts.19 When it came to being a high-ranking British male, the imperial age offered uncertain terrain. When Aberdeen chose to live by an essentially domestic and evangelical code in the context of a society overwrought about suspected gender inversion and the New Woman, Aberdeen ran the risk of seeming effeminate, anachronistic, or déclassé. All such associations potentially compromised his authority as an imperial proconsul. John Campbell Gordon did, however, have the advantage of Scottish lineage. The nineteenth century through such influences as Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, as Maureen Martin has reminded us, recast Highlanders and by implication all men of the northern kingdom as potential heroes.20 Their hypermasculinity promised to counterbalance any modern (and southern) threat of effeminacy. One less obvious alternative in the competition for masculine legitimacy and the strain that it provoked was a search for allies, partners who could countenance or enlarge the imaginative embrace of masculinity. Throughout his long life, John Campbell Gordon repeatedly chose a “politics of alliances,” the very strategy which Connell endorses as the most effective counter to hegemonic masculinity.21 While Demetriou warns that the negotiation of masculine hybridity can be another way of repositioning and ultimately shoring up patriarchy,22 doors may also be opened to a more inclusive politics. The case of Gordon and some of his contemporaries such as the Liberal MP Henry Fawcett (1833–1884), husband of the British suffrage leader Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929), suggests that alliance building can be meaningful, involving empathetic recognition of the needs of others and at least a beginning in the construction of a more egalitarian politics.23 That possibility lies at the heart of male feminism and helps explain why John Campbell Gordon came to be admired by the international women’s movement of his day and held suspect or even traitorous by many contemporary defenders of the status quo. The Powerful Aberdeen Legacy The course of a life notable for its sympathy for inclusion, conciliation, and tolerance was set early. The Gordons had long been great landholders in Scotland, a nation that increasingly identified as a “fountainhead of primal masculinity

The Making of a Responsible Man  21

imagined to virilize England and Englishmen.”24 Kilt-wearing, dirk-bearing, bagpipe-playing Scots, like the Gurkhas and the Sikhs also mustered in imperial legions, notably together in the Indian Army that fought in the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878–8025 – which roused John’s ire in the House of Lords – challenged the potential effeminacy and degeneracy of the modern age. The recurring portrayal of John Campbell Gordon as a bearded Scot, like his enrolment in the Aberdeen Rifle Volunteers as a young man, drew inevitably on such associations. This secular version of a powerful ethnic muscularity claimed authoritative space for male leadership and provided an obvious rebuttal to charges of uxoriousness. While loyalty was the stock-in-trade of Victoria’s Scottish regiments, rebellion was nevertheless just as obvious a northern legacy. When John Campbell Gordon publicly traced his pedigree, he revealingly highlighted dissenters. Through his mother, he claimed a forebear “who suffered martyrdom for his adherence to the cause of the Scottish Covenanters.” The paternal line offered the inspiration of “another direct ancestor, Sir John Gordon of Haddo, [who] was executed for his adherence to the opposite opinions.” The lesson he drew from such prized forebears was his own capacity for a broader and more measured vision: “I may hope to have inherited some degree of impartiality and comprehensiveness of view in regard to such questions,” namely, politics and religion.26 When he invoked oppositional traditions, Gordon was claiming, not so subtly, legitimacy for the life he himself carved out. His lifelong celebration of Scottish culture and advocacy of a Cabinet minister charged with that land’s affairs, like his searching out of clansmen and women who immigrated throughout the Empire and seizing opportunities to speak his modest Gaelic, attested to the continuing strength he drew from his ethnic identity. In turn, his ethnic identity did much to legitimate his claims to authority. Family tragedies shaped John Campbell Gordon into a man with a heightened sense of the inestimable value of human relations, especially but not only with wives and mothers. The grandfather of our subject, George HamiltonGordon, whom his cousin, the poet Lord Byron styled (albeit rather sardonically), “the travelled Thane, Athenian Aberdeen,”27 became the fourth earl of Aberdeen. This followed a childhood and youth marked by the loss at age seven of his father, George Gordon, Lord Haddo (the courtesy title of the Aberdeen heir; 1764–1791), at age eleven of his mother, Charlotte Baird (d. 1795), and the brutal disregard of a grandfather, George Gordon (1722–1801), popularly known as the “wicked earl.” That predecessor’s life, awash with bigamy, mistresses, and illegitimate offspring, alienated his daughter-in-law and her seven youngsters. With the premature death of Haddo, they were left, for all the evident virtue of the widow, in distress and dependent on the charity of others.28

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One lesson was clear: vulnerable women and children needed protection from violent and negligent men. The new heir and soon responsible eldest child, George, quickly rejected aristocratic debauchery for intellectual accomplishment, political service, and romantic love. As a fourteen-year-old, as was his right by Scottish law and in a deliberate slight to his grandfather, he chose powerful politicians William Pitt the Younger (prime minister, 1783–1801 and 1804–06; 1759–1806) and Henry Dundas (later first Lord Melville; 1742–1811) as his legal guardians.29 Such flouting of conventional and arbitrary authority and deliberate searching out of responsible patriarchs made George another memorable progenitor. A great Scottish estate, Haddo House, in Aberdeenshire, inherited at age seventeen but regarded as barren and uncivilized until he spent a lifetime beginning its recuperation, further secured personal and political authority as well as a considerable legacy for his heirs. The young peer became noted as an improving and liberal landlord who took pride in turning no one off the estate.30 In the mid-nineteenth century, François Guizot (1787–1874), the French statesman, historian, and friend of this Aberdeen, characterized the ancestral holdings and relations as essentially feudal, both highly personal and hierarchical. The prime minister’s grandson, John Campbell Gordon, preferred to characterize “the bond between the old laird and his tenantry” as “that of the family.” The tenants were credited as both proud and fond of their distinguished representative while he, as a principled aristocratic chief, prized and rewarded their sturdy independence and loyalty.31 Responsible kinship or clanship with its natural hierarchy of obligation and respect supplied a powerful influence for this aristocratic family. After a distinguished diplomatic career revealing some preference for mediation as well as admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte, Britain’s pre-eminent adversary of the age, the earl became prime minister in the Whig-Peelite coalition of 1852–55. Knowing something himself of such juggling acts, John Campbell Gordon later reflected on the inevitable strain of maintaining relations among dissident factions: “His Government was, of course, a Coalition, which invariably means occasion and need for most skilful leadership. It was also composed largely of men, not only of the highest ability, but of strong individuality and no small ambition.”32 Another observer, Catherine Glynne Gladstone (1812–1900), wife of the later prime minister, was less than kind in characterizing the Aberdeen under whom her husband served: “‘two people may go to him with opposite views upon any subject and each come away satisfied that Lord Aberdeen agrees with himself.’”33 Whatever that prime minister’s personal responsibility, the Aberdeen government fractured and fell during the Crimean War (1853–56), for which disaster Aberdeen was regularly blamed. His inability

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to maintain peace led him to withdraw from public life, ultimately to declare that he would never build a church on his own estate since “his hands, like those of David, were stained with blood, and that he must leave it to his successor to build a house for God.”34 While the premier earl’s reputation remained controversial, his principles earned him the “lasting respect and admiration” of his younger Cabinet colleague, the future Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, whose fondness would eventually extend to the grandson.35 The latter, in turn, battered by pervasive criticism of his own role as a peace-minded Irish viceroy, first for Gladstone in 1886 and then again in 1905–15, took great comfort in insisting on behalf of his ancestor that “within fifty years all the main points in the [Crimean] dispute which originally were regarded as essential on behalf of Great Britain and her Allies were, one by one, conceded.”36 Britain’s unhappy Irish debacle would end much the same way, with the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Politics was only one part of what made the prime minister’s life so powerful an influence on subsequent generations. Family lore emphasized private sorrows: not only the premature deaths of parents but of wives and children, and the debilitating illness of his dearly loved heir and namesake, the fifth earl (1816–1864), father of this volume’s subject. That heavy toll, far from remarkable in the age, encouraged religiosity and, in some instances as with John, a sense of humanity’s common fate. After 1812, his grandfather wore only black in memory of his great romantic love, Lady Catherine Elizabeth (1784–1812), daughter of the first Marquess of Abercorn, dead after only seven years of marriage. Their one son and three daughters all predeceased their father, keeping him in near-perpetual anxiety and mourning. In 1815, to secure his line and to give his then still surviving offspring a mother, George Gordon, the future prime minister, wed his first wife’s widowed sister-in-law, Harriet Douglas Hamilton (1792–1833), and added her name to his, a combination that lasted until 1890. Sadness dogged that difficult relationship although four sons, including our subject’s father, and one daughter outlived their father. Concerns about his children’s future, not to mention his earlier experience parenting his own siblings, suggest why this Aberdeen helped curb Scottish entails (the Aberdeen Act 1825) to allow proprietors to make provision for non-heirs, a provision that his own eldest son, George John James Hamilton-Gordon, would utilize to benefit his own younger offspring.37 In coping with heartbreak, the fourth earl became notorious for public reserve. As Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, first Baron Lord Stanmore (1829–1912), his son and biographer, later observed, “the almost feminine tenderness of his disposition was hidden under a cold and somewhat stern exterior.”38 While his

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grandson Johnny had, in contrast, an early reputation for easy temper, W.T. Stead, English muckraking journalist and friend of Johnny, suggested that the characters of the two Gordons were essentially similar: “beneath all this extreme geniality of demeanor there is concealed a strong character, all the more resolute to carry out its end because it is extremely indifferent as to the mere formalities of ceremony and etiquette.”39 Whatever their sensitivities, both men demonstrated a stubborn adherence to their own codes of manly behaviour. John Campbell Gordon’s father was likewise distinguished as a peer devoted to family life. Fighting what may have been tuberculosis much of his life, this George was long an object of intense paternal concern for the prime minister. Much like the marriage idealized by the premier earl with his first wife, he forged an intimate marital partnership with Mary Baillie (1814–1890), sister of the tenth Earl of Haddington, of the Reverend Honourable John Baillie (1810–1888), canon of York, of Admiral Thomas Baillie (1811–1889), of Charles Baillie, Lord Jerviswoode, lawyer and Conservative politician (1804–1879), and of Lady Grisell Baillie (1822–1891), first deaconess of the Church of Scotland (1888).40 That assembly of kin provided a powerful network of critical observers and sometime allies that the self-conscious John never forgot. Mary Baillie was especially beloved by her father-in-law, who saw in her much of the love he himself had lost. The deep Christian faith of the young couple encouraged close engagement in the lives of their own six daughters and sons,41 commitment to helping Scottish tenants and the London poor, and, it was said, an inclination on George’s part, to “fly with his wife and children to a distant land, where, being quite unknown, they might commence a new life with fewer outward impediments, and spend their days in prayer, and praise, and preaching to others Christ’s gospel of salvation.”42 As a Liberal Member of Parliament for Aberdeenshire (1854–1860), Lord Haddo also revealed pragmatic sensibilities, favouring “some measure of reform and readjustment, with respect to the inequalities in our system of representation, in order to allay popular discontent and reconcile different classes in society by timely and just concessions.” For him, like for his youngest son John, reconciliation and justice under responsible Christian patriarchs promised social peace. As a God-fearing landlord he, together with his wife, set an influential example in setting up “evening schools for the young farmservants, – both the young men and the young women.” Their success was assured by the assistance of “the wives or daughters of the principal farmers” who offered both practical and academic instruction. In 1865, thirteen such schools existed on estate lands, providing an influential model for John Campbell and Ishbel.43

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As a Liberal MP, George Hamilton-Gordon also withstood ridicule from his contemporaries when he urged the elimination of government support for art schools employing naked models. For the evangelical enthusiast, such display constituted “an outrage on public decency and public morals.”44 John Campbell Gordon’s later support for the sexual purity movement shared some of the same inspiration. His father’s denunciation of British and French involvement in the Second Opium War (1856–60) against China as “dishonourable” made him equally suspect among the era’s ardent proponents of British imperium. In his resistance to the opium trade, George Gordon found himself in a crossparty alliance with the Conservative peer Lord Shaftesbury (1801–1885), the leading aristocratic humanitarian of his age.45 Some two decades later, John Campbell Gordon would follow in their footsteps in the House of Lords by defending China’s right to regulate the traffic in the drug.46 George’s willingness to question party lines in both domestic and foreign affairs set the Scottish landlord apart from many of his contemporaries and reinforced the family reputation among admirers for integrity and principle and among critics for unreliability and puritanism. Inheritance of the earldom removed George from the Commons even as worsening health and deepening religiosity fostered preoccupation with salvation, family, domestic philanthropies, and foreign missions. At his death in 1864, biographers hailed his saintliness and good works, a reputation in stark contrast to that of the “wicked earl” and much less secular than that of his own father, the prime minister. In face of persisting ill health, George was widely applauded for his “work of faith and labour among the poor and the destitute” in London, Scotland, and Egypt.47 Whether establishing a boys’ industrial school, presiding at the meetings of the Scottish National Bible Society, or presenting “every tenant on the estate with a neatly-bound copy of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’” on the occasion of his eldest son’s majority,48 he stood out as an evangelical aristocrat determined to do good on his own lands and beyond. That unconventional stance always remained firmly rooted in family relations. When his eldest daughter, Mary (1844–1914), married her cousin Walter Hugh Hepburne-Scott (1838–1920), eldest son of Lord Polwarth, the fifth earl declared, “‘I have the happiness to know that my future son-in-law is not ashamed to confess his desire to live for something better than the world can bestow; and that my daughter and her husband do not hesitate to avow, on this their wedding-day, their intention of devoting themselves, and all they have, to the service of the Lord Jesus.’”49 Letters between George Hamilton-Gordon and Mary Baillie and their children, preserved in the Haddo archives, repeatedly document similar intimacy, affection, and insistence on superior moral behaviour. In some ways, the couple

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themselves reveal the affectionate negotiation of “intimacy, friendship and duty” within a fluid domestic patriarchy that Katie Barclay has recently very effectively described for the Scotland of their day.50 Neither parent was distant; both appeared deeply interested in the salvation and behaviour of their youngsters. As long as he was able, George taught all his children “reading, grammar, history, geography, arithmetic, and, as the boys grew up, Latin and other higher branches.” He also encouraged the latter “at cricket, teaching them boating, fishing, and other manly recreations.” He was especially celebrated for nursing them “in sickness – often soothing their restless hours, during the silent watches of the night, when his own emaciated and wearied frame sadly needed repose.” This reputation for self-sacrifice contributed to what subsequent hagiographers reckoned his “all-powerful influence over them, and of their profound reverence and ardent affection towards him.” He further secured his authority by barring both daughters and sons from any outside influences considered impure even as he determined to make Sundays all the more “joyous and happy.” His wife shared his determination to rear children in their ardent evangelicalism, applauding the influence and affirming the near-legend of “‘his own constant self-denial, the extreme simplicity of his habits, and his contentment and enjoyment in the most natural and child-like pleasures.’”51 Mary Baillie Hamilton-Gordon also emphasized that her husband’s oversight did not end with his family. His care was readily extended to the “temporal and spiritual well-being of his servants” even after they left his employ.52 The couple supported Sabbath schools, prayer meetings, inspirational literature, and healthy recreation for tenants and labourers. They constructed additional cottages so that young couples could escape promiscuity by early marriage and denounced Scotland’s traditional hiring fairs for fostering unsettled employment and general immorality.53 When he was in England, George served as a district visitor to the poor in London, Brighton, and Blackheath. Not surprisingly, evangelical observers hailed this Christian landlord for acting on his faith that “landed property – indeed all property” was “a solemn trust committed to him by God.”54 Years after his father’s premature death, John Campbell Gordon continued to testify to paternal influence. Even as he himself found it difficult to refuse requests for money and became a ready donor to diverse causes and individuals, he extolled his forebear’s “habit of self-effacement”55 and the fairness that led to the bequest of equally large sums to both sons and daughters, sufficient so that all could marry when they chose and a significant burden on the estate.56 In her thirty-six years of widowhood, John Campbell Gordon’s mother, the Dowager Countess of Aberdeen, ultimately well known in her turn as generous and devout, was similarly much celebrated as a model parent. While her

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husband received lengthy tributes after his death, her sway over her offspring was confirmed by decades of regular correspondence that sought and valued her opinions. During the lengthy absences of John Campbell from Scotland, she maintained active philanthropies, notably but not only as president of the Scottish Girls’ Friendly Society, which confirmed the family’s reputation as progressive and humane. Such demonstrations of aristocratic benevolence were far from inconsequential. They helped foster “the sense of being one organic community” that helped secure not only mutual regard but deferential relations between lairds and tenants.57 Aristocratic philanthropies and demonstrations of respect for industry and loyalty, ultimately, like those of the royal family often ensconced just down the way at Balmoral Castle, enhanced social stability, especially in northeast Scotland, a region that escaped much of the unrest characteristic of the Western Isles and the north in the period. They constituted a vital part of the Aberdeen inheritance. By the time that Johnny came to the title, his evangelical family offered a version of the “middle-class domesticity, piety, morality, and seriousness” that had earlier redeemed Victoria and her consort from the ill repute of Georgian excesses. The good works of such evangelical aristocrats as the Gordons ultimately consolidated “their rule with a revived and reinvigorated theory of paternalism.”58 Such effort curbed the general pattern of decline and fall otherwise charted so memorably by David Cannadine. The Making of Good Sons When their father, accompanied by their mother, sought to recover his health and to spread the Christian message in Egypt, the second son, James Henry, or Jem (1845–1868) as he was known, and the third, Johnny – the subject of this volume – attended first a small parsonage school in Surrey where religious as well as sporting interests marked the daily calendar. Writing in the late 1850s to his parents, the youngest son typically described both a very “exiting [sic]” cricket match with a local team of collier boys and inspirational lectures from missionaries visiting from India.59 Johnny also admired his clerical tutor’s establishment of a school for drunkards, asking his mother if she thought “it would bother grandpapa when he is so ill, if I were to write and ask him for something for the school. I am so anxious to know. Mr R[enaud]60 wd be so very grateful.”61 Youthful letters home, commonly written under the supervision of tutors, similarly recorded John’s testing in “Geography, History, and universal history” where “I was the top in good marks!!” as well as his spiritual progress.62 Such communication clearly pleased watchful parents while their loving and high-minded replies inspired the young scholar to redouble efforts to win approval.

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Johnny and Jem next attended Hampshire’s relatively luxurious Cheam preparatory school, which was strengthening its reputation for academic and spiritual excellence with the leadership of its noted Anglican headmaster (1855–90), Robert Stammers Tabor (1819–1909). Under him, the masters were likened “to the disciplines of Jesus Christ,”63 and instruction regularly directed elite pupils to both global and more local duties. Johnny reported enthusiastically listening to a speech by an “escaped slave,” who made it very clear what moral position should be taken on the American Civil War.64 The intended target did not, however, always welcome the school’s religious demands. One letter home described Tabor’s earnest championship of confirmation in the Anglican faith: “He says he looks upon it as an open confession before men, that we will serve the Lord. Somehow I cannot exactly look forward to it.”65 The young John Campbell seemed, in contrast, considerably more at ease with the liberal ecumenicalism, not to mention the Scottish nationalism, of the teachers he next encountered at St Andrews. His stay there as a teenager, rather than Harrow or Eton – the destination of most of Cheam’s English boys, such as Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) – before proceeding to Oxford or Cambridge, could only reinforce his sense of a distinctive part to play in the work of the world. During his first years as a boarder, Johnny regularly confessed to “being very sad” in missing his parents and worrying about his father.66 Sketching boats and biblical stories brought consolation, but he struggled not to be “too sensitive” which he knew upset his mother. When she accompanied her husband in his search for good health, he assured her that she would “have been quite pleased if you had seen me” and “I am not so unhappy as I might expect to be this time.”67 He could not refrain, however, from concluding a description of a happy day spent exploring a cave and a gravel pit, with a confession to his father that “it makes me feel rather sad when I think of you going away. How empty the house must be now.”68 Sensitivity extended well beyond his family. Animals of every sort engaged his concern. He rejected the casual brutality that readily characterized much contemporary recreation for his sex, typically confessing to his mother: “A good many boys keep stag-beetles in boxes. I do not think I shall keep any. Do you advise me to do so? It seems somehow rather cruel, for they are always being pulled about, or pinched.”69 By age thirteen, Johnny, like most adolescents, had emerged as an uncertain mixture of child and adult. Letters home conveyed pleasure in sketching “engines and tram-ways and those sort of things” alongside more mature observations, such as those on the Oxford election of a professor of Sanscrit. When “a good Christian man” secured the post, he dubbed the contest especially “exciting.”70

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On moving away from intimate parsonage classes to a bigger school, Johnny claimed to “like Cheam very much,” notably, its “remarkably good dinners … and as far as I can see, wholesome ones.” He also committed himself to doing better: “I will try and behave so that you will find improvement in me when you come back … I also, I am sorry to say, often find my thoughts wandering at family prayers. I like to tell you all these things. I really feel sorry that you had not such a good report of me from Clandown [the parsonage school]. It will be so very nice when you get back.”71 While Cheam recruited the offspring of the wealthy, the Gordon boys were nevertheless counselled to be frugal and responsible. Jem, as a matter of course, knew to justify a “new pair of cricket trousers” to his mother, explaining that he had very much outgrown his old ones but that they would still do “very well” for Johnny.”72 Conspicuous consumption was not to be their lot. Later, on the anniversary of his father’s death, the youngest son offered this pledge to his mother: I shall think of my resolutions which I made at that time; and how you told me of what would be your earthly comfort now, and how I promised to live in the way which he would wish & had prayed for, & in the way which would be a comfort to you. My darling mama, I do not feel that I have kept this promise as I ought. Of course it is just the same whether I made it in words to you or to myself. I feel so sorry. And I shall particularly think about how careful I must be to be kind to Jem, and I will pray that you may be abundantly supported and comforted, and that you may feel that God is very much near to you, my precious mama. It is so nice to have a lock of his hair … Please give my best love to Harriet and Katie [his sisters] … Ever dear mama your truly loving boy Johnny. Jem will send a letter tonight.73

Family affection and instruction ultimately seemed more important than institutional settings that are better remembered by historians for fabricating a dominating “imperial masculinity” for aristocratic offspring in the period.74 The loving and sentimental schoolboy disappeared from view when John Campbell Gordon came to write his memoirs many decades later. As an adult sensitive to what the world would respect in male leaders, he was more concerned to emphasize his independence and authority. He drew a portrait of himself as a buoyant Cheam senior who defended a new boy, whose name might suggest he was Jewish, from bullying and scorned the petulance of his schoolmate Randolph Churchill, with its foretokening of an undisciplined life.75 Other school memories presented for public consumption included forbidden flirtations with a girl and, at St Andrews, devotion to a “female singer” who

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later became “a valued friend.”76 Heterosexuality was firmly asserted, as was a romantic view of women. Thus, John Campbell’s best-selling public autobiography faithfully constructed the origins of the knightly image and liberal credentials that had become so much a part of his adult persona. After the lingering death of the fifth earl, in 1864, the title passed first to his eldest son, George (1841–1870), who had been educated almost entirely at home until his mid-teens. The father was nevertheless said to be “sensitively alive to the comparative effeminacy often engendered by a home education.” His training attempted to counter that danger with its emphasis on “a simple and hardy life.” His sons were urged to cultivate an “utter scorn and distaste for all luxury or softness.” As illness sapped his energy, the earl sent his namesake first to a private tutor in England and then to the University of St Andrews, which, as later with John Campbell, seemed designed to foster a sense of Scottishness.77 George, however, showed little inclination for academic life. Right from the beginning, the family’s heir displayed a passion for seafaring. Since this readily implied a disrupted home life and potential moral hazard, his parents could hardly welcome such a vocation, despite the presence of two vice admirals in the previous Gordon generation. As time passed, the young George grew too old to be admitted as a midshipman or apprentice officer, the first step in a career in the Royal Navy for someone of his rank, albeit highly unusual for a future earl. After a stint at St Andrews, he rejected the natural progression to either Oxford or Cambridge. While a scurrilous family history spread by one of Johnny’s grandsons suggested that George produced an illegimate son, whose arrival encouraged his departure, no evidence of such fall from grace is apparent.78 In any case, George set off to tour North America, including a stopover with his father’s brother, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, then lieutenant governor of New Brunswick (1861–66). Once again he demonstrated unconventional interests when he escaped unchaperoned to New England. On its republican terrain, he sought employment before the mast, first as an ordinary seaman and later as a first mate in the American merchant marine. After a short visit home to console his widowed mother after he succeeded to the earldom, he returned to sea under an assumed name, George Osborne, certified at a Boston school of navigation, and claimed the life of an industrious and respectable seafarer. His letters home suggest considerable pride in earning his way “by the labour of his hands or brain” and resisting dependence on the estate, the revenues of which were directed to the support of his mother and siblings.79 The sixth earl’s highly unusual path was documented in great detail after he was swept overboard to his death in 1870 en route to Australia. Extensive investigation before the succession to the Scottish and English peerages could

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be secured for John Campbell Gordon included interviews with American shipmates and lodging housekeepers and the submission of numerous letters written to his mother and brothers. These left an extraordinary account of religious faith, family affection, enthusiasm for the sea, fondness for hospitable New Englanders, hostility to southern slaveholders, and scepticism about the merits of his homeland: “the more I see of other countries the more convinced do I become that England is the most stupid, pig-headed, stick-in-the-mud of them all.”80 The eldest brother strongly endorsed travel as a way of coming to “understand what makes a man and a brother.” He urged Jem certainly to come to America for a short period just to see what a noble country it is, and what lies are told by so-called travelers about it … I don’t like the southerners as far as I have seen; any of your miserable rebel sympathisers in England ought to come here and see these murderous villains, and see their towns dependent on northern industry and northern manufacture for everything; they ought to have been in New Orleans at the time of the riot last summer, and then let them talk about the chivalry of the south. I don’t want anything to do with them; give me the New England States to live in and New Englanders for friends … My best love to dear mama. I think of her only; she is always in my thoughts.81

The sailor earl’s correspondence set out a man self-consciously embarked on the search for a worthy vocation – employment to make life meaningful and justify aristocratic existence – a rigorous quest that his youngest brother would also embrace.82 Not surprisingly, his unusual path made George an object of considerable contemporary interest. As one observer exclaimed: “The cases are rare, indeed, in which the inheritors of ranks and wealth think proper to abandon, or conceal the distinctions derived from an illustrious ancestry; to mingle with the humble sons of toil; and to fulfill in the most literal manner the primeval degree, ‘In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread’ … not the least remarkable is that of George Gordon, sixth Earl of Aberdeen in the peerage of Scotland, and third Viscount Gordon in the peerage of the United Kingdom.”83 The “strong democratic element” revealed in George’s life, in effect, rather ironically helped justify faith in the integrity of some aristocratic leaders in a period where their caste was both under assault and often deemed deficient.84 Johnny himself took considerable pride in his seaman brother’s “just contempt for everything in the nature of artificiality,” clearly seeing it as a model for his own questioning of the restraints and privileges of rank.85 The next oldest son, Jem, appeared at first glance far more conventional, renowned at Cambridge as “Captain of the University Shooting Eight” and

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collegiate rower, someone “so popular, so admired, so idolized in all feats of strength and skill … wonderfully pre-eminent,” while respected by all for “his geniality, his good nature, and his thoroughly gentleman-like conduct on all occasions.”86 Like his brothers, Jem professed a heartfelt sense of Christian mission, teaching in a local Sunday school and considering a future as a missionary to “‘lumberers’” in Canada or “the Kaffirs” in South Africa.87 High expectations put early pressure on the young man to contest a parliamentary seat, to which he reluctantly agreed. It ended in 1868 when the twenty-three-year-old shot himself in his college rooms. A close friend described the death of this noted rifleman for Johnny: He told me about the pending election and the position he had promised to take in it and seemed greatly to regret the course he had taken with regard to it. He was then in very low spirits and apparently unwell … I hoped … his usual good spirits would soon return. But it was not so … He said that he was too ignorant for such a position, that he was unfit for public life, that he could not make a speech, that he should not know how to live in London … he used to declare that he should run away and emigrate under a feigned name, and even that he should put an end to his existence, but these threats were regarded by others and myself as meaningless or only intended to express his great dislike of the task before him.88

When Jem shot himself, ruled an accident by a sympathetic coroner, expectations of John began to shift. The loss less than two years later of the sixth earl, George, left hopes firmly with the last male heir but for whom the title would leave the immediate family. His sisters and mother rallied to Johnny’s support. His older sister, Mary, set forth loving expectations: It seems as if we are all being taken away so quickly from this world and it makes Heaven so much more real and near now our two own dear Brothers are there and Papa. Sometimes we cannot help longing to go too away from so much sorrow but it is better to be willing to stay and work for God here, so long as He wills … It is such wonderful comfort to know that God in His unerring wisdom and Love, ordered all that we cannot understand and we are quite sure it is the best for him and for each of us, for all things work together for God to them that love God. I am sure you try to be a comfort to mama and I pray that you may be made more and more so, now you are the only boy she has here. Your very loving sister.89

The Aberdeens’ Edinburgh lawyer summed up the new demands more bluntly: “You enter on your high earthly calling through a very dark portal,” but “grief

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of the family must give way to other considerations of exceptional importance,” namely, the management of a great estate and name.90 The shadow of such responsibility does much to explain Johnny’s subsequent tendency to nervousness and depression.91 Charting Responsible Manhood The deaths of George and James in the course of acting out highly gendered scripts propelled the youngest brother into the peerage officially in 1872, when the succession was at last legally confirmed in both Edinburgh and London. The title truncated what some contemporaries considered promising academic hopes. John Campbell Gordon had gone up to Oxford in 1867 where his choice, University College, was not in the scholarly forefront, even as it attracted more “future landed magnates” than many colleges.92 It had nonetheless been recommended to him as less “snobbish” than other contenders for his attendance.93 His tutor at St Andrews had set out a serious course of studies for his protégé: I think you should easily pass next Easter, and then I think will have plenty of time, if you like, to make something of the history schools. You have plenty of retentiveness of facts, which is the main thing; general views & facility of expression will come to you as to others, if you will practice yourself to think as well as read. Your style of writing is naturally clear & good. The fault of your essays last session was merely want of the application of your mind to both sides of your subject, a process which requires time … I think everyone should go in for honours to gain real good from Oxford: and that I am sure you might be most successful in that school if you set yourself to it from the first.94

Unlike growing numbers of ambitious aristocratic undergraduates, such as the little more than a decade younger George Nathaniel Curzon (1859–1925), however, John Campbell Gordon, who proceeded so quickly from spare to heir, did not take honours when he graduated in modern history and law. Unfortunately, University College has retained little information on such “passmen.”95 Nor did John’s early passion for railroads, not to mention his unusual ability to drive locomotives, see any formal recognition in science or engineering courses, hardly surprisingly given the classical orientation of most Oxford instruction in these years. Many years later, however, Dudley Gordon, the second of Johnny’s sons, left Harrow to apprentice to an engineering firm rather than seek university credentials.96 The city of dreaming spires did, however, foster Johnny’s evangelical leanings. Although he later joked about his passion for university sports, especially rowing, and remained a dedicated horseman, correspondence portrays him

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as a member of a close-knit, serious-minded community of young men who conscientiously debated their duties.97 As an undergraduate both committed to Christian life and fascinated by science, he found much to ponder. Oxford resonated with the repercussions of the famous 1860 evolution debate at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. On that occasion, Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) On the Origin of the Species (1859) supposedly sparked Bishop Samuel Wilberforce’s (1805–1873) memorable, although evidently apocryphal, question of scientist Thomas Huxley (1825–1895): did he claim descent from monkeys through his grandfather or grandmother? The same year also produced the influential Essays and Reviews by prominent Anglican clergymen, most associated with Oxford, whose overall message endorsed ecumenicalism and the reconciliation of science and Christianity.98 Since, as Ben Griffin has stressed, textual criticism contributed significantly to the loss of confidence in patriarchal authority and beneficence,99 the young Gordon found essential religious support for a more egalitarian personal and public politics. Oxford in the 1860s also gave the aristocratic undergraduate a front seat on the passionate struggle over the maintenance of traditional religious tests for university fellows and undergraduates. John Campbell Gordon could see that, despite dire warnings to the contrary, atheism and anarchy did not triumph with the end of such requirements. After he graduated, he acted on that lesson by becoming a liberal supporter of atheist Charles Bradlaugh’s (1833–1891) right to sit as a Member of Parliament by affirming his loyalty rather than swearing on a Christian Bible.100 From Gordon’s perspective, differences merited conversation and a hope for reconciliation not exile or exclusion. Unfortunately, no record of his response to Bradlaugh’s concurrent enthusiasm for free love and birth control can be found, though hints predict repugnance, probably because of their association with male immorality. Religious faith at Oxford was closely allied to assumptions about public life and national duties more generally. For earnest Victorians, Britain’s claims to civilization at home and abroad frequently depended on high-minded Christian dedication to improving humanity. Oxford’s Slade Professor of Fine Art (appointed 1869), John Ruskin (1819–1900), typically presented good works and public-spirited leadership in public affairs as the proper duty of Britons and Christians.101 Undergraduates should take up missionary challenges to reform the world. In this spirit, a friend newly ordained in Anglican religious orders recommended that John Campbell Gordon devote himself to “the shoeblacks who stand near the station” since “no one I find ever looks after them.” While he joked that this “nice bit of work” was “connected (somewhat remotely I own) with engines too,” a well-known passion of Johnny’s, he also offered practical advice: “you ought to work up the subject, by visiting the poor … & by

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learning about the laws wh.[ich] regulate health … I have long wanted to suggest to you in the way of quietly & unobtrusively but not without self-denial confessing Xt [Christianity] in Oxford … pick out one or two cases of men with whom you think you could have naturally some influence, for special prayers & efforts … I think this better than making vast & general … flabbier efforts for a whole college or even a whole university … hardest of all. Do not be spasmodic in doing good.”102 His brothers’ premature deaths deepened John’s need to find meaning in life. The Reverend Francis Godolphin Pelham (1844–1905), future fifth Earl of Chichester and a Cambridge friend of James, invoked “that noble manly brother” and “all that was good and truly pious in him” to bring both himself and the mourning brother “nearer to our Saviour … If one tries with all one’s might to lead a consistent life, one is sure to do some good … I think there is nothing so glorious in this life than to be able to do good to someone. And you may be certain that the University is the very best place in the world for one to try to do so … Dear old boy let us make it a rule to pray for each other.”103 The Gordon brothers’ community of like-minded friends repeatedly voiced the mantra that personal happiness, not to mention salvation, required the wedding of faith and life. As another college friend put it in offering condolence upon the death of the sailor earl: “At the same time I am glad, as every one who knows you must be, that you are now by God’s providence placed in a position where you will have a most noble field for serving our Lord & carrying on His work in which, I think, your chief interest lies.”104 Such convictions that Christianity, notably, the “golden rule,” should be applied to the problems of the day constituted a social gospel that mobilized a significant community of Victorians around the world.105 Its inspiration for John Campbell Gordon was reinforced by a lifetime of friendships, including with the charismatic Presbyterian ministers Henry Drummond, a Glasgow evangelist, teacher, and proponent of the reconciliation of science and Christianity in books such as Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883) and The Greatest Thing in the World (1894), and Charles Gordon (1860–1937), the Canadian author of best-selling novels such as The Sky Pilot: A Tale of the Foothills (1899) and The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land (1919), with their evangelical protagonists. Like many of his generation, Aberdeen’s faith was further affirmed by his exposure to American preachers Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) and Ira David Sankey (1840–1908). Beginning in 1873–74, he saw them rouse Scotland and England in wildly successful missionary campaigns. Like those heroes of the age, the young Gordon turned to “experiential religion, a loving God, the moral and spiritual essence of the gospel, and the unity of all Christians” to counter war and conflict among sexes, classes, and races. This harmonious message was especially powerful for many Scots “divided so long by academic theologies

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and schismatic church courts,”106 just the divisions that John Gordon would set out to heal as lord high commissioner to the Church of Scotland in the 1880s. Not surprisingly, he publicly proclaimed “the revivalism of Messrs Moody and Sankey” as “a valuable power for good among the people.”107 The messages of the era’s social gospellers were highly gendered. As Janet Forsythe Fishburn’s The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family (1982) has demonstrated, their Christian activism embraced ideas of “fatherhood,” “brotherhood,” and “‘kingdom” that offered a responsible alternative to the hard-hitting drunkards and mean-spirited capitalists who frequented the popular imagination in novels by Charles Dickens and others. With his welcome to women and children, the humanized Christ they celebrated may have been a kinder soul than the old Jehovah, but his protective embrace legitimized male leadership and solidarity. God-loving men could redeem themselves and masculinity in general from the snares of the modern world if they took up Christ’s crusade on behalf of the weak.108 Much like his father, John Campbell Gordon could hope to justify wealth and rank through the pursuit of good works in securing the Lord’s earthly Kingdom. The 1872 accession to the title equipped John Campbell Gordon with a larger purse to pursue such sympathies. On taking charge of the Aberdeenshire estate, he immediately confirmed progressive credentials, surrendering his historic right to appoint a local minister in favour of election by parishioners. Elite patronage and control were to give way to democracy, at least for male church members.109 The new earl also set about to investigate the conditions of his tenants and to foster common community. While he maintained his family’s historic involvement with the Aberdeen Rifle Volunteers, which testified to traditional masculine prowess, he was more visible as a Christian landlord, someone who blended evangelical activism with the long-standing “cultural baggage of clanship” expected of a senior Gordon. Historically, clan chiefs such as himself were expected to offer concrete expressions of “paternalism to offset periodic economic distress among their tenantry.”110 Following in the philanthropic footsteps of his parents, John Campbell Gordon was soon “regarded with favour by nineteenth-century commentators, since eviction from the Haddo Estate was said to be unknown, and … tenants’ leases were generally renewed by private bargain before they expired.”111 The earl’s vision of responsible lairdship soon extended to the nearby City of Aberdeen to the south of the villages of Ellon, Tarves, and Methlick, all closely associated with his estates. Just before his marriage to Ishbel Marjoribanks, John Campbell Gordon declared his confidence in the “most enlightened and enterprising” citizens of Scotland’s third city. He also went on to suggest there was “ample scope for a hearty interchange of sympathy and interest in matters

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which concern the moral well-being or material prosperity of either town or country.”112 This conviction underpinned what evolved in the late 1870s and 1880s into a significant program of urban outreach. While his philanthropic and democratic initiatives only began to address Scotland’s recurring agricultural depression and clash between ranks, not to mention its regular emigration to cities and overseas, they placed Gordon firmly among a small group of progressive peers. In contrast, most Scottish lairds, routinely described as “disproportionately powerful and influential,” have been condemned “in the assessment of historians and contemporaries alike, [as] overwhelmingly reactionary.”113 No wonder, then, that the progressive Gordon sought friends and allies much further afield than in aristocratic strongholds where his proclivities were likely to be eyed with suspicion. The young earl’s broad sympathies were further encouraged by his distinctive enthusiasm for railways and the men that ran them. After his first locomotive ride, in 1862, ignited a lifelong passion, he regularly seized opportunities to learn from engineers, firemen, and conductors, whose advocate he readily became. He typically hailed the “engine drivers who became my friends in those days” as “not only efficient in their work, but sterling men of worth, and of high tone.”114 At age twenty-five, in 1872, John Campbell Gordon became a member and afterwards the chair of the House of Lords Royal Commission on Railway Accidents. Its report emphasized both the value of the new technology and its challenge for the men who worked the rails. One “fireman” and “friend” invoked reciprocal admiration when he thanked Aberdeen decades later for the recognition and respect he had offered upon their first meeting on a local line in 1874.115 Central to such expressions of regard was a sense of shared cross-class commitment to responsible manhood in which dignified labour figured heavily. Similar feelings of solidarity were invoked in the course of the earl’s recurring service, in memory of his brother, to Friends of the Mission to Seamen beginning in the 1870s. Sturdy seafarers, like railroaders, deserved better treatment than they commonly received from those in power. The same decade saw the earl join England’s leading aristocratic philanthropist, Lord Shaftesbury, a man of his father’s generation, in championing omnibus “drivers, conductors, stablemen, and boys” in demands for better hours and pay and the Reformatory and Refuge Union’s outreach to the homeless poor.116 In 1875, in presiding over the laying of a foundation stone for new cottages where young urban waifs and strays might be protected from injuring themselves or others, he endorsed a Christian humanitarian of his own generation, Dr Thomas Barnardo (1845–1905). When the latter later proved a less than effective administrator, Lord Aberdeen spearheaded a committee to continue assistance to youngsters

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believed to be in need of adult guidance.117 While always particularly sympathetic to the plight of boys, the earl demonstrated early sympathies for homeless girls.118 His hopes for both sexes were those he had for poorer Scots in general, whom he encouraged to improve their lot by emigrating to Canada, thus effectively feeding the “settlement explosion” described by James Belich.119 He attempted to check on the well-being of those he assisted, but the abuse that could accompany children’s removals never generated the same effort as removal from suspect spiritual and economic circumstances.120 Like many others of his generation, Aberdeen clung to the conviction that Canada, like Australia and the other white dominions, would offer a warm welcome to refugees from Britain’s hard times. John Campbell Gordon’s firm linkage of philanthropy to an insistence on the “dignity of labour” was shared many Victorians, such as the Oxford academic, John Ruskin. Just as with the so-called squires in the slums of the 1890s, whose inspiration included stress on Christ the worker,121 such faith supplied a mainstay of the era’s progressive thought. Yet, even as a “calling” and a strong work ethic were increasingly key components in the elaboration of a meaningful masculine identity in the modern world, some commentators, such as noted Scottish critic and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and Scottish author and reformer Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), argued that “neither land ownership nor the public service,” both traditional aristocratic pursuits, constituted sufficient evidence of worthy activity.122 While the Earl of Aberdeen contradicted reactionary calumnies that questioned the industry and morality of ordinary men and championed their claims to manliness, the claims of his own class came under attack. Such assaults deepened his self-consciousness and sensitivity about charitable undertakings. Aberdeen’s conviction that the poor, no less than the rich, required meaningful labour for self-respect as well as financial sustenance spurred his support for prison reform. In 1877, as president of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Sciences, he explained: when prisoners are employed at trades which they have followed before their conviction, or by which they may earn their living after the expiration of their sentence, such labour is in no respect degrading, and in numerous instances it cannot fail to operate as a positive alleviation of the prisoner’s lot. Enforced idleness in a bare and solitary cell would be to many a more grievous punishment than enforced labour in any probable circumstances. To administer prison labour in such a way that it will be punitive to the undeserving and a boon to those who give proof of their desire after reformation – this is one of the problems which claim solution.

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At its best, labour brought men, and women, into worthwhile communion that could foster rehabilitation and self-respect.123 The same Edinburgh address considered the poor more generally. While admitting that the few who were determinedly idle were “scarcely deserving of pity,” Aberdeen insisted the majority were more unfortunate than indolent. For the victims of ill fate, workhouses were the resort of desperation and the public should be “shocked by the record of bitter privations, and even of deaths, incurred to avoid the workhouse.” Christians should ensure that refuges allowed the “aged and the infirm” not punishment but the “asylum” they deserved.124 The young earl linked distress directly to the shortcomings of the larger society. In particular, the pervasive absence of good housing generated both suffering and crime, a theme he would return to throughout his life. He recommended the “Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Working Classes”125 and urged farmers to take responsibility for labourers’ cottages just as he did on his own estates. Improvements in accommodations would also curb the intemperance that helped fill “our prisons with inmates of both sexes and all ages, drawn from every class of life” and injure the nation’s overall health. The need for reform was dire since, as John Gordon argued: “If the State neglects the social and moral welfare of the masses of the people and … allows Government to become a mere matter of police, it will not fail to reap the natural fruit of its neglect in an ever-increasing amount of pauperism, disease, and crime. True enlightenment in the Government of a nation will not display itself in the erection of hospitals, lunatic asylums, workhouses, and gaols, institutions which no civilized community can dispense with, but in dealing with the causes which tend to undermine the health, prosperity, and virtue of the people.”126 In 1877, this proclamation roused his Edinburgh audience to cheers, a reception that positioned Gordon as a Scottish peer to be watched. While his distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor supplied a staple of Victorian philanthropy, Aberdeen’s concern “that care has not always been taken to avoid hurting the feelings of poor persons” was unusual enough to win applause from a contemporary journalist: “Bravo, Lord Aberdeen! But fancy anybody ‘hurting the feelings’ of the poor! What right have the poor to have feelings.”127 Shortly later, Frederick Verney (1846–1913), a nephew of Florence Nightingale and later a Liberal MP, conveyed his own approval: “I think it is George Elliot who says in one of her novels ‘Work is a great gift of God.’ I am sure it is, and one of those gifts which he sends down upon the evil and the good. Those who know it is a blessing should give the knowledge to those who don’t, and it is this ignorance that creates our criminal classes, and feeds our prisons.” He finished by affirming his “true sympathy with what you said on this subject.”128

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Other liberal causes in the 1870s offered Aberdeen similar opportunities to situate himself as possible recruit to the party of Gladstone. Prominent among these was anti-slavery. In September 1877, he shared in the welcome tendered by Edinburgh’s Lord Provost to President Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), the Northern military hero in the American Civil War: “We can now send forth to the ends of the earth assurance that wherever the English language is spoken the bloodstained banner of slavery is torn down (“hear, hear,” and cheers) and trampled under the foot of freedom never again to be raised. (Cheers).” A few months later, Aberdeen would use his honeymoon with Ishbel Marjoribanks as the occasion to act on the same principles and rescue slaves in Egypt.129 Succession to the title admitted the Earl of Aberdeen to the House of Lords, where he first took his seat as a Conservative, perhaps as a result of his friendship with Shaftesbury. Contemporary contests between the larger-than-life figures of the Tory leader Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) and his most prominent Liberal opponent, William Ewart Gladstone, over domestic reform and foreign involvement soon complicated his loyalty.130 Disraeli’s progressive initiatives with regard to the franchise, housing, education, and employment law held obvious appeal, as too did the 1877 designation of Victoria, an admirer of Gordon’s grandfather, as Empress of India. The subcontinent promised fresh terrain for the blessings of British Christian civilization as well as a demonstration of imperial might. Gladstone’s high regard for Prime Minister Aberdeen under whom he had served in Cabinet and his offer of a Treasury clerkship to John Campbell Gordon when he was a university student nevertheless weighed on the young peer. Critical shifts in the makeup of the House of Commons further determined his future path in public life. A Conservative victory in 1874 was accompanied by the return of fifty-eight Irish Home Rulers and the first trade union MPs elected on the basis of the enlarged 1867 franchise. Well into the twentieth century, Lord Aberdeen and others would have to address the fundamental questions these two groups raised about regional sovereignty within the United Kingdom and the extension of popular democracy. John Campbell Gordon showed his colours early on in the House of Lords. In 1874, he moved the second reading of the Conjugal Rights (Scotland) Act, introduced into the Commons by George Anderson (1817–1885), a Liberal MP for Glasgow. By championing deserted wives endeavouring to protect their property from abusive husbands, the young earl positioned himself as a suppor­ ter of one of his era’s leading feminist causes.131 Two years later, contemporaneous with founding of the British Women’s Temperance Association, his championship of a Select Committee to investigate intemperance associated him with a high-profile evangelical crusade that roused many women, even as

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it repulsed many Tories.132 Aberdeen’s 1876 alliance with the Whig George Douglas Campbell, eighth Duke of Argyll (1823–1900), against an amendment to the Publicans’ Certificates (Scotland) Bill that would increase liquor licences made much the same point.133 Working men similarly discovered an advocate. In debates on the appropriate means of directing railway development, a central concern of the industrial age, the earl advocated state control of private companies. Left unregulated, they could not be trusted to defend the public interest. Aberdeen denied accusations that rail employees expected “every advantage and even luxury.” Citing his own fifteen-year study of railways and his lack of “interest or bias in any direction,” he argued that “increased demands were made upon them [the employees], owing to increased traffic and an increased number of trains and signals” and that the very nature of the industry rather than individual negligence caused most accidents.134 To safeguard lives, railway owners had to accept responsibility and government direction. In voicing opinions suggestive of the later new liberalism’s rejection of laissez-faire dogmas,135 he once again joined a small group of progressive peers. In short, while most aristocrats evidenced little sympathy for or knowledge of the needs of women or workers,136 the unmarried addition to the Lords evidenced consideration for both. Aberdeen’s response to the 1876 Throne Speech also invoked foreign policy interests that recalled his grandfather, the prime minister. Commenting on a revolt within Turkey, he applauded efforts by European powers, including Britain, to encourage “peace in the disturbed Provinces” and “the establishment of religious toleration for the Christians who inhabit them.” But if the Ottomans’ treatment of their Christian population was anathema, he was hopeful about the extension of British power. He supported Disraeli’s efforts to control the Suez Canal and protect Britain’s strategic route to India. Moreover, Aberdeen’s backing of continuing campaigns to combat slavery and the slave trade, notably, a “treaty with the Seyyid of Zanzibar,” as well as a possible “Confederation of the South African Colonies,” which would “have the effect of placing on a better basis the relations of the several races which inhabit those regions,” testified to his faith in British dominion as a civilizing force.137 The linkage of the humanitarian and practical benefits of Empire would become a leitmotif of Aberdeen’s recurring attitudes to foreign policy. His stance was immediately saluted as very much in keeping with the evangelical commitment of his family. As one admirer wrote to his mother: “When I think of your son’s unaffected piety and of the interest, which he takes, in works of benevolence and charity I think I may venture to predict for you, dear Lady Aberdeen, much comfort and even joy in his future years.”138

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Very shortly, however, Lord Aberdeen grew disenchanted with Tory policy. The Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) and the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), pursued under Benjamin Disraeli’s watch, left him, much like his grandfather in the case of the Crimean conflict, disillusioned. The earl’s opposition to the Afghan campaign drew approval from the Duke of Argyll eager for a Liberal recruit: “‘you have had the courage to join a small minority in condemning a War which I sincerely believe to have been wholly unnecessary and therefore unjust.’”139 Self-consciously “ever an ardent follower of peace,” Aberdeen both spoke out and voted against such adventurism, leaving himself “open to the charge of being unpatriotic” and “much cold shouldering by his fellow-peers,” a response that as lord lieutenant of Ireland, he would come to know well. Buffeted by criticism from senior Tory Lords, he typically consoled himself by interpreting his independence as one more expression of a proud family history.140 And, even as he felt “like an outcast, almost a pariah” from many friends and colleagues, Aberdeen received a warm welcome from Liberal leaders.141 In winning the approval of the scion of a former prime minister, Gladstone had scored a significant symbolic coup and won an important addition to the minority Liberal ranks in the Lords. Aberdeen’s liberal imperialism found confirmation in the efforts of his paternal uncle, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, later Lord Stanmore, who had been secretary to his father when, in 1853, that prime minister had opened the Indian Civil Service to native Indians. This colonial administrator, who had been president of the Cambridge Union Society, early on served as secretary to Gladstone.142 As a younger son, Arthur began his imperial career as lieutenant governor of New Brunswick, reinforcing a family association with Canada, which had been inaugurated with the seventeenth-century conferral of a Nova Scotia barony. Hamilton-Gordon’s active interpretation of his role as representative of the Crown made postings to Trinidad (1866–70), Mauritius (1871–74), Fiji (1875–80), and Ceylon (1883–90) more congenial than two years in New Zealand (1880–82). In Fiji, he endeavoured to protect the Natives, whom he assessed as “in much the same state that our Scotch rural ancestors were 400 years ago. Like those Scotch they are eminently improvable, and the problem is … how to get them from the 15th century to the 19th.” This British proconsul worried about the threat of extinction and argued that if Natives could “get some 25 years for their present civilization to grow and root itself firmly, they will hold their own without need of further adventitious help.”143 Later, in New Zealand, he earned settler ire by championing the Maoris.144 Eventually, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon would return to Britain, where he became increasingly hostile to Home Rule and less resolutely liberal than his nephew, and their relationship suffered.

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John Campbell Gordon’s emerging attachment to the Liberal Party was encouraged by his corresponding commitment to Scotland. Indeed, the liberalism of his native land was itself deeply imbued with a national pride that assumed that Scottish virtues of industry, imagination, and courage constituted a special contribution to Empire building. Soon enough an advocate of a Cabinet secretary for Scotland, special legislation for the northern kingdom, and the interests of its tenants and small farmers, the Earl of Aberdeen put himself on the side of decentralized rule and greater local autonomy. He became a ready recruit both for what came to be known as “home rule all round” and for Scots’ active participation in the settlement and management of Britain’s global holdings. Despite considerable popular “hostility to a landed elite,” evident in the radical Tom Johnston’s later best-selling Our Scots Noble Families (1911), Gordon treasured his ethnic identity. This love, personally signalled in his highly visible preference for tartan kilts and Scottish jokes, further grounded his faith in the integrity and merits of ordinary people, most particularly those who originated in his own home nation.145 By the time John Campbell Gordon emerged from the shadows of his tragic but loving family in the 1870s, he had established himself as an aristocrat of advanced opinions. While his youthful penchant for wandering through the highlands and later fits of depression suggest his own demons, he challenged some conventions of his rank. A special investment in the romantic history of the Gordons, close ties to his mother and siblings, recognized skills as a horseman, rower, and locomotive driver joined with a strong evangelical sense of purpose to provide a foundation for constructing a future as a responsible husband and father. Family archives also hold a confession from a young female admirer of the 1860s, which suggests how the impressionable Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks would regard the young peer in the next decade: “He is so different to any other young man; – to the generality of young men for he is so thoroughly unworldly & so thoroughly true … he led me to think (more than I have thought for long I fear) of serious things … A tall, nice figure, such a very nice face, & it is pleasant to hear him talk! I don’t know what he thinks of me, but I rather fancy from his manner that he has always liked me a little bit & I know that his short visit has made me like him so very much, that I think there is no one like him, & I feel as if I should never care for any one so well?”146 As these sentiments so effectively conveyed, Johnny Gordon was desirable for many reasons. By 1877, the Earl of Aberdeen appeared every inch the romantic Scot who could woo a passionate woman and bring imperial rule closer to its humanitarian ideals. In the process, an aristocratic title would be traded for an infusion of the new money associated with Empire. That hard calculation, however, never became part of the stuff of legend.

Chapter Two

The Dutiful Daughter: Ishbel Maria Hogg ­Marjoribanks to 1877

Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks was born in Mayfair, London, England, on 14 March 1857, fifth of the seven children and second daughter of Isabel Weir Hogg (1827–1908) and Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks (1820–1894), later first Baron Tweedmouth (1881). She stood out in her own age and stands out today as someone whose prominence as a female reformer and public figure calls out for attention and explanation. Opinions of her have been deeply divided. Did she advance the feminist cause through pragmatic positioning or did she curtail its development, encouraging concession and limited action? Did she unnaturally rule the Aberdeen roost, including perhaps cuckolding Johnny, or was she the ideal helpmate? Never denied, however, is the strength of Ishbel’s character and her determination to do good as she understood it. Equally important was her assertion of a modern leadership role for aristocratic women. The foundations of that activist orientation were set in the history of the Hogg and Marjoribanks families and in Ishbel’s experiences before her marriage at age twenty to the Earl of Aberdeen, in November 1877. This chapter explores the young Ishbel’s preparation for a life of shared activism. The Hoggs In a testament to the hereditary claims of her family and a foreshadowing of her own loyalties, Ishbel proudly bore the Gaelic version of her mother’s first name. Her maternal line appeared, in contrast to John Campbell Gordon’s, at least as influential as the paternal. Her mother, Isabel (sometimes written as Isabella), was the eldest daughter of Mary Claudine Swinton (1805–1874) and Sir James Weir Hogg (1790–1876), created first Baronet Hogg (1846).1 Both the Swintons and the Hoggs made fortunes in India. Mary’s father, Samuel Swinton (c. 1771–1839), son of another Samuel and a “cadet of the ancient Scottish

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family,” who had been “something of a soldier of fortune” with an interest “in several English newspapers,”2 had an extended imperial career as a senior administrator for the East India Company managing the lucrative opium trade with China. In 1830, the House of Lords interrogated him closely about the details of commerce in that drug, but by then he had retired respectably to England with his family.3 When that Swinton’s Hogg granddaughter memorialized the life of her own philanthropist father, she sidestepped drug-trafficking ancestry, stressing instead that Mary Swinton was descended through the female line from “the Marquis d’Hausonville,” whose “title and estates were swept away in the French Revolution” and that Samuel himself was sufficiently successful after his Indian sojourn to recover “family property in Berwick from his cousin.”4 Opium conveniently disappeared from the family narrative. The family of James Weir Hogg similarly originated in Scotland but had more recent history in Ireland. With them, too, descendants stressed romance, notably, an elopement with a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton by a Quaker Hogg. The family chronicler portrayed James himself as the ambitious son of an impoverished but worthy family who treasured his Irish roots, a message that Ishbel would later value. The initiative, independence, and responsibility of this graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, who, like Swinton, sought his fortune in India was a source of family pride. Upon arriving on the preserve of the East India Company, this “most wonderful son” became a family icon applauded for immediately remitting money to his widowed mother, Mary Dickey Hogg.5 In fact, his father, William (1754–1824), did not die until well after the son’s departure to the subcontinent. His granddaughter suggested that James’ mother had loomed especially large in his life by encouraging “the strong religious tendency that showed itself even in childhood.” In contrast, he inherited “from his father the fun and high spirits, the ‘gift of the gab,’ iron will, unflagging perseverance and capacity for work.”6 With such an amalgam of family qualities, James Weir Hogg was cast as the ideal Victorian male hero. After she married James, Mary Claudine Swinton kept busy producing and rearing fourteen children on three continents. Isabel, the eldest, was born in South Africa en route to or from India, although the birth was supposedly to occur in Ireland, in order to assert her lineage as one of the “Hoggs of Co. Antrim.” Decades later, Ishbel still valued this membership in “one of those Ulster families long settled in Ireland, and so intertwining Scottish and Irish ancestry that it is difficult to divide them.”7 The blood connection became a critical part of her inclination to distinguish herself as a champion of the Emerald Isle, albeit one rooted in Protestant rather than Catholic history. James Weir Hogg became registrar general of the High Court of Calcutta, a post that a son later effectively inherited, “built up an exceptionally lucrative

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law practice,”8 and returned to England in 1833 with a substantial fortune to join the East India Company “family” that included the similarly repatriated Swintons. Some six years later, he became a Conservative MP for Yorkshire, effectively acting as the representative of the East India Company and speaking almost solely on its affairs in the Commons.9 He also became an EIC director and eventually chairman. The British imperial establishment looked approvingly on this trajectory, appointing him baronet in 1846, and a member of the influential India Council following its establishment in 1858. The prestigious Cheam preparatory school, which was attended by John and James Gordon, welcomed his sons as indeed it did many young Swintons. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Hogg family maintained its profitable ties to the British imperial project, serving in high positions in the Indian Service and the British military on the subcontinent.10 The Raj underpinned much of Hogg financial success and fame. For Ishbel, the most personally influential of her mother’s siblings was the youngest, Quintin Hogg (1845–1903), charismatic philanthropist, educational reformer, and West Indian sugar merchant. Known after his stint at Eton College rather uncharitably as “Piggy Hogg,” he became the epitome of the ­muscular Christian, active in both football and shooting. Quintin was also remarkably successful as a director, later chairman, of the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company and a director of the San Paolo Coffee Estates, the National Discount Company, the London and Paris Securities Corporation, and the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, all the while pursing substantial profits in Caribbean sugar. At probate in 1903, his wealth was reckoned at a munificient £161,253 8s.11 Money-making was never Quintin Hogg’s sole passion. His mother, the former Mary Swinton and now Lady Hogg, a “deeply affectionate woman with plenty of determination and strength of character,” inspired religiosity even as he rejected her strict Puritan views on damnation and salvation.12 Quintin preferred a hopeful faith that concentrated on education. He initiated his charitable career by disguising himself as a denizen of the London streets, “learning,” as his daughter suggested, “to know the boys he meant to ­rescue, making their life his life, their language his language.”13 By the mid1860s, he had started a “ragged school” for boys and a Youths’ Christian Institute. In 1870, R.S. Tabor, the same Anglican minister who had supervised his and John Campbell Gordon’s education at Cheam, married Quintin to Alice Anna Graham (d. 1918), daughter of a merchant and Liberal MP for Glasgow. Similarly evangelical, Alice shared her husband’s enthusiasm for saving “outcast” London, but illness and pregnancies kept her largely on the sidelines. Spurred by the calls to action from the American evangelist

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Ira Sankey, who was ­simultaneously rousing the young Earl of Aberdeen, Quintin established technical courses, recreational and emigration programs, and labour bureaux, all of which gradually involved hundreds of youngsters and won widespread public support. In 1885, the businessman explained his outreach: “Christian profession without Christian work is an anomaly.”14 Although he founded a girls’ day school, their brothers remained his major interest. In 1888, his high reputation as an urban reformer was signalled by his election to the first London County Council chaired by the Scot, and later Liberal prime minister, Lord Rosebery, friend to his cousin Ishbel Marjoribanks. Here was a powerful network of elite activists who found work and philanthrophy a profitable and inspirational exercise. The merchant philanthropist was an imperialist who regarded race as an important determinant of capacity for civilization. In 1869, while on a trip to the West Indies, he wrote to his sister: The odd part of it is, that the black children are unusually sharp and precocious; indeed, I expect that at thirteen they would be more advanced than a white child at the same age, but there they seem to stop and the intellect develops no more, while all that is animal in the nature seems to be forced into unnatural growth. How I wish some of our negrophilites would come out here and try to live for a year under universal negro suffrage … There are good points in the nigger, but the man who wishes to rule him as an Anglo-Saxon, and to do away with a paternal government, does him a grievous wrong.15

Like his Swinton grandfather, Quintin also testified before a parliamentary committee as to the consequences of British rule. In the course of explaining the expense of producing colonial sugar, he dismissed former slaves as “black people” who “did not care to work.”16 Industry was the duty and the evidence of ruling races. Such responses summed up the sense of racial superiority that justified much metropolitan rule. As “the largest private West Indian sugar producer in Great Britain,”17 James Hogg endowed both public parks and Moravian missions to former slaves in Guyana. He encouraged Christian evangelization of the “east Indians,” whom he rated somewhat higher on the scale of civilization than natives or Africans but also assisted mosques since he believed “that some religion was better than none.”18 Such apparent tolerance served his desire to import, with the assistance of the East India Company, Indian “coolies” for the colony’s cane plantations.19 They were to substitute for former slaves (freed in 1833 but facing indenture for five years) who proved troublesome when expected to contribute their labour at minimal expense to their former masters.20

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Like many British imperialists of his day, Hogg’s perspective was global. While visiting a sister-in-law serving as a missionary in China, he offered opinions on another Asian “race”: “John Chinaman, with all his faults and his dirt, has many redeeming qualities. He is industrious, frugal, persevering, in a sense enterprising, most wonderfully obedient to his parents, and, as a rule, upright in business.”21 Such virtues did not protect China from European interlopers eager to claim spheres of influence in trade and much else. General doubts about the capacity of all peoples other than his own further encouraged Hogg to support campaigns against the Boers in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. White they might be, but such observers readily dismissed them as “evolutionarily inferior to Britons – superstitious, backward agriculturalists whose insularity meant that they missed the entire Enlightenment.”22 Piggy Hogg’s assumption of a hierarchy in civilizations helped explain his enthusiasm for emigration and a “Greater Britain beyond the seas,” a cause also endorsed by the Aberdeens. As he emphasized: “my father went to India before he was twenty, and nearly all my brothers sought their fortunes in the same country, while during the past quarter of a century I have, in one shape or another, assisted over 1,000 fellows to one or other of our colonies. No words of mine, however, can be of equal value with those coming from working men who have actually shifted their homes to the colonies during the past few years.” He recommended Canadian success stories, including a “large boot and shoe factory” in Hamilton, Ontario, where “boys began by being almost hopelessly bad bargains, and now are thoroughly reformed.”23 During a trip to the United States, he portrayed a promising future not in cities but with a “splendid army of small freeholders, living on their own lands, possessing and using the blessings of cheap and advanced education, and raising up a race of independent yeomen and healthy citizens, who are to-day, and will be for many a year to come, a crown of honour and strength to the Republic.”24 That vision reflected the pervasive anti-urban bias and romantic investment in small property owners that motivated many British liberals, including his niece and her husband, as they sought to address Britain’s land wars, city distress, and imperial opportunities. While race appeared a fairly robust line separating the worthy and their inferiors, Hogg was optimistic about bridging another divide. His daughter insisted that as a philanthropist he was determined “to demolish the class barriers which nature has decreed to be “inevitable.” He pursued that goal despite the fact that it meant “almost complete detachment from one’s own people, one’s own friends, one’s own class, often from one’s own instincts and habits.”25 Religious difference was no deterrent to cooperation. Inspired by his “theology of love,”26 the London polytechnic he founded was to welcome “the rankest

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infidel or most bigoted atheist” as much “as the truest Christian” who wished “to avail himself of the social or educational advantages.”27 Typically innovative in spreading his gospel of elite-sponsored cooperation, Quintin Hogg published, edited, and wrote for a monthly magazine, Home Tidings, later The Polytechnic Magazine. Like Ishbel’s similar publications, this would run at a deficit covered by its determined founder.28 Although she went unmentioned in her cousin’s account of Quintin, Ishbel treasured his provision of tickets for evangelical rallies and his encouragement for teaching in London’s East End evangelical Sunday schools. Like William Ewart Gladstone’s work with the city’s prostitutes, Hogg’s faith in the education of the British poor proved a lasting influence. Individual action by committed leaders such as themselves and environmental remediation in housing and health care could redeem women and men with the “right” heredity. Quintin Hogg’s example powerfully seconded the religious inspiration of Ishbel’s mother and confirmed that men, as well as women, could offer moral and practical guidance to the dilemmas of the world. Isabel Weir Hogg left her family to marry long before her youngest brother made his mark in Guyanese sugar markets or London streets, although she remembered being the “playmate” in Ireland of another pillar of Empire, her cousin Brigadier General Sir John Nicholson (1822–1857) of Indian Mutiny fame.29 In 1848, she settled in London as the wife of the brewer, and soon Liberal MP, Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, and rapidly became the mother of seven children born between 1849 and 1861, two of whom died young. While she did her duty in securing the Marjoribanks lineage, the beautiful Isabel also stood out as a noted Liberal hostess assisting her ambitious and increasingly rich husband. The entertainments of her London table and Scottish estate introduced her offspring to leading Liberal parliamentarians such as Gladstone and John Bright (1811–1889).30 Guest lists nevertheless always included Conservative notables such as Benjamin Disraeli. Such political ecumenicalism smoothed the way for the advantageous marriages of the Marjoribanks’ eldest son, Edward (1849–1909), to Lady Fanny Octavia Louise Spencer-Churchill (1850–1904), daughter of the Duke of Marlborough (and soon aunt of Winston Churchill [1874–1965]), and of the eldest daughter, Mary Georgiana (1850–1899), to Matthew White Ridley, first Viscount Ridley (1842–1904), later a Conservative home secretary. Isabel’s promotion of such alliances, all very much expedited by Marjoribanks wealth, would link Liberals Ishbel and John, the Aberdeens, to prominent members of the opposing party throughout their lives. Isabel shared her younger brother’s religious fervour. As the chatelaine of the some 20,000-acre Highland estate purchased in the mid-1850s, she pursued a regime of good works from her base in a luxurious Georgian mansion with

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some fifteen family rooms and as many or more for the servants. For many years, the famed Guisachan (“Place of the Firs” in Gaelic, a name that would later be employed for Ishbel’s Canadian ranch in the Okanagan Valley) housed the Marjoribanks-Hogg clan and their frequent guests for the annual six-month parliamentary recess. Isabel’s mantle of benevolent landlord or “lady bountiful” was immensely practical in encouraging long-time occupiers of the land, many of whom were Gaelic-speaking and Catholic, to shift loyalties away from the Frasers of Lovat who had held Guisachan since the sixteenth century. In a further confirmation of the tangled skein of Empire, that family included the Canadian explorer, Simon Fraser (1776–1862), as well as representatives active in the Caribbean and Indian colonies.31 Empire was always a family enterprise. Isabel joined many an elite British woman “who generally handed over the education of her own children to a succession of nurses, tutors, governesses, clergymen, and schools,” while acting “in a maternal capacity towards the dependents on her husband’s or her own estate.”32 Such a role was far from natural and benefited from specialized training. Ishbel described how her mother learned from her own London doctor how to minister to Highland tenants. Medicines and foodstuffs had to be organized for delivery by Marjoribanks children, among others, to sustain the ill and the elderly. Such initiatives were followed up by Isabel’s financial support for a visiting nurse paid to serve the district. When asked by his employers for public endorsement of their reign, Duncan MacLennan, Guisachan’s “famous head stalker,” dutifully and tactfully celebrated both Isabel and Dudley for their gendered expression of duty: “her holy habits and noble character made her a queen among other ladies. Lord Tweedmouth would not spoil anything she would do for the People; their liberality and care gave them a place in the heart of the People for their lifetimes; we looked to them as father and mother.”33 Isabel’s assumption of supposedly womanly tasks contributed to “a wider system of social relations” that stabilized a long-standing “structure of paternalism” that helped secure peaceful occupancy by non-hereditary and nouveau riche landlords.34 Thus, the Marjoribanks wife whose family had made a fortune in India and the Caribbean found a critical role as a mistress bestowing benefits on Britain’s Celtic fringe.35 Ishbel and her daughter Marjorie, later Lady Pentland, at various times suggested that the union of Isabel Weir Hogg with Dudley Marjoribanks was far from entirely happy. He emerged as a rather domineering husband, whose temper only worsened when they lost their second son, Stewart (1852–1864), to scarlet fever. A daughter, Annie Grizel (1855–1856), had earlier died as a toddler. Isabel eventually sought consolation in her youngest daughter whom she took into bed when her husband was away and told that her father’s problem

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was jealousy.36 In consequence, the grown-up Ishbel remembered her mother rather conventionally as “an adored goddess,” very much the Victorian “angel of the home”: “I worshipped the ground she trod on. And yet I learned to pray for her death, so miserable was her life even to the sight of a child.”37 Whatever the accuracy of this memory, K.D. Reynolds’ important study has suggested that Britain’s aristocratic women possessed invaluable options in unhappy relationships: spouses could live “separate lives within marriage,” especially after they had done their duty in providing legitimate male heirs.38 Reynolds’ invocation of the sociological concept of “incorporated wives,” partners who were critical in furthering husbands’ careers,39 reminds us that while Isabel may not have been entirely happy she had reason to value her own contribution to dynastic success and lots of money to slake her hungers. The Marjoribanks In their alliance with the Marjoribanks, the Hoggs encountered another ambitious family with similarly deep roots in the financial machinations of Empire. In their case, too, memories of ancestral landed estates were inspirational, but money came from elsewhere; banking and brewing fuelled their hopes for high station. Like the Swintons and the Hoggs, Ishbel’s father, Dudley Marjoribanks, prized Scottish lineage. His own father, Edward Marjoribanks (1776–1868), had left the north as the scion of a noted family. His older brother, John (1763–1833), became lord provost of Edinburgh, a Scottish MP, and Baron Marjoribanks. The next eldest, Campbell Marjoribanks (d. 1840), became chairman of the East India Company, while another, Stewart (1774–1863), a London merchant, also served as an MP, a prominent Mason, and promoter of emigration to New Zealand.40 Ishbel herself emphasized a fabled female ancestor, Grizel Cochrane (d. 1748), who risked much to rescue her Jacobite father from Sassenach justice.41 Although Edward, reckoned a “brilliant but penniless youth” by descendants, had intended to make his fortune practising law in Calcutta,42 family connections placed him in the orbit of Thomas Coutts (1735–1822), the Anglo-Scottish founder of a private London bank that would eventually form part of the Royal Bank of Scotland. This powerful moneylender catered to royalty and nobles, amassing a great fortune and marrying daughters, nicknamed “the three graces,” into the aristocracy, despite the terminal madness of their mother and his later infatuation with and marriage to an actress.43 In 1810, Edward Marjoribanks himself wed Georgiana (d. 1849), daughter of Louis Francis de Latour, who had fled France after the Revolution to make his fortune as a banker and merchant in Madras before settling comfortably in

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England. This French connection, like that through the Swintons, encouraged Ishbel’s interest in learning the language and later fondness for the Canadien/nes. Despite his remarkable financial talents and the accumulation of his own fortune, Edward was only permitted to bring his eldest son and namesake (1814–1879) into the bank. The second son, who would become Ishbel’s father, had to look elsewhere for riches. Well fortified by paternal subsidies, this Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks soon found plentiful opportunities in the established breweries operated by Sir Henry Meux (1770–1841) in London. With the death of the first Baronet Meux, Dudley became a leading partner, eventually dealing with the complications created by the second Sir Henry (1817–1883), whose estate was estimated at a massive £700,000 in 1857.44 This heir was declared legally insane (seemingly of syphilis) in 1858 but remained an MP until 1859 and a bank shareholder until his death.45 His son, yet another Henry (1856–1900), became Dudley’s ward and Ishbel’s foster brother. Making beer for Victorians turned out to be good business. Dudley was well equipped to pay off the debts of his older brother Edward when he went bankrupt in the 1870s. In the process, the latter became an ex-partner at Coutts bank, and the family lost the patronage of England’s greatest female philanthropist, Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906),46 whose godmotherhood to Ishbel subsequently produced few benefits. Given Burdett-Coutt’s extraordinary career in funding Christian missions and the education and housing of the poor, her alienation from the senior Marjoribanks distanced a potent model of female activism and perhaps fuelled Dudley’s seeming discomfort with strong-willed women. The Marjoribanks brewer found time to serve as a Liberal MP from 1853 to 1880. He became a baronet in 1866 and a decade and a half later was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Tweedmouth. Like his father before him, he spoke little in the Commons, but one observation to a sister revealed suspicions he would share with his daughter. In favouring imposition of some level of income tax, he trusted “‘they will lay it on the Irish Absentees,’” just those aristocratic landlords whom many fellow Liberals blamed first for the tragedy of the great famine and then for the growth of republicanism in the neighbouring island.47 Rank had duties that such Anglo-Irish peers were widely regarded as far too slow to fulfil. The energetic Dudley’s real enthusiasm, however, rested with property. His success took physical form in fashionable establishments – Brook House in London, Dollis Hill in the capital’s then suburbs, and Guisachen in Invernesshire. Under its owner’s supervision, Dollis, later the home of Ishbel and John, flaunted groomed acres as well as “little Swiss cows” brought “with cow-herd and cow-bells” from Switzerland.48 Dudley further asserted

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social status by purchasing land with ancestral associations in the Scottish border county of Berwickshire where his own son would later be MP. Art collections confirmed the same message. Hailed as “a leading pioneer of the Adam Revival,”49 with pockets deep enough to develop a reputation as an art connoisseur, Dudley purchased “Gainsborough and Reynolds, Raeburn and Allan Ramsay, George Morland and George Stubbs; the panels by Fragonard and Boucher, chimney-pieces by Canova and Wedgwood” and “the choice carpets and furniture, books and china.” In the course of meeting in “old bookshops and old china and silver shops” in their shared passion for antiques, Dudley became friendly with Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone. William, his wife Catherine, and their progeny became regular guests and, in turn, welcomed the Marjoribanks to their home. Domestic intimacies helped win over the young Ishbel, who felt herself “privileged to see much of that beautiful family life in which our great leader carried out so faithfully the precepts that he preached.”50 Much of Dudley’s enthusiasm and cash focused on Guisachan, a remote site north of Inverness. The Highland estate also produced the greatest public criticism. His mid-1850s purchase of the Fraser lands reflected a trend of rich industrialists claiming the hunting opportunities long associated with aristocratic privilege. Shooting parties made up of the powerful became a fall rite that confirmed prestige and gave access to power. The acquisition had, however, other implications. It overlapped with the brutal clearances of the Western Isles, raised the spectre of Irish dispossession while functioning at some symbolic level to link new money to Scotland’s storied masculinity. Like the Aberdeens’ historic lineage and Victoria and Albert’s acquisition of Balmoral, also in the 1850s, Guisachan offered an antidote to possible imperial and modern degeneration. The brewing magnate set about to construct a romantic vision of landlordism in which he valued those men with “skill in the deer forest or on the farm.” For them and their families, as his granddaughter Marjorie Pentland later explained in the course of affirming family myths, “he thought nothing good enough but the best. For them, instead of the old ‘black’ houses, he built the village of Tomich, with its granite dwelling-houses, trim rustic porches and gay gardens; its school, inn, shops, mill, smith, brewery. For his herd of champion cattle he built a model farm steading; he drained the land, made bridges and roads, gave better pay to more workers, planned for them employment throughout the year. Suits of ‘guisachan check’ tweed were given to the men, shawls to the women, cloaks to the children.” As one reward, his young daughter Ishbel was supposedly “welcome everywhere, she went in and out of the cottage homes on an easy equal footing, learnt to know these neighbours of hers, their stories and their feelings, with the absence of class distinction that

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belongs especially to Scotland.”51 Revealingly, however, Dudley drew the line at Ishbel acquiring much of the Gaelic spoken by many tenants. French and German were far more in keeping with Marjoribanks ambitions. Whatever dreams of equality permeated Guisachan, these required the disappearance of those who could not adapt, those whom Ishbel and her daughter acknowledged were “poor folk [who] loved their homes with a passionate devotion, and the story of their dispossession is a black one.” Even the benefits of emigration to supposedly welcoming colonies, improved agriculture, and better wages could not entirely outweigh the yearly “sad little procession of ancient dames in their white mutches and plaid shawls [who] used to wind their way up from the tidy slate-roofed stone cottages in the new village built by my father, to the tumble-down ruins of the old chimneyless cottages with earthen floors and tiny windows, and loose stone walls, and there join in a dirge of lamentation, which evoked the liveliest sympathy on the part of us children.”52 Her subsequent endeavours to replenish with tenants and emigrants the colonies of settlement, a wider phenomenon effectively described by James Belich, suggest that Ishbel did not readily forget such scenes.53 In 1873, Dudley found himself investigated before a committee of the House of Commons discussing his acquisition of Guisachan. A local “Inspector of the Poor” described farmers losing holdings, either “sent to the four quarters of the globe, or to vegetate in Sir Dudley’s dandy cottages at Tomich, made more for show than convenience, where they have to depend on his employment or charity.”54 When asked about displaced tenants, the new baronet answered, “I told them that when they had found other places to go to, I wished to have their farms.”55 The Scottish radical who described these events concluded, however, that “they were, in point of fact, evicted as much as any others of the ancient tenantry in the Highlands, though it is but fair to say that the same harsh cruelty was not applied in their case as in many of the others.”56 Ultimately, the Marjoribanks received a mixed grade for their experiments with a model village, departing crofters, Sunday schools, home visits, and breeding kennels.57 Ishbel and her brother Edward publicly asserted the family’s preferred perspective in erecting at the entrance to Guisachan a fountain featuring sculptures of their parents, associated with reliefs of the golden retrievers that Dudley was famously credited as creating. It was dedicated “To the memory of Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, 1st Lord of Tweedmouth, born 29th December 1820, died 4th March 1894, who lived at Guisachan from 1854 until his death, who built the village of Tomich and whose passion was the discovery and development of the district, and also to the memory of Isabel, Lady Tweedmouth, who was a mother to all those on the estate of Guisachan from 1854 to 1905.”58 Ishbel’s public commemoralization of Edward after his death in 1909 similarly

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invoked the ideal of responsible paternalism with her inclusion of seemingly heartfelt testimony from Guisachan’s head stalker.59 Effectively, she offered her brother’s career as a justification for the rank their family had underpinned with money from banking and brewing. Ishbel’s Siblings Leonore Davidoff has supplied an important reminder of the significance of sisters and brothers. In the nineteenth-century world she describes, they readily functioned as allies, inspirations, and warnings.60 Such was true for Ishbel, just as it was for John Campbell Gordon. Her eldest sibling, Edward, heir to the title acquired by his father, was the most powerful Marjoribanks of his generation. Soon dispatched to Eton, he was an admired, if initially somewhat distant, older brother. He was not a scholar. Ishbel recollected him “scrambling” through classes with “high spirits constantly getting him into trouble with the authorities.”61 While more successful as an athlete, Edward was sent down from Oxford without a degree in 1870, sought consolation in the self-education offered by a world tour, and then turned to the study of law. While called to the bar in 1874, his forte quickly turned out to be politics, and he was elected as a Liberal MP for North Berwickshire with its family estates. He soon became a stalwart Gladstonian and served as a Liberal whip through the Irish Home Rule debates in the 1880s. A Cabinet minister in Lord Rosebery’s short administration (1894–95), Edward next devoted himself in opposition to recovering Liberal fortunes especially in Scotland, a project shared with Ishbel and John Campbell Gordon.62 In 1873, Edward married Lady Fanny Spencer-Churchill, whose father had been Conservative lord lieutentant of Ireland (1876–80). Since this Churchill was, “as Disraeli noted, ‘not rich for a duke’” and was obliged to sell family jewels and land, union with a rich brewer’s son offered obvious advantage.63 Fanny was also sister to Conservative political luminary and maverick Randolph Churchill (Aberdeen’s Cheam schoolmate), and aunt of Winston Spencer Churchill (1874–1965), thus securing Ishbel further powerful links to the Conservative Party beyond her own Hogg relatives. Whatever its obvious practicalities, his sister regarded the union of Edward and Fanny as a love match, even perhaps what later came to be called a “companionate marriage”:64 “She and her husband were so identified together in the world of politics, society, and sport that one can never be thought of without the other. They were comrades and friends in all they undertook.”65 There were nonetheless rumours of Edward’s affairs, a second life long permitted, especially but not only if undertaken discretely, by male aristocrats and lesser men as well.66

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In any case, stalwart and beautiful Fanny was spectacularly successful in claiming a modern political role for aristocratic women. She soon hosted Liberal gatherings that helped the party secure its footing in tackling the persistently divisive Irish question. While such salons were well-known endeavours for noble ladies, Ishbel credited her sister-in-law with pioneering in more pedestrian realms: during the 1880 general election, the duke’s daughter accompanied her less exalted politician husband on the hustings. Fanny also wheeled and dealed in the Scottish and English Women’s Liberal Federations where more militant suffragists sometimes regarded her, and Ishbel, as far too deferential to male authority.67 After her death, however, the leading Liberal imperialist Cabinet minister Richard Burdon Haldane (1856–1928) waxed lyrical about a hostess who was “stronger than most men,” “no respecter of persons,” and “said what she thought straight out,” all the while remaining seemly and “queenly.” This apparent paragon was also said to have won the love of Highland tenants on Marjoribanks estates, further legitimating aristocratic authority.68 Edward was reputed never to have recovered from Fanny’s death, but a near-simultaneous financial crisis with his Meux’s brewery holdings also taxed his resources. He was forced to sell art collections, Brook House, and Guisachan. Although the Liberal Party won the 1905 election and his Scottish friend, Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908), appointed him First Sea Lord and John Campbell Gordon viceroy of Ireland, indiscreet correspondence with the German emperor in 1908, testimony itself to the circles in which Tweedmouth moved, relegated him permanently to the political wilderness. A mental breakdown then ended his career. His sister nursed him in Dublin until his death, in 1909, when he left an estate estimated at a very useful £204,975 18s.69 Although her powerful sibling never received a full-length biography, Ishbel rushed a defence into print. Edward was firmly positioned as a liberal champion of diverse causes from marriage to a deceased wife’s sister to the creation of a Cabinet department responsible for Scotland. It was easy to believe she was referencing her own isolation as well when she stressed the hardship of finding “oneself in a very small minority, and it was not a very pleasant thing to find the opinions one held so dearly were opinions that were scouted and looked upon with reprobation and contempt. He, and his colleagues in the Upper House were bent on securing the absolute predominance of the elected house of the people. The Liberal Party was essentially a fighting party. There must be retrogression, and no faint-heartedness. They had to press forward with all their might, utterly careless of what their opponents might say about them.”70 Firmly denying charges that he had behaved improperly in his dealings with the

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Kaiser,71 she insisted that he had destroyed all personal correspondence out of “his peculiarly strong sense of public duty and loyalty.”72 Although Edward had not always appeared a stalwart supporter of women’s suffrage, Ishbel secured a handsome contribution for the commemorative volume by a member of the Berwickshire Women’s Liberal Federation. Its noted poet-author effectively sidestepped the franchise issue but stressed the “unique example of harmony between brother and sister as was shown in the public life of Lord Tweedmouth and Lady Aberdeen – with different talents and different spheres, honouring and helping each other so constantly in the good cause and for the good cause. It was very beautiful … now we say farewell, indeed, to a true democrat, a true Liberal, a true man.”73 Such effusion was part of the history-constructing exercise typical of public figures, all the more so perhaps when they also claimed to be democrats. Edward and Fanny left one child, a son, Dudley Churchill Marjoribanks (1874–1935). In 1896, he captured headlines when he was sued for breach of promise by a young actress, Emma Watkins, who went by the stage name of Miss Birdie Sutherland. She was a “Gaiety Girl,” whom he was said to have met at the “Prince of Wales Club.”74 In a confirmation of the incestuous nature of the British elite, his lawyer was Herbert Henry Asquith (1852–1928), former Liberal secretary of state for war and future prime minister. Birdie’s court appearance “almost concealed beneath a leviathan hat in which every known shade of pink and mauve had its place” received global coverage, but she eventually settled for £5,000, candidly calculated as “the commercial value of virtue.”75 The delinquent himself was reported as dispatched, accompanied for safekeeping by his mother, to North America to visit his Aberdeen aunt and uncle, then governor general of Canada, “for penitential recovery.”76 Exile was brief. After serving in the prestigious Household Guards during the Boer War and the First World War, Dudley went on to become a lord-in-waiting to Edward VII and George V. In 1901, he married the daughter of a prominent Conservative family; they honeymooned at his mother’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace.77 For all his inheritance, Dudley proved profligate, and his estate was in disorder at his death. As daughters, his two offspring could not succeed to the Tweedmouth baronetcy, which became extinct. While Edward became her partner in offical Liberalism, Ishbel’s youthful diaries suggest initially closer relations with her older sister, Mary Georgiana, or Polly, with whom she read, partied, and rode. Routinely celebrated as a beauty by at least her younger sister, she made just the advantageous match desired by ambitious families. In 1873, she wed Matthew White Ridley, a Conservative MP since 1868 said to be on “the squirearchical side of the party.” He served as undersecretary of state for the Home Department in Disraeli’s government

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(1878–80) and home secretary in Salisbury’s (1895–1900). The couple produced five children, several of whom married prominent Conservatives. In a testament to the Marjoribanks’ networking skills, one Ridley son would go on to chair Coutts’ bank. Ishbel’s brother-in-law’s estate at his death was reckoned as an exceedingly healthy £535,615 14s.78 Their formal Conservative affiliation never prevented the Ridley nieces and nephews from spending considerable time with their Gordon relatives. The seven-year gap between Ishbel and Polly was filled by Ann and Stewart, who died in childhood. Next came two younger sons, eventually best remembered as the family’s black sheep. While only four or five years separated them, Ishbel always regarded Coutts (1860–1924) and Archibald John (1861–1900) as “very much under my special charge” and “as belonging to another generation which had to be mothered.”79 Their apparent marginality within the Marjoribanks clan was not unusual. Family historian June Perkin has argued that “far more attention and resources were devoted to marrying off the daughters, whose alliance with other influential families could bring political and social influence as well as opportunities for patronage and material bargains, than to settling younger sons who were merely, as it were, an insurance against the premature death of their eldest brother.”80 Third son John Campbell Gordon’s elevation to the earldom and subsequent marriage to Ishbel kept him from such near-oblivion. Seemingly the classic “remittance men” so despised in the colonies and elsewhere,81 Coutts and Archie were packed off in their twenties to test their imperial manhood on American and, later, in the case of the former, Canadian ranches. They eventually cost a great deal of money, much coming from the anxious Edward and Ishbel. The details of whatever particular scandals precipitated their exile have been lost, but their general ineptitude as cattlemen on thousands of acres in North Dakota, Texas,82 and British Columbia was eventually self-evident even to their fond sister, who had hoped to “see poor old Coutts a rich man after all!” The same brother found her solicitude sometimes oppressive: he was remembered as enlightening a Presbyterian minister, “You know, my sister has so much godliness that there wasn’t enough to go round the rest of the family.”83 While the Honourable Coutts stayed in Canada, to marry, produce offspring, and die, the Honourable Archie made his way back to England. Before that, he married the American Elizabeth Trimble Brown (1876–1925), and their Tennessee wedding was attended by the doubtful Gordons, who were then Canada’s viceregal couple. The marriage produced two children, Anne Frances (b. 1898) and Edward (1900–1932). In 1905, Archie’s widow reinforced the family connection by wedding Douglas McGarel Hogg, First Viscount Hailsham

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(1872–1950), son of the philanthropist Quintin and yet another Conservative politician, and produced two more sons. Her eldest, Edward, became a successful Tory MP and writer until his promise was cut short when he shot himself following a love affair gone sour.84 His half-brother Quintin Hogg (1907–2001) became a still more prominent Conservative politician. Ishbel also had her foster brother, Henry, the son of her father’s insane business partner, Henry Meux. While his origins and fate are discreetly ignored in her autobiography, his sometime inclusion in the Marjoribanks household was far from atypical in an age where death and disability were ever-present and guardians were regularly drawn from family and friends. Indeed, the Aberdeens would serve much the same function for some of their own young relatives. Henry, who became third baronet in 1883 upon his father’s death, had a chequered history. In 1878, he made headlines by marrying the nearly decade older butcher’s daughter Valerie Susan (1847–1910). She was said to be an actress, but rumours cast her as effectively a London prostitute. Not surprisingly, this “flamboyant and controversial figure, who was given to driving herself around London in a high phaeton, drawn by a pair of zebra” was not accepted in all circles, although her guests were said to include the Prince of Wales and Winston Churchill, and her portrait was painted by society artist James McNeil Whistler. She somewhat redeemed herself, however, by emerging as a patriot when she donated guns for the Battle of Ladysmith during the South African War.85 The marriage with Meux produced no issue. Unfortunately, Ishbel’s response to such controversial kin has been impossible to ascertain. They nevertheless served as an essential backdrop to her very different choices in making a name for herself. The Dutiful Daughter The questions raised by sources of wealth, evangelical faith, sexual irregularities, and contradictory political allegiances constituted a powerful legacy and the base from which Ishbel moved into marriage and activism. Like many talented young women of the day, she had to reconcile talent and ambition with domestic expectations and histories. In 1865–66, a popular Scottish writer, Mrs Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897) published a best-selling novel eponymously titled Miss Marjoribanks. While the story cannot be directly tied to Ishbel, it raised questions she faced and would have been well known to her even as it centred her clan in the dilemmas of contemporary womanhood. The evangelical and family-minded author, although rarely termed a feminist, regularly explored “the miseries suffered by women required to shed a moral influence on male relatives over whom they had no other authority.”86 The mid-nineteenth

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century protagonist offered a possible solution. Indeed, Lucilla Marjoribanks has been cast as “a Victorian anti-heroine, large, strong, unsentimental, insubordinate to men and with a hearty appetite, who bossed everyone around and eventually married a man she could regard as a partner.”87 Male relatives might fail but she would not. Lucilla and her creator were, nevertheless, ultimately conventional: there was no questioning of marriage as the institution to which their sex was properly directed. Thus, the only option for a woman “of superlative talents” was to manipulate “those around her for their own good,” just as had Ishbel’s ancestral heroine Grizel Cochrane.88 It would be some time, however, before Ishbel recognized her own abilities, what another well-known Liberal Scottish writer and friend, Annie S. Swan (1859–1943), would later characterize as “’the extraordinary fertility of her brain”’89 or, one suspects, appreciate the contradictions found within her own family. Childhood diaries, many preserved at Haddo House, testify to early days passed in the midst of siblings, long walks with “papa,” and much riding on cherished ponies in both London and Invernesshire. Since the family, like many, lost children to illness, outdoor activities were much prized even for girls. Lessons in French, German, piano, and painting began early and encouraged Ishbel’s real talent, especially as a watercolourist. Typical of the day, as well, early reading was more feared lest it produce “brain fever.” Young Ishbel escaped prohibitions by learning secretly with the guidance of an under-butler, an influential experience of instruction by those lower in rank that encouraged her to value their talents.90 Ishbel early on assumed the role of dutiful daughter. Driven by internal voices, she felt “destined to be my adored mother’s protector,” a task at which her older brother and sister had presumably failed because her mother’s marriage remained difficult.91 Ishbel followed self-imposed rules, such as avoiding lines on pavements and memorizing texts, that other sensitive and conscientious offspring will recognize as one of the special burdens of childhood. Her protective impulses were accompanied by an “abiding terror of bringing the name of my parents and their forbears into disgrace by my inadequacy to rise to the level of their attainments.” Expurgated versions of the family histories told earlier in this chapter set intimidating standards of “ancestor worship.” However contradicted by “genealogists,” the official Marjoribanks-Hogg story laid a heavy burden on her shoulders. Her identification with her remote kinswoman, the heroic Grizel, however, suggested sources of special empowerment for ambitious girls.92 Families could ultimately rely on female independence and strength. A steady whirl of visitors to homes in London and northeast Scotland offered the Marjoribanks offspring further instruction in parental expectations. At first,

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Ishbel could only view arrivals from nursery windows, but as a teenager she found herself sitting next “to some of the most leading men of the day.” These included relatives but also prominent politicians such as the Liberal orator and parliamentarian John Bright, the great Whig aristocrat and one-time viceroy of Ireland Earl Spencer, and the charismatic Gladstone, as well as cultural luminaries such as the poet Robert Browning (1812–1889), the American writer and diplomat Russell Lowell (1819–1891), and the violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907.93 Ishbel’s dedication to liberalism was fuelled by Gladstone, whose appeal – like John Campbell Gordon’s later on – included a readiness to take his young admirer seriously. She also encountered more public opportunities for instruction in what it meant to be a Liberal. In 1864, she “dressed in a yellow [Giuseppe] Garibaldi [1807–1882] blouse and blue skirt,” not coincidently the official colours of her father’s Scottish Liberal constituency, to join in London’s welcome to the “Liberator of Italy” as he received the freedom of the city. Pageantry encouraged imaginative connections as well with other supposed “democratic heroes,” notably her favourite, “Robert the Bruce, Liberator of Scotland.” Freedom was, however, not a personal expectation: stern governesses drilled her daily in the French and German lessons expected of Britain’s female and male elite.94 Ishbel’s father’s extensive art collection and regular dealings with architects provided still other occasions to acquire the cultural capital prized in a marriageable daughter. The liberal values of national liberation and material accumulation or industry were simultaneously held up for emulation by obedient offspring. Ishbel had to make sense of their sometimes contradictory message. Suspicious of temptations for youthful frivolity or even rebellion, the evangelical Isabel Hogg waited until her daughter was in her teens to expose her to many unrelated girls. Ishbel remembered being “pretty much a lonely child, and scarcely knew what it was to have a playmate my own age”: despite “hosts of cousins, we only had a sort of bowing acquaintance with them.”95 The first significant excursions beyond kin-dominated space occurred when the teenage Ishbel was permitted to attend the Educational Institute of London in Cadogan Gardens in the company of her governess. A cautious mother gave approval to classes overseen by Antonin Roche (1813–1899), a popular and distinguished French teacher and author, with whom she had also studied as a girl. Roche had been teaching the metropolitan’s elite offspring since France’s Revolution of 1830 when, a supporter of the Bourbon monarchy, he had seen it overturned by the more progressive House of Orleans. Such political credentials seemed at odds with the professed liberalism of the Marjoribanks but very much in keeping with hopes of affirming prestigious networks and constraining young people. Roche’s Institute was extremely popular. One of Ishbel’s

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contemporaries fondly remembered that “a group of eager girls might be seen waiting outside, impatient to secure their places at the long oval table” where they would have to pass the tests of “a little grey-haired, bright-eyed man, carrying under his arm a big bundle of papers, and wearing at his buttonhole the tiny red rosette that proclaimed him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.” The regime was rigorous. Students competed to translate back and forth readily between French and English authors. Especially talented girls were encouraged to acquire the “extra knowledge gained from a wider reading or more cultivated home surroundings” and respond to “questions addressed to the class ­collectively.” Although Roche was credited as “wonderfully patient with the duller girls,” sometimes “his naturally sarcastic temper flashed out – when a foolish answer was held up to the ridicule of the class, and thereby much needless misery inflicted. But such occasions were happily rare; he more often laughed with his class than at it … Something too he tried to teach us of the great principles and laws of history, and if often he rose far above our understandings, at least he succeeded in impressing upon us the conviction that history was interesting.” Roche might have been a passionate French “legitimist,” but he pushed participants beyond the texts to familiarize themselves with different arguments. The result encouraged a lifelong love of learning by Ishbel and many of her classmates.96 Freed from close domestic supervision, the teenager thrived, applying her energy to new lessons and rivals, ever determined to meet the high expectations of her family. Bolstered by candlelit bedtime reading, she repeatedly took first place in classes. In the memory of one younger pupil, she was “worshipped” as “a genius from a respectful distance.”97 Her excellent French later made her especially welcome in Canada’s Quebec. Notably, however, the classical languages of Latin and Greek, requirements for university and many professions, remained terra incognita. Only men were trained to interlace speeches, whether in the Lords or the Commons, with the classical references that connoted membership in a real intellectual elite. Ishbel’s formal training did, however, perhaps because of her interest in mathematics, include sessions with Nathaniel Everett Green (1823–1899), a noted astronomer of the day whom she was subsequently able to recommend to Queen Victoria who became his pupil.98 Ishbel’s intellectual progress was monitored beyond her immediate family ranks. Lucy Lyttelton Cavendish (1841–1925), a maid of honour to Queen Victoria, niece to the Gladstones, and wife of the second son of the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Frederick Cavendish (1836–1882), who as chief secretary for Ireland would be assassinated by Irish nationalists, was a frequent guest of the Marjoribanks. Once a widow, she never remarried and became a prominent advocate of female education and philanthrophy; a women’s college

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at Cambridge would be named in her honour. In September 1874, Ishbel “shocked” Lucy by “saying I had never read any of W[alter]. Scott’s or Miss Austen’s novels” and found herself the object of a “determined” campaign of improvement.”99 This may help to explain her enrolment for instruction in English literature and history with the Scot, John Miller Dow Meiklejohn (1830–1902), a prolific textbook writer and publisher, translator of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and later professor of education (from 1876) at St Andrews. With him, Ishbel “discovered for the first time the delights of her own language” and “plunged into the works of Milton and Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold and William Morris, [Francis] Bacon and Jeremy Taylor, [John] Ruskin and [Walter] Pater.”100 A twenty-first century assessment has judged Meikeljohn a “remarkable” Victorian Liberal who nonetheless articulated the commonplace prejudices of class and race. When appraising the difficulties of the English language, he suggested, “No wonder that the lower classes, who have so few brain residuals find it difficult to learn to read and that even the middle classes find it difficult to learn to spell.” He nevertheless argued that the British were in all the world the people the “most adventurous … most scientific … most desirous of justice and fair play … most rapidly in favour of individual freedom,” a perspective that left little virtue for the rest of humanity. Not surprisingly, a passionate imperialist, Meikeljohn advocated “a Greater Britain” and “New Englands with better climates and kindlier soils.” As for his opinion of the “gentler sex,” his writings demonstrated a faith that “the true sphere of a woman is in the Home.” Such opinions made him an acceptable choice for anxious elite parents, who preferred learning without obvious transgression of accepted opinion.101 They also further grounded his young pupil in much the same kind of imperialism as distinguished Quintin Hogg. Fortunately, Ishbel preserved essays she wrote for this admired tutor between 1875 and 1876 when she was eighteen or nineteen years old. They reveal forceful but largely conventional opinions before her marriage. In June 1876, she submitted three pages “On Industry” that resonated with central tenets of the Victorian middle classes. Industry was, she argued, a “necessary” condition of the good life for humanity; indolence, in contrast, caused “untold evil to body, mind and soul.” Since God had created human beings to make the best use of their talents, any neglect of this mandate rendered them “faithless stewards.” Her arguments never implied that women were less bound than their brothers to this fundamental creed. An approving Meikeljohn evaluated her essay as “clearly & vigorously expressed.”102 Another paper, composed at much the same time, remained untitled but tackled the challenge of revolution, for which it received the notation of “well

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turned” from her tutor. In its pages, Ishbel undertook an emotional assault on unidentified rebels engaged in the “murder” of “gentlemen.” This Scottish landlord’s daughter vigorously condemned the assailants as “faithless, not only as subjects but as tenants.” Their goal to make “all equal in wealth” was portrayed as grounded in envy. Their success would be catastrophic, “fatal to all labour” and “the utter ruin of all trade and manufacture in this country.”103 Theirs was not the proper road to progress. Two essays “On Nobility,” both dated July 1876, similarly pursued the question of class division. Reminiscent of the views of her much admired family friend Gladstone,104 she offered a spirited defence of the aristocracy as having a major role in preventing monarchy from devolving into “a pure and absolute tyranny,” as had, she suggested, occurred in Turkey. And, much like Gladstone, she insisted that not all nobles deserved approval, only those “who have the most aptitude for public duties, and who possess talents and qualities likely to be useful to the country.” In fact, she warned that a too “numerous nobility, being a source of superfluous expense, is apt to cause poverty and inconvenience in a state.” Thus, having dispatched indolent aristocrats from the justification of utility, Ishbel quickly moved on to admit that republics and Switzerland in particular might be “generally quiet and less subject to sedition” because they were “united by the great bond of mutual usefulness.” The Low Countries or Holland was also applauded since “all classes are on an equal footing, debates and consultations are less partial, and the taxes are paid with greater cheerfulness.” Despite some clearly muddled thinking, most evident in Ishbel’s simultaneous concern about the dangers of the “insolence of inferiors,” her father’s employee Meikeljohn awarded this effort a “good” grade.105 A week later, he received the second reflection on “nobility,” albeit an exercise introduced with an apology from his always busy student: “In great haste – Cricket match at Lords!” This time, only months from her engagement to the Earl of Aberdeen, Ishbel singled out the virtues of “ancient noble” families “which have withstood all the ravages of time.” More recently elevated peers, in contrast, might be “more talented and more virtuous,” but she thought it “rare that a rapid rise to fortune does not result from a combination of good and evil actions.” On the other hand, she admitted the possibility that high-born men (there was no mention of women) might well be “idlers” who envied the “industrious” newcomer and suggested that their “jealousy” posed a constant challenge for those newly “promoted to honour.” She went on to insist, as well, that “able men” among the nobility faced no shortage of employment: “They will be more useful ministers to the king than those of an inferior rank, for people instinctively honour and respect those whose natural position entitles

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them to command.” Such observations from the daughter of a newly raised baronet received the notation of “very good.”106 Ishbel also submitted an essay of ten pages tackling the anticipated visit of Edward (1841–1910), Prince of Wales, to India in 1875–76, just before Victoria was officially raised to empress. The youthful and little travelled commentator voiced rather contradictory observations. At the beginning, she acknowledged general English ignorance about the subcontinent but then proceeded to overgeneralize and stereotype. She was alert to the victimization of her sex, condemning child marriage and suggesting that a young Indian wife became the “slave” of her husband: “He will not care for her half as much as his horse.” British laws forbidding widow suttee were applauded. Such reforms could not, however, compensate for what she held to be the essential fatalism of Indian nature, which could not embrace proper “protective measures” against floods and environmental disaster. Like many imperialists, she distinguished between northern and southern peoples, with “nothing to admire” about the latter in India while the “Seikhs [sic],” who were “fairer” and taller, constructed “healthier looking and better built villages.” Even this martial race, however, revealed major failings, accepting “the advantages afforded by English progress without any notion of making any progress themselves. Their matrimonial arrangements are no better; for they too, are victims of early marriages; the wives are regarded as little better [than] household drudges utterly untaught, untrusted and uncared for.” The evangelically inclined offspring of a family enriched by East India Company profits emphasized that problems of imperial rule ultimately stemmed as well from the commercial nature of much contact: There is no sympathy between the English and people of the country – no society common to both which has any other object than business. What the natives say to the government officer, is by no means what they think, but what they believe will best please their listener. It cannot be affirmed that they view the British rule with any warm feelings of discontent, but it may well be assumed that they are satisfied with the existing regime, mainly because they do not know how to throw it off or where to look for a better. The English are viewed with distrust and suspicion and it is never supposed for an instant that any wish to mix with the natives and to know more of their inner life arises from any other than an interested motive.

While dubious about official or mercantile governance, Ishbel credited missionaries with superior intentions. She feared, however, that India’s “millions” were hardly likely to believe such goodness and insisted that the Empire had a “responsibility” to address the “want of sympathy and confidence” that afflicted race relations.

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The young Marjoribanks held out hopes for the visit of the heir to the Throne: “as their future sovereign,” he might awaken “enthusiasm and loyalty” in the “hearts” of those “in whose welfare he takes the deepest interest.” In particular, she endorsed what has been recently characterized as “ornamentalism.” “Extreme magnificence,” as Ishbel judged it, was a key weapon in the proconsular arsenal, and something she and her husband would explicitly practise in both Ireland and Canada, since it “alone produces the full impression of power.” She trusted that British taxpayers would provide the wherewithal for the prince to properly impress susceptible Indian nabobs with the largesse of Empire. The young imperialist could not, however, resist expressing reservations about the future Edward VII, widely known as the “playboy prince”: “may not the view of the Empire to which he is heir lead him to reflect on the trust that is committed to his keeping, and to see what a noble work may and does lie before him? Ought not a life so marvelously given back to be dedicated in the most especial manner to the service and glory of the King of Kings, so that, in the day when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, our Prince may be able to render in his account with joy.”107 Ishbel’s generally well-written essays largely took for granted privileges of gender, class, and race, but they were far from uncomplicated, even though they made no reference to particular sources. Neither men, nor aristocrats, nor the British Empire came away unscathed. Power had to be employed for Christian good, and relations should recognize mutual humanity and the possibility of improvement. Meikeljohn responded positively while at the same time pointing to the limitations of Ishbel’s arguments: “Now you labour under the disadvantages of being totally – well no, not quite – uneducated; on the other hand, you are well worth educating. But the fact is, you must do this for yourself. You have some taste, some power of writing, therefore you must not waste your time with the twopenny and the ephemeral.”108 His “wild idea” that she should join female pioneers in university education was, however, firmly rejected by her father.109 Much later, she remembered the request originating with herself and its rejection as her “personal introduction to the position of women.”110 Her cage might have been gilded, but she had begun to recognize its confines. Ishbel would envy the lucky handful of her contemporaries who attended Girton College, Cambridge, Britain’s first residential college for women, established in 1869 in Cambridge by suffragists Emily Davies (1830–1921) and Barbara Bodichon (1827–1891), or the somewhat more conservative St Margaret’s Hall, Oxford, whose first principal (1879–1909) was the Anglican novelist and poet Elizabeth Wordsworth (1840–1932).111 Later work with a formally better educated generation of female reformers gave her many occasions to regret the

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lost opportunity. Her intellectual development did not, however, come to a halt. Roche and Meikeljohn, not to mention Lucy Cavendish, helped Ishbel waken “to the fact that there was real advantage in seeking after knowledge, and real inspiration to be found in literature, music, and arts.”112 As an adult, she was rarely without books, magazines, and newspapers, took courses, and eagerly listened to and joined in debates. For Ishbel, such intellectual exercises were essential preparation for the full citizenship she wished for herself, her sex, and the disadvantaged in general. She nevertheless frequently stressed the privilege, rather than the right, of higher education for women. Her later addresses to coeds, whether in Britain, Canada, or the United States, included warnings. In 1894, she reminded the “lady” students of Canada’s Queen’s University that “you know how much harm to many causes frowsiness and frumpiness have done in the past. And then any imitating or aping of men, any attempt at mannishness, ruins women’s work and saps it of its force … You have to justify the action of those who have won these privileges for you; you have to show that University women will justify their emancipators – not by unsexing themselves, not by claiming power or by asserting their superiority.”113 The woman whose father had denied her university ultimately never entirely escaped his command that womanly duties superseded liberties. Religion and Activism Even as formal and informal education both empowered and constrained the young Marjoribanks, so too did her powerful engagement with religion. As Clare Midgley, Sue Morgan, Frank Prochaska, and Andrea Geddes Poole, among others, have reminded us, religious ideas and feelings inspired many Victorian women, underpinned nineteenth-century reform movements, and infused discussions of sex, romance, and marriage. Religion could strengthen resolve even as it sought to direct female energy and determination into appropriate channels.114 When it came to matters of faith, Isabel, in concert with the Hogg kin, was the key parent. As Ishbel explained, “My mother’s influence moulded my life and ideals far more than anything else, and her deeply religious character and ardent faith were doubtless the chief means of making things eternal, a great reality in my life from very early years.”115 At fourteen years of age, she received typical maternal Christmas presents: volumes titled Light and Truth and Sacred Allegories and a book of prayer. A few months later, Ishbel took first communion in the Church of England in London. This transition into the adult community of believers occasioned a “long letter of admonishment” in which her mother reminded her strong-willed offspring that “Satan is ever at hand to snatch what he can of blessed privilege from us. Therefore fail not to fill

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up every smallest interval of time with prayer and holy meditation.”116 Revealingly, as well, Ishbel also undertook duties as a Presbyterian at Guisachan and moved comfortably, as did Queen Victoria, between the state churches of England and Scotland. Such early ecumenicalism was encouraged by powerful revivals led by Sankey and Moody, who also inspired Quintin Hogg and John Campbell Gordon. As a rather sceptical contemporary observer in New York’s The Nation suggested, such evangelists spurred “an interest and belief in the efficacy of religion – not any particular kind of Christianity, but of Christianity itself.”117 For Ishbel, like for many other women, the evangelical “religion of duty” with its placement of “service above doctrine” had special appeal.118 While parents barred her participation at such unsettling multiclass events, Ishbel traded tickets obtained from her uncle Quintin Hogg for friends’ reports of the sermons.119 In time, her own chapels would be strikingly ecumenical, and she applauded the inclusive outreach of the Salvation Army. Isabel directed her daughter’s devotion to practical service with Scottish tenants, but Quintin Hogg, Francis James Holland (1828–1907), Anglican minister of Mayfair’s Quebec Chapel (1861–82) and promoter of Anglican girls’ schools,120 as well as Lucy Cavendish, who, like Holland, drew inspiration from the Anglican Oxford Movement’s enthusiasm for saving slum dwellers, encouraged her to look further afield for good works.121 Cavendish also made it abundantly clear that well-born women had special obligations “to use philanthropic enterprises to affect the broader debate on public policy, and, in the process, construct new identities as citizens,”122 a conclusion that her protégé would embrace and, in time, expand to include full suffrage. The youthful Ishbel attended the prestigious Quebec Chapel with great enthusiasm, waxing lyrical about Holland’s sermons in her journal entries. In April 1874, she was overjoyed to win her father’s permission to accept the minister’s invitation to teach Sunday school.123 She set herself to become an earnest pied piper, playing the harmonium and the concertina to win young souls for Christ. Her classes soon filled and in London she found herself training “older ones as pupil-teachers.”124 As Frank Prochaska has observed, such “Sunday schools became part of the network of local welfare agencies outside the Poor Law. Bringing together children, teachers, parents, and local worthies, the schools were ideally placed to serve the community in an era that desperately needed social services.”125 Ishbel followed up initial success by reading the Bible with two of the Brook House housemaids, a commitment that she hoped to “be able to keep to regularly on Sunday evening.” The ambitious teenager very much wished to be “made the channel through which the water of life may flow to some of these souls.”126 Although she divided her attention between Invernesshire and

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London, she seized additional opportunities for influence, acting as well as a “supplemental” to Lucy Cavendish’s missions in London’s East End.127 And, quite remarkably for someone her age, she managed between 1874 and 1876 to compile a Questions and Answers on the Shorter Catechism that was printed for private circulation.128 Although “teaching in Sunday schools was considered appropriate for young, unmarried women, training them in public service, and reinforcing the ties between the classes,” only a tiny minority ever took it up and far fewer remained loyal.129 In her contacts with the Empire’s young urban poor, the brewer’s daughter suddenly faced conditions she could have only faintly imagined. Her critical early persistence was ensured both by an energetic community of like-minded religious reformers and by the pleasure and the insights that she discovered in her work. At a more pragmatic level, as Prochaska has noted, the pressure to contribute to philanthropy was “unrelenting” for women, coming “from the pulpit and the platform, the reports and pamphlets of the charitable societies, the numerous family and women’s magazines, and from millions of penny tracts pumped out by the religious publishing houses.”130 Like many others, Ishbel succumbed. Bright and enthusiastic Cockney and Highland pupils, some of whom followed her subsequent career with pride and wished her well on her golden wedding anniversary in 1927, furthered the imaginative connections with the disadvantaged that she had first found in delivering medicines to Guisachan tenants.131 For Ishbel, whatever it meant for her students, such service with its introduction to a diverse community of city dwellers proved a foundational moment in self-development. As a teacher, she discovered an identity, an authority, and a cause apart from her powerful family. Evangelical outreach also gave her cause to wonder and worry about a father who appeared “so particular about the material well-being of his people” but largely indifferent to “their spiritual needs.”132 The thoughtful daughter would want something better when she came to considering her choice of a husband. The death in 1874 of her Swinton Hogg grandmother provoked a journal entry that captured a young enthusiast’s model of religious devotion: her kinswoman was someone whose life “has been one [of] continued self-abnegation & devotedness & now it is so glorious to think of her, beyond all the turmoil & suffering, with Him whom she so loves.”133 Ishbel could, however, also imagine, like some other Victorians, that religion could promise an agreeable life as a single woman. In 1876, she considered this possibility in an essay for Meikeljohn titled “An Old Maid – perfectly contented.” Written from the perspective of a forty-year-old spinster, it claimed entire satisfaction. To be sure, the author admitted: “If I could have found one whom I could have really esteemed – one

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who, realizing he was not his own, had determined that God’s will and glory should ever hold the first place in his life – then I believe I should have found intense happiness in married life.” When this “maid” observed her married friends, she was nevertheless confident that she had made the right choice.134 Nieces and nephews, like Sunday school pupils, offered multiple satisfactions beyond a husband. Ishbel’s taken-for-granted middle-class or better life that included “my piano, my books, my pencil, my paint-brush and my spinningwheel” deepened their possessor’s sense of well-being. There was no hint of the author’s later concern for the economic welfare of the unmarried of her sex in all classes. In considering her decision, the single protagonist thanked “my Lord that He has made me the instrument of bringing souls to the knowledge of Him.”135 Like many of her generation “who imbibed the social gospel of viral religion, belief without active benevolence was inexplicable.”136 It justified life itself. Ishbel’s tutor rewarded her with a “good” mark; given her ambitious parents, he might well have been leery of assigning any greater encouragement of non-matrimonial ambitions. Ishbel’s theoretical excursion into the issue of marital choice was hardly unusual in an era that, like most, offered ample reminders of the problems created when a couple did not share key opinions. Three prominent aristocratic activists – the ladies Carlisle, Somerset, and Balfour – stood out for the complications created by incompatibility with spouses. Her somewhat older colleague, Liberal Party activist and prominent suffragist, Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, was educated at home before she married and produced eleven children. In direct opposition to her Liberal Unionist husband, she moved to the left to support Irish Home Rule and female suffrage. A superb organizer for the franchise and temperance, she helped found Girton College and became a gifted public speaker. Howard’s agnosticism and dogmatism, like her public separation from her husband, however, proved liabilities. She herself recognized that Ishbel’s more conciliatory stance won more supporters in the Women’s Liberal Federation. Unfortunately, only a few letters survive in the Haddo House archives to hint at their complicated relationship.137 The heiress Lady Isabella Somers-Cocks, some six years older and just as evangelically minded as Ishbel, found disaster in her 1872 marriage with the dissolute Lord Henry Somerset. Despite the scandal of the divorce she initiated, she won custody of their son in 1878. Later as president of the British and the World’s Women’s Temperance associations and good friend of the charismatic American activist Frances Willard (1839–1898), Isabella became one of the handful of famous feminist aristocrats of her generation and was sometimes identified as a “Fabian socialist.”138 Widely regarded as a beautiful and heroic victim of male debauchery, statuses that Ishbel escaped, Somerset

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remained still more on the margins of her own class. The liability of an at best embarrassing husband was hard to overcome. Religion and feminism similarly energized Frances Campbell Balfour, the talented descendant of the dukes of Sutherland and Argyll. Like Ishbel, she was largely taught by governesses and by the spirited conversations provided within her prominent Whig family, well known for causes, including anti-slavery. Her marriage to Eustace Balfour (1854–1911), a junior son of a staunch Conservative family, was better than Somerset’s but he proved no match for her intellectual energy. Frances became a noted biographer, tackling Prime Minister Aberdeen as well as Scottish feminists, outspoken and among the “highest ranking” advocates of woman suffrage. She challenged the reservations of her husband, her powerful father, and her otherwise admired brother-in-law, the prime minister, A.J. Balfour. Frances served as president of the Travellers’ Aid Society from 1885 to 1931, proving an effective champion of its efforts to protect girls. Like Ishbel, she resolutely opposed sex wars and her feminism was “rooted in nineteenth-century concepts of freedom and democracy.” She also took a leading role in the British National Council of Women and the campaign for Presbyterian ordination. Such commitments inevitably put her into the company of the like-minded Aberdeens. Both, however, went curiously unmentioned in her two-volume autobiography, perhaps because she, unlike them, was a staunch defender of the historic rights of the state Church of Scotland and an opponent of Home Rule for Ireland. Frances did not bend her knee to Gladstone.139 Carlisle, Somerset, and Balfour, like Ishbel herself, represented an extended generation of aristocratic women seeking a political voice in an increasingly democratic world. Even as countesses, duchesses, and the like long exerted power through patronage and influence,140 some now sought other means to demonstrate talent and responsibility. Reform causes and political organizations offered them, just as they did middle-class women, new ways to exert influence. In particular, the Women’s Liberal Federations and the Conservative Primrose League “institutionalized aristocratic female management in electoral politics.”141 Diverse philanthropic initiatives in matters from education and public health to temperance, anti-slavery, and child welfare provided modern opportunities to reassert traditional claims to leadership and to affirm full citizenship in the expansion of women’s public sphere. No more than the men of their rank did they wish to be left behind when it came to power. In any case, despite her daughter Marjorie’s mention of friends, including Frances,142 Ishbel’s letters and journals offer little indication of intimacy with other women, including the notables mentioned here. Perhaps a truer observation came from Ishbel herself who identified men as her closest comrades.143 Certainly, unlike Carlisle, Somerset, and Balfour, she could place her husband

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among their number. When examining her life in its entirety, from her relations with her father and brother onwards, it is also tempting to suspect that she never entirely escaped a need for male approval, a curb on many a would-be feminist. Romance By the time she entered adolescence, Ishbel had had a front-row seat on the celebrations attendant on the marriage of her siblings, Edward and Mary, into the aristocracy. She was expected to do the same. That trajectory was, however, potentially more difficult. Already having demonstrated a practical commitment to Protestant evangelical service, she sought similar aspirations in a spouse: only a serious young man would do. Second, she was never regarded as a beauty. While her complexion and voice would always be complimented, she was neither a willowy pre-Raphaelite damsel nor a somewhat later curvaceous Gibson girl. Like many women, Ishbel was extremely self-conscious about her looks. Of her youth, she remembered “the desperate miseries of those years, how the terror hanging over me, the fear of always being wrong, the conviction that I was too naughty, and ugly and ‘potato-nosed.’”144 Feelings of inadequacy were hardly addressed when her father termed her a “great Brobdingnagian,” a derogatory term coined from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels to denote someone of colossal size.145 Her 1870 diary worryingly, and rather unconvincingly attributed her weight of nearly 130 pounds at age thirteen to “all my linsey petticoats.”146 Unmentioned in such reflections but hardly unimportant was the social stock of the ambitious Hogg Marjoribanks who needed every asset to marry beyond their station. Britain’s high-born families might well view them as upstarts. It is now impossible to know how Ishbel’s family coped with “the social exclusivity of the aristocracy, an exclusivity which not infrequently took the form of petty snobberies and care for marks of distinction,”147 but beauty always has its own currency, as various ill-judged alliances of the age, including those within her family, demonstrated. The younger Marjoribanks daughter was never credited with a sufficiency of that particular capital. Despite early external recognition of her intellectual and organizational talents, Ishbel remained often privately uncertain and nervous. Her self-consciousness about her looks (especially her size) and her lack of formal academic qualifications (notably, a university degree) persisted. Such sensitivity further encouraged lifelong compassion for the unfortunate. Personal doubts had to be set aside when leadership was required. Fortunately, her essentially sunny temper and personal warmth inspired considerable admiration and affection, crucial supports when she faced the misogyny commonly directed at talented women.

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The Marjoribanks wealth was an additional substantial advantage. This could be demonstrated as a London debutante. Just before her eighteenth birthday, “packed away in the great family coach, the coachman sitting aloft on his hammer-cloth with a cocked hat, and two footmen standing on the footboard behind, in full dress livery, with long sticks in their hands,” she was brought to court for presentation in February 1875.148 Queen Victoria’s kiss officially admitted the granddaughter of her former banker to the ranks of eligible young women. Ishbel remembered tripping over her skirt in the course of her departure from the royal presence, but she enjoyed two seasons of dancing and balls held by the Marjoribanks and family friends such as the Duke of Westminster, “reputedly the wealthiest man in Britain” and the respectable Earl of Dudley.149 She was brought into carefully protected contact with unprecedented numbers of eligible bachelors and set up to await a suitable proposal. This was another stage in the cycle of formal courting for British elites that also occurred when aristocrats and their imitators paraded themselves and their ponies and horses up and down “Rotten Row” on the south side of London’s Hyde Park. That outdoor venue provided critical moments for Ishbel and John. Waiting never came easily for Ishbel. Her interest had already been roused by the 1869 visit of John Campbell Gordon, before he inherited the earldom and just after his brother’s suicide, to Guisachan, her favourite place in the world. While sunstroke kept the adolescent in her room, Gordon hove into view as a lone romantic figure exploring the glens north of his own estate. Their formal meeting came in February 1871 when Arthur James Balfour and John Campbell Gordon, now Earl of Aberdeen, displayed their manly virtues, not to mention their class, in riding down London’s Rotten Row. Later, Ishbel contributed to the stuff of romantic legend by remembering the immediate loss of her heart when he treated her “as if I were a rational being and a grown-up young lady, instead of chaffing me, as was the fashion with most of my sister’s friends; and besides, he admired and patted my brown pony Crotchet.”150 The young Scottish member of the House of Lords gradually emerged to become a regular in her social circles. The fact that he attended services at Mayfair’s Quebec Chapel provided only more confirmation of superior qualities. The courtship moved far more slowly, however, than the impetuous Ishbel liked. His attraction for her was visceral. In 1875, the eighteen-year-old described her feelings on seeing him in church: “A very mechanical and unsatisfactory Sunday, at least from the moment I caught sight of him at the 8:30 sacrament service – from that moment my whole being began to be in a whirl and it seemed literarily impossible to fix my mind on anything I was doing, saying, hearing, or reading – least of all could I truly pray. I know not how to alter this state of things.”151 Ishbel was too inexperienced to judge Gordon’s feelings and

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struggled to overcome “waves of contradiction and rebellion that are washing over me.”152 Her confusion and frustration were so great that she approached her tutor, J.M. Meikeljohn, for advice about careers other than marriage: should she consider taking up writing and did she have “the power of influencing others for good?” When he offered cautious encouragement, she took heart, determined typically “to work as hard as possible.”153 By 1877, however, the passionate young woman, now two years beyond her court presentation, began to consider “other Christian gentleman,” confessing, at least to herself, that she must either “be married or die” and that she desired the joys of “love on earth” before death. Offers arrived but her father at least was relieved when she refused one candidate, whom he viewed as “nice enough, estimable enough and rich enough” but “not of sufficient weight and caliber to suit.”154 Fortunately, Aberdeen never entirely vanished from sight. The parliamentary season of 1877 brought them constantly together at parties. Ishbel experimented with strategies to rouse his interest, even jealousy, while London society gossiped about her hopes, or at least that of her family, for a Scottish noble who could not be brought to the question. Even Queen Victoria was said to be curious. Her father was furious, “the future” was “dreary,” and Ishbel felt she would not have survived the ordeal but for her “Mamma.”155 In July 1877, Aberdeen ended speculation by denying attachment and escaping to Scotland. The devastated Ishbel wept: “The one dream of my life for the past six years has dissolved into nothing and I must face life without him.”156 Her mother was of sterner stuff. Sensitive both to the loss of face and to the strength of her daughter’s feelings, Isabel issued an extraordinary admonishment to Aberdeen: allow me to venture to tell you that I am very sure you are deceiving yourself & that you do care for my child as a Christian man should care for the woman he wishes to make his wife – What is the highest, truest love but that sympathy of soul which enjoys the fellowship & mutual interchange of thought & feeling with one suitable in age & personally acceptable to our taste? What is the evidence of such love but seeking the companionship thus appreciated? Continued introspection is a fatal error in this matter as in others. Feelings cannot stand this sort of scrutiny. I can trust you to take these few words generously as they are uttered. We have known each other too long to doubt our mutual sincerity & simplicity of purpose. For your own sake I would not have you lightly throw away certain happiness and a priceless blessing. May God bless & guide you.157

Although still somewhat uncertain, the embarrassed earl almost immediately came south to offer a proposal that was accepted post-haste.

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The exact explanation for Aberdeen’s change of heart is now impossible to discern – he had to marry to secure his lineage, he could only be reassured by Ishbel’s religiosity and youthful vitality, and his estates would certainly benefit from his acquisition of a wife with access to the Marjoribanks fortune. In any case, John Campbell Gordon remembered his decision as the best in his life. Whatever her family’s calculation about the benefits of adding an earldom to its assets, Ishbel credited his love as “deep, holy, deferential, tender, heavenly” and insisted that she had not waited “a scrap too long as a preparation for such Paradisical happenings.”158 In November 1877, the couple married at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London’s most fashionable location for Anglican weddings. The prominent union was presided over by Archibald Campbell Tait (1811–1882), a liberal reformer and the first Scot to become Archbishop of Canterbury (1868–82).159 He was assisted by a distinguished coterie: Aberdeen’s uncle, the Honourable Douglas Hamilton Gordon, canon of Salisbury Cathedral; the Reverend Edward Glyn (1843–1928), an Oxford friend of John’s and a Kensington vicar, who later married a daughter of the Duke of Argyll;160 and the Reverend Holland of Quebec Chapel. Ishbel’s attendants marked her family’s status as much as her affections.161 Bedecked with Aberdeen and Marjoribanks jewels, twenty-year-old Ishbel walked out of St George’s to become the most famous of the countesses of Aberdeen, the foremost aristocratic feminist of her age, and convincing evidence that the “nobility had never been a closed caste.”162 The cash-rich were readily welcomed and the Marjoribanks, whose crest bore the motto, “Advance with Courage,” had entered new territory in embracing a Scottish earldom. Their daughter would have to work out how her talents could be employed now that she had secured a coronet.

Chapter Three

Forging a Partnership, 1877–1886

The 1877 Marjoribanks-Gordon union presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared no more than a conventional society wedding of the rich and well-born. Queen Victoria’s kiss for the new countess during her second court presentation in 1878 reiterated that message. Like the vast majority of their peers, the couple could have retreated into effective historical obscurity, marked only by the requisite public notices of births and deaths. Ishbel and John’s earlier forays into activism had, however, already signalled the possibility of an entirely different trajectory. Their first years together constructed in turn a further powerful foundation of emotional support for exploring other possibilities and ultimately contesting, although not overturning, convention. Their working out of the intimacies of married life, which as Katie Barclay has recently reminded us, were evolving as patriarchy was renegotiated in elite Scottish families,1 provided the sturdy foundation of their public life. By 1886, both husband and wife had become newsworthy reformers, determined to claim a place for responsible aristocratic leadership. The Gordons’ construction of domestic life, evolving religious faith, support for diverse philanthropies and reforms, adherence to the Liberal Party, and viceroyalty of Ireland made them, as William Ewart Gladstone put it, “an edifying couple.”2 John Campbell Gordon became identified as the heir of the great aristocratic philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury and Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon as a community-minded countess. That good repute suggested that the aristocracy still had a role to play in modernizing and improving the Empire. Gladstone’s use of the term “edifying,” however, also hinted at some contemporary discomfort with seeming paragons. Right from the beginning, the Aberdeens raised questions about how kind hearts could be accommodated with coronets.

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The Construction of Domestic Life Ishbel and John, the Countess and Earl of Aberdeen, took each other for better or worse in the midst of debates about the reform of marriage. By the 1870s, many Victorians admitted the widespread oppression of women, most vividly expressed in the Contagious Diseases Acts, with their targeting of prostitutes rather than clients, and were increasingly convinced that women’s position offered a test of true civilization. For some contemporaries, a commitment to mental companionship and moral compatibility was the proof of marital well-being. As Lord Aberdeen later reflected: “Be sure that you find your right mate as early as you can in life, and let your sympathetic understanding of one another lead you to take up together pursuits outside your business, which will not only be a protection against the carping cares of daily worries, but which will in some way or other be of service to wider circles outside your home. Thus you will together keep your hearts young.”3 His uncle, Arthur HamiltonGordon, himself a man who had been desperate for a loving wife, saluted his nephew’s union as promising “the most perfect harmony of thoughts & feelings.”4 For the countess, Catherine and William Gladstone, never her own parents, modelled ideal relations. As Ishbel explained: “Soon after our marriage Mrs Gladstone said something to the following effect: ‘Now, my dear, your husband is going for a political career, and there is no career that so separates man and wife unless they determine to share it. I will tell you my experience … as soon as we settled in our new home I took my desk into his room, and said: “Now I am going to write my letters and do my work here, except when you want to see anyone in private, when I shall go away.” Politicians coming in would look surprised, but they soon became accustomed to it. When health permitted it, I have always accompanied my husband to all his meetings and campaigns, and so our lives have never been divided.’” The admirable Catherine also disguised her “remarkable ability and real knowledge of affairs” in her role as “the devoted wife, the kindly philanthropist, experienced in all the arts of nursing and ready to help all works of charity, but little versed in public affairs, and therefore one before whom it was quite safe to talk of political secrets with her husband.” As a result of Catherine’s restraint, Ishbel believed that the Gladstones’ “blended life was indeed a beautiful harmony, but few realized the interdependence of the two, or how much Mr Gladstone owed to his wife’s constant, wise and loving ministry.”5 For that older generation, marital egalitarianism was deemed acceptable when discreet and largely out of sight. Its model of public deference for the wife survived as both strategy and handicap for younger Victorians such as the Aberdeens.

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The Aberdeens’ relationship matured in face of greater, although still far from wholehearted, acceptance of women’s equality. This more liberal context potentially liberated both partners. With John’s support, Ishbel found room to emerge from a suffocating past of marriageable daughter to ambitious parents and discover what other activist women sometimes found in marriage, “a site for reworking social and sexual conventions.”6 Formerly only the proverbial “spare” as the third son, Johnny, in turn, drew strength from her vitality and approval. Such collaboration was not unique. The women’s movement of their day produced many mutually supportive wedded leaders.7 Reformminded middle-class couples such as Millicent (1847–1929) and Henry Fawcett (1833–1884), Emmeline (1858–1928) and Richard Pankhurst (1834–1898), and Emmeline (1867–1954) and Frederick (1871–1961) Pethick-Lawrence employed their relationships “to implement – at least publicly their conception of equality.”8 Marital equality and good husbands appeared less visible among Britain’s aristocratic fin-de-siècle elite. Nevertheless, in addition to the Gladstones, many powerful contemporaries, such as prime ministers Lord Rosebery and Henry Campbell-Bannerman, were well known as devoted to wives with interests of their own.9 Ishbel’s decided rejection of the type of “New Woman” who viewed men as enemies rather than allies, and her public deference to John’s authority, even as she forged a distinctive public role, helped both of them negotiate equality’s uncertain path.10 Her husband made a corresponding commitment. As a friend of the muckraking author of “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” (1885), William Stead,11 and an endowment trustee for the “White Cross Society,” which social purity reformers created in 1883, he came out as a “New Man.” Membership in the WCS, a “vast moral federation,” required “the obligation of personal purity” for men as well as women, a central tenet of Victorian feminism.12 Its recognition and denunciation of male abuse left idealization of “the benign authority of the Victorian paterfamilias” in tatters.13 Men had to earn respect. A half-year honeymoon gave the newlyweds time apart from family oversight to set in motion a marital partnership. While the much-publicized theft of family jewels and wedding gifts following the ceremony reminded observers of great wealth, which was further confirmed by the bride’s father’s regular subsidizing of the couple, the subsequent trip to Egypt proved much more than an exercise in conspicuous consumption. Surviving letters invoke delighted intimacy. Near-daily epistles from “Ish” to her mother-in-law, mother, and father, the latter happily hailed as “my darling Diddlems,” documented fulfilment. Seemingly as besotted as his bride, the groom aligned his faith with his love: “My darling, sacredly given gift; shall we take as a text for tomorrow, ‘the Lord

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shall give strength to His people – the Lord shall give His people the blessing of peace,’ I am, now and always hereafter your own Johnny who loves you very much.”14 As the biblical quote indicated, intimate discoveries were accompanied by spiritual harmony. Egypt had long been a focus for British geopolitical and financial ambitions, and these only intensified following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. While actual imperial occupation awaited 1882, the newlyweds arrived only two years after Benjamin Disraeli’s controversial purchase of a 44 per cent stake in the Suez Canal Company and more immediately in the wake of the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention of 1877, which asserted Britain’s cultural and moral leadership.15 Even in the midst of new pleasures, the young earl found time to write to his father-in-law from fabled Luxor: “We are very glad indeed to hear what you say about the prospects of continued peace as far as England is concerned … I suppose it is the fashion at present with the majority, to speak of the idea of England occupying Egypt, as a piece of useless enthusiasm: but I think there can be no doubt that such an occupation would be an unspeakable boon to this country in many ways, & no loss, even in revenue, to England (at any rate eventually).”16 Part of the “boon” was slavery’s termination. Even as they distributed Bibles and medical supplies and help, the young Gordons freed four Sudanese boy slaves, who in turn subsequently rescued an equal number of “little black girls.” The boys were baptized, adopted, and renamed Aberdeen, Haddo, Campbell, and Gordon in a particular version of the “interracial intimacies” noted by today’s post-colonial feminist scholars.17 Relations were not to be ephemeral. The honeymooners set out to underwrite the training of their new “sons” either as missionaries to “their own race” or, should they prefer, in “any trade they like.” While three succumbed to childhood illnesses, Gordon eventually taught at Sudan’s leading boys’ school, Gordon Memorial College, named after the imperial hero of Khartoum.18 In yet another determined exhibition of British imperial morality, the irrepressible honeymooners of 1878 next set upon the rescue from his parents of Ahmed Fahmy (1861–1933), a teenager who became “the most celebrated convert from Islam to Christianity in the history of the American Presbyterian mission in Egypt.”19 Ties again proved long lasting. Letters, now in the Haddo archives, from Fahmy, as well as from ex-slaves, Gordon and a woman freed as a child thanks to the Aberdeens and working for the Church Missionary Society in Northern Sudan, convey ongoing obligation and concern. Fahmy’s medical schooling in Edinburgh and career as a missionary in China were typically both subsidized by the Aberdeens.20 After his honeymoon, Lord Aberdeen characterized Egypt as a land where well-mannered but sometimes “untruthful” Arabs worked hard, and Turks,

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most prominently the ruling khedive or viceroy and his entourage, while sometimes “courteous,” were frequently “cruel and arbitrary.”21 Similarly orientalist conclusions had already encouraged Ishbel’s enthusiasm for her new cousin, “Gordon Pasha” or Charles Gordon, the khedive- appointed governor general of the Sudan: “the more we saw of him, the better we liked him … One feels the greatness of the man instinctively… so simple & childlike in his way of talking & so conscientious & good.”22 Known colloquially as “Chinese Gordon,” for his role in leading the so-called Ever-Victorious Army against rebels opposed to China’s Qing dynasty in the 1860s, this iconic imperial champion eventually perished at Khartoum in 1885 while defending the city against the Sudanese forces of the Mahdi.23 Having demonstrated their mutual commitment to the Empire’s civilizing mission, the aristocratic anti-slavers departed Egypt in the spring of 1878. En route home, they took time to tour the Paris World’s Fair,24 where they approved Britain’s prominent display of its civilizing mission and manifested their own expression of this in endorsing a local medical dispensary. At the latter, the earl delivered a prepared speech while a nervous but excited Ishbel “summoned up my courage & followed him with a very few words.” This moment gave public expression to her hopes for full partnership. Nor did romance evaporate. Even as she tested her foothold as an activist, Ishbel took time to defend John’s new beard explaining to her mother, “it saves the poor boy so much trouble” and “it makes him even handsomer than before.”25 The lovers’ perambulation north allowed the earl to await good weather before introducing his bride to Haddo House, where he feared an invidious contrast with the luxurious Guisachan. What his historic estates could offer, however, was a tenants’ welcome that was “almost feudal in its intensity, of love and esteem.”26 The countess reported to her father how she was “thoroughly” inspected but found her scrutinizers “all wonderfully hearty & nice.”27 Such reception reflected years of responsible Gordon landlordship as well as desire for approval by powerful patrons. By Marjoribanks’ standards, however, Haddo itself stood desperately in need of improvement. The new chatelaine, bankrolled by paternal cash, immediately initiated what would become a lifetime of renovating and building expensive residences. These commonly included ecumenical chapels, as at Haddo, designed to accommodate comfortably both private life and public duties. Her father’s advice, like his architects and wallet, helped create a future treasure for the National Trust for Scotland. Despite the ever-present demands of rebuilding, Ishbel plunged into far more critical waters as guarantor of the Aberdeen lineage. Between 1879 and 1884, she gave birth five times – three boys and two girls. The first, George Gordon,

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commonly known by the Scots nickname of “Doddie,” was born 20 January 1879, some fourteen months after the marriage. A much-desired male heir but sickly from birth, he quickly worried the proud parents.28 He may have suffered from epilepsy, a highly stigmatized malady that many contemporaries believed properly precluded marriage and parenthood.29 The second arrival, less than two years later, on 7 December 1880, was Marjorie Adeline, who grew up to be her mother’s close helpmate. The next was Dorothea Mary, commonly referred to as Dorothy, born on 12 March 1882. She died less than nine months later, on 25 November, but her memory was invoked until the end of her parents’ long lives. At the time of that loss, Ishbel herself was carrying Dudley Gladstone who appeared on 6 May 1883. Then, a little less than a year and a half later, came the family’s beloved benjamin, Archibald Ian, on 3 October 1884. Alone of the five children, Archie was born at Haddo House, now much renovated, in Aberdeenshire; his older siblings all arrived in the comforts of the family home in Grosvenor Square, London, a reflection as well perhaps of its nearness to Ishbel’s family as well as more medical options and the demands of the House of Lords. The healthy twenty-nine-year-old countess had then ended her childbearing although, not untypically for the age, no discussion of birth control survives in the family archives. Limitations on fertility were, however, one part of the commitment of progressive couples to the “white life for two” and more egalitarian marital relations in general.30 Children came into their lives in other ways as well. Godparenthood – the Aberdeens would eventually have very many spiritual daughters and sons and receive similar commitments from others – extended kinship both up and down the social ladder. Ishbel typically took on the role of godmother to Neil Primrose (1882–1917), son of the Scottish Liberal leader Lord Rosebery, who in turn accepted that moral duty to her youngest, his namesake, Archie. A host of less high-ranking admirers’ offspring in Britain, Ireland, and Canada became Ishbels and Johns, sometimes receiving small gifts and subsequent exchange of correspondence. Such arrangements have been readily forgotten but could constitute significant sentimental and practical bonds when it came to assistance and affection. As frequent family letters confirm, Ishbel remained to the end of her days intensely concerned about her eldest and committed to parental duties, though these were sometimes conducted at a distance, as with many aristocratic households with their nursemaids, governesses, and public service. Her early and mid-twenties saw her self-consciously overseeing construction of a healthy and well-appointed nursery at Haddo where she and John played with and instructed their offspring. Both proved eager students of contemporary pedagogy espoused by the Christian educator Charlotte Mason (1842–1923).31

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Her Home Education (1886) “criticized the tendency to ‘talk down’ to children, and emphasized their claim to be regarded as ‘persons’ and to be treated accordingly.”32 Ishbel and John soon became long-time joint honorary presidents of Mason’s Parents’ National Educational Union (PNEU), with its insistence on moral development, finding inspiration in the natural world and good literature. While the Union targeted, as its title suggested, both parents, mothers loomed especially large. Even “humble” women were credited with possibility; like those higher in status, they possessed special power to guide offspring to “power, wealth and position.”33 Enthusiasm associated with rearing their own sons and daughter encouraged the Aberdeens’ patronage of local day nurseries and infants’ homes and similarly fostered identification with parents in a range of classes. Proper education was the foundation of proper behaviour and the promise of social equality for the talented.34 As Rachel Ann Neiwert has recently emphasized, however, the PNEU’s initial claim to embrace all classes in the United Kingdom quickly collapsed before economic realities that left most women little chance to focus on progressive nurturing. Soon enough it concentrated on educating governesses and teachers and on the imperial frontier rather than the heartland. Like the Aberdeens, the PNEU nourished great hopes for the progressive possibilities of new lands, where the divisions of class and ethnicity might no longer hinder good parenting.35 Even in the midst of repeated pregnancies and renovations, the couple kept their Scottish estates a hub of activity with guests, including relatives, politicians, academics, theologians, and artists, variously offering and requiring work, conversation, and inspiration. In July 1882, guests rather typically ranged from the crown prince of Germany, later Wilhelm II (1859–1941), to Lady Knightley (1842–1913), a “leading” constitutional suffragist married to a Conservative politician and eventually active as a dame in the Primrose League.36 That formidable matron, who coordinated an active program of good works on her own estates, had already summed up Ishbel as a “young thing,” “whom it is delightful to find so full of enthusiasm for all good works” and who “in the heyday of youth and prosperity” was surrendering herself “entirely to the service of God and man.”37 In September 1884, just days before Archie’s birth, one Welsh Liberal lord waxed lyrical about Haddo House’s welcome: “there never were kinder, more lovable, or better people than the Aberdeens.”38 Interlocking family, estate, and community duties kept Ishbel and John almost steadily in the public eye, in a pattern of traditional aristocratic life they sustained for their lifetimes. As members of the “governing class,” a countess and an earl were expected to maintain a state of near-constant “open house.”39 Less expected was their dedication to faith and good works.

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Evolving Faith Both Ishbel and John entered their marriage as earnest Protestants. Their initial rather dogmatic faith inspired individual acts of charity, but its limitations were challenged by a further experience of religious awakening in these years. In the 1880s, Quintin Hogg introduced the Gordons to the charismatic scientist, theologian, and activist Henry Drummond.40 Life changed. This middleclass Glaswegian “became the closest of our friends and comrades, the playmate and boon companion of our children,” providing a “friendship” worth “more than we can ever hope to express.”41 Drummond channelled his era’s fascination with the relationship of science and faith. His best-selling Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883) and The Ascent of Man (1894), with their gospel of “theistic evolutionism” and discipleship of Herbert Spencer, Darwin’s foremost popularizer, won many admirers.42 Like his friends Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, the ecumenically minded Drummond repudiated original sin and infant damnation, embraced a doctrine of Christ’s love, and regarded natural and human progress as inevitable. In claiming “a divine plan in the dynamic evolution of life,”43 he aligned modern Christianity with scientific evolution and rejected fatalism and despair. When Darwin’s “Struggle for Life” gave way to the “Struggle for the Life of Others,”44 the result was an “evolutionary lovestory of the world.”45 Converts could trust that individual action and modern science provided the path to collective salvation. This message of positive thinking offered a powerful counterweight to the trauma of Dorothea’s death and the era’s recurring crises of gender, class, race, and religion. Drummond’s appealing vision prompted Ishbel to “examine the foundations of the beliefs she had held and expounded with such certainty.” In the process, she lost some of her “youthful happy confidence,” but she and John also discovered “a new freedom.”46 The transformation was profound: “looking back to the first seven years of our married life we scarcely recognize ourselves in the prim goody young couple that we were then.”47 More than ever, they committed themselves to the cause of duty. To spread Drummond’s good gospel, the Aberdeens arranged for him to lecture to Britain’s political elite at their London Grosvenor House in 1885 and to meet Gladstone in 1886.48 By penetrating the halls of power, they trusted he could transform government. Even at the height of Drummond’s considerable popularity, however, real power-brokers remained largely immune. His “theistic evolutionism,” which has been subsequently judged “a soothing doctrine, a source of comfort and strength to those who feared the revolutionary changes of the late nineteenth century,”49 was regularly discounted at the time as “weak science and weaker theology, the flatulent mysticism and the singular

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mixture of truth and error.”50 Ultimately, the message of conciliation offered by Drummond and disciples such as the Aberdeens made little headway against realpolitik. By choosing the Scottish minister’s “struggle for the life of others” and promise of social reconciliation as central principles, the Aberdeens anchored their politics in a pervasive optimism. John Campbell Gordon’s conclusion that “the underlying tendency and genius of Christianity” was “democratic” fuelled his hope that political parties true to such principles would attract working men and eliminate class conflict, just the message of social harmony that his countess was offering servant girls and their mistresses on their estate and beyond.51 Nor was reform to be confined to Britain. As Drummond reminded his Haddo House friends when they undertook the Irish viceroyalty in 1886: “We are all missionaries for good or evil – high or low. The politicians may arrange what they like but the only solution to trouble in India, S. Africa, or Ireland, is a knowledge of a faithful following of Christ. It is hopeful for England and Ireland that your great and difficult task is at last grappled with in that spirit and of that strength.”52 The couple’s early subsidies for the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction (Zenana) Society and the Ladies’ Association on Foreign Missions matter-of-factly included other races alongside Britain’s classes and masses as candidates for both redemption and common membership in an evolving social order that promised a peaceable kingdom.53 In highlighting altruism as central to the divine plan of improvement,54 Drummond relied heavily on women. Their supposedly natural “mother love” embodied “the true meaning of Otherism, Altruism, and Self-Sacrifice.”55 Under their management, the home played a central role. There, “children first experienced the Struggle for the Life of Others and acquired a taste for Altruism” that guaranteed humanity’s “spiritual evolution.”56 George Nathaniel Curzon, later the president of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, noted this appeal when he responded to the couple’s request to support Drummond’s Oxford lectures. He recommended a “special invitation to undergraduates. Otherwise he will be flooded with ladies who flock in schools to anything of the kind in Oxford. If he does not desire their presence I think he had better print upon his notices For Men Only. I will mention this to him in a letter: so that he may decide as he thinks fit.”57 Central as segregation might have been to the manly ideals of India’s future viceroy, Drummond’s great crusade nevertheless required the alliance of the sexes. Many Aberdeen allies found that possibility attractive. In Canada, where the Glaswegian has been judged to have had greatest impact, the Aberdeens encountered a kindred spirit in the influential Presbyterian minister, popular novelist, and suffragist Charles Gordon (1860–1937), better known by his pen

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name of Ralph Connor. A product of Scottish theological training, this social gospeller trusted that “the primeval forest of patriarchal Calvinism must give way to the new seedlings of maternal liberalism.”58 This shared doctrine paved the way for friendships and reform alliances throughout the English-speaking world. Yet, even as it celebrated women, Drummond’s faith held particular dangers for them. As scholar Thomas Dixon has concluded: “Drummond used evolutionary science to reinforce the idea that it was natural for women to subordinate their own needs to those of their husbands and children; to romanticize the institution of Christian marriage; and thus tacitly to resist the rise of feminism and the ‘new woman.’”59 Like other believers, the Aberdeens’ investment in maternal character made it harder to recognize women’s diverse interests. The result could cripple and constrict, creating impossible standards and uncongenial duties. Nevertheless, for all its obvious conservatism, Drummond’s updating of long-standing gender essentialism undercut recurring dismissal of female moral authority. For many feminists, its riposte to pervasive misogyny made it both pragmatic and attractive.60 And although activist maternalism could not adequately describe real women, it promoted a sense of sisterhood that could sometimes confer real benefits, as with the campaigns against Britain’s brutal Contagious Diseases Acts.61 For Ishbel and many others, Drummond’s creed ultimately revitalized religious faith, justified activism, armoured them against critics, and helped them cope with illness, death, and disappointments. Such benefits were far from inconsequential. The relationship with Henry Drummond produced, however, an unexpected liability. Although the Gordons appeared initially irreproachable, their subsequent reputation as occasional mavericks to their class encouraged later calumnies. In particular, two authorities have suggested that Ishbel found time for an affair with the charismatic Presbyterian. This charge appeared in print in a 1988 biography, Ishbel and the Empire, by Canadian Doris French Shackleton and was picked up, without further authority, by John Cafferky and Kevin Hannafi in Scandal and Betrayal: Shackleton and the Irish Crown Jewels (2002), which described a “a fourteen-year-long extra-marital liaison with the love of her life.” Young Archie was its supposed illicit by-blow. John was dismissed as absorbed in his clubs, probably a homosexual, and offering Ishbel “a free hand in the company of men.”62 Such charges ignore the characters of both the Gordons and Drummond, the nature of the relationship between a middle-class Presbyterian minister and leading Scottish aristocrats, and the fish bowl in which they all lived. The dating is equally problematic: within days of first meeting in 1883, a year when Ishbel was recovering from the birth of her fourth child and Henry Drummond spent much time travelling in equatorial Africa, they

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would have had to be almost immediately intimate. Since the Glaswegian has also been assessed as “sexless … towards women,” and all three professed and demonstrated deep religious faith, with Drummond ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1884, an affair would have contradicted critical moral and emotional trajectories.63 The accusation nevertheless remains a significant part of a persisting pattern of gossip and innuendo. Whether it involved an affair with a charismatic Scottish minister, or supporting labour unions, dining with servants, or a supposedly homosexual eldest son implicated in the 1909 theft of the Irish Crown Jewels, the result, effectively titillation, offered an easy way to discredit a woman who was presumed not to know her place and a man who did not easily fit the mould of dominant masculinity. Happily unaware of later rumours, Henry Drummond accepted an invitation in 1884 to become Archie’s godparent. Flattered but hesitant, he confessed that such a duty had never entered “into my celibate and Presbyterian mind” and promised to do his best.64 As it happened, he missed the christening in deference to a Sunday sermon elsewhere but trusted that the “halo of good wishes which surrounds your little child at this time, and from many quarters, will bear their fruit in a life of unusual consecration and usefulness. I know this is your, and Lord Aberdeen’s sole desire for him, and I pray it may be even so.”65 In the next few years, Drummond holidayed separately with John, helped supervise all the young Gordons, regularly wrote both parents, and supported their religious, philanthropic, and political initiatives, even as he himself pursued a busy life of missions and lectures before his death from cancer in 1897. By then, the Aberdeens had emerged as broad-minded liberal reformers. Their hopeful personal faith guided them at home and elsewhere. While Ishbel’s mother had been the lynchpin of spiritual life for the Marjoribanks with little support from Dudley, the Aberdeen household was very different. John led the family and its retainers in regular prayer, striving to model a life of Christian commitment. His leadership, while obviously paternalistic, left space for recognition of the capacity of others, notably but not only a talented wife. Ishbel appeared equally inclined to acknowledge ability wherever she found it. In 1884, the young countess typically urged cooks and housemaids to seize the “habit of thinking when you are reading your Bibles.”66 Two years later, she suggested to the Scottish Christian Women’s Education Union that a “spirit of free inquiry must of necessity enter into the religions of the times” and reassured her listeners that “they should not be frightened by it – they should meet it not by authority but by sympathy and respect.”67 Her assurances to servants that “we are all the same distance from Heaven” invoked an ultimate democracy among the community of believers.68 They contributed as well to

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continuing rumours that the Aberdeens’ household arrangements did not meet elite standards of deference. The couple joined a small group of like-minded evangelical aristocrats for whom “good works were the only sure sign of conversion.”69 In the spring of 1885, they agreed with the bishops of Canterbury and London “that society’s code had become sadly lax, that the children of the upper classes received but little religious instruction from their parents, that church-attendance and Sunday observance had greatly fallen off, and that the pursuit of pleasure and wealth was leading to widespread deterioration.”70 Ishbel found allies in a few highborn ladies committed to weekly devotions with the Archbishop of Canterbury. These “Lambeth Penitents” had no luck, however, in convincing “the Princess of Wales to join them in promoting ‘the moral improvement of society.’”71 Undeterred, Ishbel worked with Lady Adeline Mary, Countess of Tavistock (1852–1920; later the Duchess of Bedford and a noted prison reformer),72 as cosecretary of the Associated Workers’ League, which assisted in boys’ and girls’ clubs, parish visiting, and the London School Board’s evening classes. Admirers hailed such titled leaders as “very fairly representative of the influential and serious women of the day” who rejected conventions that “the first duty of women was to be blind and dumb.”73 Other contemporaries proved more sceptical. Even the sympathetic Drummond jested “that the League would be like a servants’ registry for the unemployed of the West End, a Workers’ Exchange where volunteers would learn about the most suitable field for their gifts.”74 His assessment proved not far off the mark and the League ultimately languished. In explaining failure, Ishbel identified the elite’s frequent lack of “systematic religious instruction” and its “susceptibility” to worldliness. She warned that the age’s pervasive materialism would never satisfy the “underlying desperate hunger of soul for a deeper and more satisfying life and for the opportunity of being of service.”75 When inspired by Gladstone and supported by John but otherwise opposed by her family, she joined Lady Tavistock, in taking the message of Christian redemption to London prostitutes, she found further occasions to question class superiority and became “thankful for the friendship of some of those girls, who have turned out to be splendid women.”76 Opportunities for reflection expanded in 1880 when Gladstone appointed John Campbell Gordon lord high commissioner to the Church of Scotland, a post taxed with warring Presbyterians and ecumenical hopes, not to mention continuing resistance to female activism.77 The demands of the position seemed especially fitting for someone already courageous enough to defend the right of the notorious atheist Charles Bradlaugh to sit in the House of Commons. As Aberdeen argued in the Fortnightly Review, intolerance and exclusion were ineffective responses to disagreement. People of good will needed to

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engage directly and practically in combatting “socialistic habits of thought as well as … depraved habits of life.”78 Haddo’s newly built chapel with its welcome to all faiths sent the same message. Unfortunately, the earl proved too discreet to comment on Bradlaugh’s well-known and highly controversial endorsement of birth control, although readers would certainly have made the connection to “depraved habits.”79 Whatever their personal practices, neither John nor Ishbel ever acknowledged publicly that opportunity and equality for women demanded more than the advocacy of sexual restraint. Birth control remained publicly forbidden territory for them, as for the vast majority of reformers. As the monarch’s representatives to Scotland’s national church, the Aberdeens dwelt in splendour two weeks a year at Edinburgh’s Holyrood House. They quickly turned out to be far more than ornamental. They initiated an active regime of building consensus and cooperation among fragmented Presbyterians. While John Campbell Gordon himself comfortably contemplated a “new National Church,” no longer needing state support to flourish, he moved cautiously to conciliate opponents. Unlike the ardent champions of disestablishment among the free churches, he awaited “the broad and firm basis of the people’s approval” and urged “the exercise of forbearance and mutual concession.”80 He counted on a slow but ultimately inevitable “growth of mutual toleration in ecclesiastical matters” and an “emerging tide of brotherly love.”81 Lord Aberdeen’s search for a middle path between warring parties was widely applauded. From far-off New Zealand, one observer suggested his “genius for conciliation.”82 Closer to home, The Scotsman editorialized that the earl had been the “ideal High Commissioner.” His combination of “Christian breadth of view” with “Christian depth of sentiment” made common “acerbities and jealousies” appear “peculiarly little and mean in his genial presence.”83 For all such praise, the lord high commissionship proved exhausting and expensive. John Campbell Gordon succumbed unhappily to Gladstone’s persuasion to take renewal, but further service was cut short by his appointment as lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1886. He would hold the high commissionship once again for a year during the First World War, but the Gordons wearied of the constant attack on their liberal ecumenicalism not to mention the high costs. When Prime Minister Gladstone had to decide in the mid-1880s whether it was worthwhile to tackle legislative disestablishment of the Scottish Church even as he faced divisions over Ireland, he ultimately preferred the go-slow advice of Aberdeen and most of Scotland’s leading Liberals.84 As the Aberdeens discovered in other settings, bitter divisions were not easily mended. For partisans of every stripe, however, their caution could readily be interpreted as unwillingness to take a firm stand. The high commissionship began their alienation from both radical and reactionary true believers.

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Reforming Country and City In any case, the Aberdeens found plentiful opportunities to practise their conciliatory faith. The first years together saw them emerge as prominent liberal landlords and active philanthropists in country and city. In 1883, John Campbell Gordon set forth his guiding principles in joining a testimonial to John Ruskin (1819–1900), a powerful Victorian advocate of social justice and elite duty: Those of us who have made a special study of economic and social questions desire to convey to you their deep sense of the value of your work in these subjects, pre-eminently in its enforcement of the doctrines: – That Political Economy can furnish sound laws of national life and work only when it respects the dignity and moral destiny of man. That the wise use of wealth, in developing a complete human life, is of incomparably greater moment both to men and nations than its production or accumulation, and can alone give these any vital significance. That honourable performance of duty is more truly just than rigid enforcement of right; and that not in competition but in helpfulness, not in self-assertion but in reverence is to be found the power of life. It is both our hope and our belief that your advocacy of principles such as these, by its suggestive analysis no less than by the inspiration of its eloquence, will be powerfully felt in the social and economic teaching of the future, and in our national life.85

The newly wed Ishbel put her intentions more simply, namely, “to prove myself worthy of Lord Aberdeen’s choice by following in the footsteps of his honoured mother, by striving to carry out her life of charity and Christian faithfulness.”86 Such commitments were far from typical of Scottish landlords. Only a handful ever saw themselves as Christian activists or partners with their tenants. These few were generally found within Liberal rather than Conservative or Unionist ranks.87 Considerably more common were defenders of privilege and private property, a group damned by the socialist politician Tom Johnston (1881–1965) in Our Scots Noble Families (1911). Later scholars have largely agreed, summing up the region’s aristocrats as “overwhelmingly reactionary.”88 Their spokesmen included such notables as Scotland’s premier Whig and later Unionist George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, friend of Prime Minister Aberdeen, opponent of Scottish Church establishment, and early mentor of John; and the Welshman Sir Henry B. Frere (1815–1884), former member of the India Council, governor

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of the Cape Colony and Bombay, and foe of Gladstone. In 1881, Frere offered a lengthy defence of conservative Aberdeenshire owners. Arguing that tenants were “relatively as well as absolutely, richer” than their grandparents and far better off than their Irish counterparts, he attacked any questioning of property rights as “undisguised socialism and communism” that recalled the French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror.”89 Such charges inflamed the times in which the Aberdeens experimented with liberal landlordism and greater provision for the poor. While Ishbel’s school essays had painted dire portraits of revolution and ungrateful citizens, a decade later she and her husband distinguished themselves from most of the aristocracy by embracing the possibility of class conciliation through social improvement and elite leadership. Country Poor weather and prices, together with competition from the Americas, regularly devastated British agriculture throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Many tenant farmers and farm labourers, especially those from the Highlands and Islands, protested – producing the Crofters’ Party in 1886 and much local unrest – and emigrated, often to Canada, either on their own initiative or after being expelled by their landlords. While east coast Aberdeenshire saw many departures, its resentment rarely boiled over. Both contemporaries and later commentators credited the Earl of Aberdeen’s management of his estates with contributing to social peace. Even as tenants faced off against Scottish and Irish landlords in the era’s land wars, John Campbell Gordon won early regard for cordial relations, lowered rents, and payments for improvements. In 1880, he publicly affirmed his intention and that of his wife, who was indisposed, probably with pregnancy, “to act rightly as a landlord” and remitted a half-year’s rent, which his tenants described as “an act of generosity unprecedented, we believe, in the history of Scotland.”90 In 1882, some two to three thousand delegates representing “over 40,000 farmers in the counties of Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardine” heard a Tarves farmer contrast the callousness of many landlords with the “manly way in which Lord Aberdeen had dealt with his tenants.”91 In that “year of storms,” Aberdeenshire lease holders petitioned Parliament for rent relief but they found the laird of Haddo House, whose estate was already reckoned “as the most liberally managed in the county,”92 ready to convene a joint meeting to consider solutions.93 He offered “new leases, greater freedom of cropping, compensation for certain improvements, and revaluation of holdings two years before the expiry of leases.”94 Such welcome offers proved expensive. In the 1880s, to help finance such generosity, Aberdeen began the land sales that continued throughout his tenure of the title.

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A handful of his neighbours were nevertheless inspired. The liberal imperialist Donald James Mackay, eleventh Lord Reay (1839–1921)95 and their host on a later visit to India, proved willing to seek advice from the younger man. “Knowing” that Aberdeen would “look at the question from a Christian point of view,” he “attributed[d] great weight to your experience and to your judgment, and know that you will excuse my asking for it in confidence. The great difficulty in a mater of this kind is to be just, not to give too much to one tenant and too little to another.”96 As Marjory Harper, the pre-eminent chronicler of northeastern Scotland, has concluded, however, most landlords pursued a far harder line.97 Nor, for all the good will they won, could individual good deeds remedy overpopulation and inequitable distribution of resources. Right from the start, Aberdeen himself endorsed other solutions, notably, adult and juvenile emigration, preferably to the imperial colonies of settlement.98 From the 1870s onwards, the couple supported initiatives, including those of Thomas Barnardo and William Quarrier, to send children to opportunities elsewhere.99 In the next decade, the Gordons’ female orphanage dispatched girls to Canada, while Ishbel worked with the Aberdeen Ladies’ Union that sent more than 330 female immigrants to the same Dominion over more than a quarter of a century.100 In contrast to the lands of the Duke of Argyll, Aberdeen’s tenants were not forced off, and relations were sufficiently cordial that both Ishbel and John could enjoy visiting immigrants in the course of their trips throughout Canada. For those who stayed, the Aberdeens proposed other solutions to distress and unrest. On the one hand, they promoted social responsibility and cohesion. More prosperous tenant farmers were urged to better the physical and moral conditions of landless labourers, whose situation was widely judged “immoral” and “debasing.”101 The Gordons set the example with unprecedented holiday fetes and new cottages for Haddo’s farm workers. They also sponsored improvements in poultry and livestock, handicrafts, fruits, and vegetables.102 The goal was the restoration of the harmonious social relations that they believed had characterized the Scottish past. As a contemporary admirer of Ishbel lyricized: In the last century simpler manners had permitted much acknowledged association between farm servants, male and female, and the families of their employers. Then they had sat at the table with their masters’ sons, fresh from college, and the mothers of men rising in ecclesiastical and social influence had spun among their maids in the farmhouse kitchen … life under these former conditions had not only had good and pleasant influences in its present, but it could not have lacked hopes and prospects of such promotion as was natural and fitting. All this, however, was

92  Liberal Hearts and Coronets quite over … All the evils which must always attend the existence of a pariah race or class had become painfully manifest. Wives and mothers were almost in despair as to securing virtuous and modest women to serve in their own parlours and nurseries.

The loss of a supposed organic connection between high and low was considered a major test of aristocratic mettle. “The young Countess of Aberdeen” was widely applauded as among “the first” to address the need for shared community.103 The Aberdeens’ early tools, all designed to foster cross-class collaboration, were the Haddo House Association (HHA), the Haddo House Young Women’s Improvement Association (HHYWIA), later the Onward and Upward Association (OUA), and the Institute of Agriculture for the Promotion of Agricultural Education.104 While similar to the inspiration to other contemporary philanthropic initiatives such as the Anglican Girls’ Friendly Society, these groups were in contrast conspicuously ecumenical. Ishbel harnessed new technology to spread the good message of inclusive cooperation in magazines for adults and children – Onward and Upward and Wee Willie Winkie, the latter officially edited by Marjorie Gordon but directed by Ishbel.105 The highly personal significance of the associations, in particular, was suggested when the countess interpreted them as a testimonial to her lost daughter, Dorothy, and “God’s gifts to the daughters of our land.”106 For idealists, they promised an extended kinship and community revival. In the Haddo House Association, the youthful Gordons joined their household and estate servants, from the housekeeper and the butler to the gardener and dairymaid, in giving and listening to lectures, music, and sermons. Ishbel described the Club, which would be reproduced in their Irish and Canadian households, as really the outcome of an uneasy feeling on our part that whilst we were sharing in various philanthropic movements, and trying to bring ameliorating influences to bear on the lives and surroundings of the farm lassies, we were doing nothing in the same direction for the members of our own household, and the outside employees, and nothing to bring all into human relations with each other and ourselves, beyond our daily gathering in the Haddo House chapel for family worship day by day, and on Sunday evenings. Those last-mentioned gatherings, always well attended, suggested that some further opportunities should be created, through which we might all know and understand one another better, and assist one another’s development, and also thereby form channels of helpful influence through which our household might

Forging a Partnership, 1877–1886  93 be an active factor for good in its relation with the community in which our lot was cast.107

The plans of the Haddo House Young Women’s Improvement Association were still more ambitious. Lady Aberdeen attempted to enlist the wives of tenant farmers in the cause of improving female servants and promoting mutual good will. She assured mistresses that giving each employee “some object of interest outside the weary routine of her daily life” would raise standards and reduce transiency. Prizes for excellence in both theory and practice would encourage “habits of perseverance and determination” even as they fostered gratitude.108 Members would become the “first-rate servants” upon whom mistresses could rely.109 In turn, the countess promised employees that devotion to “welfare of the family under whose roof you live”110 would allow them to realize the “ideal of womanhood” embodied by Queen Victoria herself. As an ultimate reward, “good housewives and good servants” would attract “wise, respectable men – men who are worth having for husbands.”111 While contemporary critics feared democratic levelling and the “world turned upside down,” sympathizers interpreted the associations as an endorsement of the dignity of labour, a recurring theme in Victorian iconography. One 1882 observer suggested that “masters and mistresses who think their servants should be slaves, and nothing more, will see little need for such an Association.” Training in English and arithmetic, as well as “specific branches of useful and readily accessible information,” reiterated that nothing was “necessarily ignoble or degrading in connection with any form of honest labour.”112 Such endorsement of domestic education resembled the efforts of Scotland’s early women school board members who, like those elsewhere in the English-speaking world, “did not equate the domestic with the private. Instead, they saw the former as laying the basis for the exercise of an active social citizenship. In pursuit of that, they manoeuvred within a patriarchal system, working with men rather than against them.”113 Both as householders and as domestic employees, women were believed to match and more the dignity of workers in industrial or professional settings. At the same time, Lady Aberdeen’s explicit policy of “no rule of exclusion whatsoever” with regard to association membership suggested that every woman was potentially worthy, even if she had borne a child out of wedlock. Such inclusion was highly unusual when presumed sexual misbehavior could bar women from respectable society.114 Adherence to that rule prevented the HHYWIA’s later union with the far sterner and much larger Girls’ Friendly Society. With pride in themselves and their jobs and recognition and support from

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sympathetic employers, Ishbel offered hope for hard-working young women. In good and well-organized households, servants, whom she described as “second to none in intelligence,” would be protected from “evil” and equipped to do “great things.”115 What her recommendation ignored was the prevalence of sexual exploitation, a reality not peculiar to domestic service but ubiquitous in unregulated private settings. Mistresses were not always the protectors Ishbel imagined. Domestic training was only one part of the offer made by the Aberdeen associations. Instruction in writing, arithmetic, science, literature, and art was also valued. Such benefits, like those too at Glasgow’s far less respectable Magdalene Institution,116 were more common in Scotland than England. Founders’ faith was not so much in intellectual equality, although that sometimes surfaced, as in the value of “intellectual subjects” generally as “a means of moral training.” The survival of student essays from members makes just this point. One Annie McBain described a Sunday lecture from Ishbel. This involved three stories, all “about love.” In the first, a Swiss boy persevered, undeterred by a broken leg, in seeking medicine for his shepherd father. In the second, the emperor of Russia arbitrarily exiled innocents who lacked recourse to justice, and, in the third, French revolutionaries both executed their monarchs and imprisoned ordinary “people” who were “not safe anywhere though they did no ill.” In another submission, a nine-year-old reported on the same talk, adding positively that a subsequent rebellion returned a new king and queen to power.117 What such young listeners clearly heard was the importance of duty and the dangers of both arbitrary rule and upsetting the established order, especially when good rulers were available. In a society where deference could pay rewards, oversight could be welcome. In 1895, the grandson of a long-serving estate dairymaid took the time to offer “most respectful thanks” to “his Lordship” for “your unfailing kindness.” This had allowed his grandmother “to pass the remaining years of her life, in comfort which otherwise would have been impossible.”118 In much the same spirit later on, a retired nurse and Onward and Upward graduate from the 1880s thanked Lady Aberdeen for her “great work for the betterment of the women of all classes.”119 After the Great War, the son of a widowed tenant wrote of the Aberdeens’ “great goodness to her in the years of her adversity, the lean years of agricultural depression, when as your Lordship knows, it was so hard for a farmer without capital to rear a family & make financial ends meet.” The couple’s “devotion to altruistic purposes” was regularly credited until they died with making a crucial difference in real lives.120 While grateful correspondents abound in the records, observations from the bitter and the unhelped were also less likely to be sent or probably to be

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preserved. The Aberdeens oversaw an agricultural economy that ultimately offered few choices to the poor. Their paternalism or maternalism hardly challenged fundamental disadvantage, and their stress on mutual duties and the respectability of service produced obvious benefits for those in authority. A few fortunate beneficiaries might seize opportunities, but hard conditions and limited horizons curbed many lives. A continuing pattern of illegitimate births supplied one obvious reminder of the vulnerability of many Scottish women in domestic service and elsewhere.121 The employee groups were, however, only one part of the Gordons’ efforts to redeem country life. Their construction of an estate orphanage, a cottage hospital, a convalescent home, and a temperance institute, like Ishbel’s dedication to handicraft renewal, similarly aimed to improve life on the land.122 Regular visits to patients and inmates and prize giving to students personalized interventions in much the same way as did the associations. Schoolchildren were invited to write monthly letters, and “very many” were said to “avail themselves of this privilege.” Girls and boys were enjoined to establish animal-rescue “Bands of Mercy,” endorsed by Ruskin himself, on the principle that “the cultivation of this feeling of kindness to the lower creation is always accompanied by the chivalrous protection of the weaker by the stronger, and in proportion as the young realize that they are called upon to help those whose needs appeal to their strength, they will increase in self-respect and all true virtue.”123 Still more practically, Ishbel, together with Mary, her dowager countess mother-in-law, set up “hot soup dinners” offered at a “small charge to young scholars.”124 By 1885, the local school at nearby Tarves fed “an average of 90 children” every day, while the neighbouring village of Methlick “mustered about 100.”125 Their parents were offered a temperance café, “with reading and recreation rooms; and provision has also been made for the accommodation of visitors over night.” Lord Aberdeen justified expenditure on the latter by suggesting that “if a man discovers he can be comparatively comfortable without any kind of stimulating liquors, the discovery is a valuable one” in countering “the incalculable damage and misery which this vice causes.”126 Such commitments roused considerable admiration. To some extent, this reception stemmed, as K.D. Reynolds has argued more generally, from “the very infrequency of aristocratic visits.” Relative rareness “lent mystique and authority to the aristocratic visitor, which the familiar supervision of the middle classes could not obtain.”127 The particulars of the Aberdeens often seemed, however, somewhat different. Both Ishbel and John were intensely sensitive about the absentee landlords who were so much the object of contemporary censure. During their early married life, they spent some half a year directly engaged on the estate. When they were away, as they increasingly

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would be, they dispatched near daily missives to the estate manager and other representatives. Such oversight, what their daughter described as their “sort of feudal interest in anyone at work on their property, or even next door,”128 was reinforced by a sentimental view of Celtic Britain. This was especially visible in their patronage of home industries, first in Scotland and later in Ireland. Like another romantic and practical aristocratic activist, Millicent Leveson-Gower (1867–1955), Duchess of Sutherland, they “glorified” the local “cultural milieu,” finding at least a partial antidote to the suspect materialism of the age.129 For all its obvious essentialism and benefits for the elite, this perspective included a certain respect. As the self-titled “Scottish granny,” Ishbel later explained: “The patient, plodding crofters and their wives and families have won the land into cultivation in very deed by the sweat of their brow, but at the same time they have kept in touch with the politics of the day with deep and intelligent interest, and have brought up their children in such fashion that from their homes can be traced many a well-known name in business, ecclesiastical and political circles, both at home and in every part of the globe.”130 The Aberdeens’ seeming comfort with the possibility of social mobility on their estates and elsewhere, typically revealed in this last statement, encouraged many contemporaries to see “kind hearts” as well as “coronets.”131 More to the point, their benevolence occurred in the midst of financial exigency. By the 1880s, income rarely matched expenditure.132 Crusades in Towns and Cities John and Ishbel Gordon’s project of social improvement extended well beyond rural Scotland to the nearby City of Aberdeen and to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London. In the latter, homes at Dollis Hill and Grosvenor Square substituted for Haddo House in hosting philanthropic and political life. In 1883, the earl was made a Freeman of Aberdeen for his contributions. As the lord provost, himself a prominent northern Liberal, explained, John Campbell Gordon had been faithful to his family’s long engagement in civic affairs. Aberdeen responded with a toast to “our municipal institutions.” “A leading factor in our national life,” they offered “abundant scope for every element of healthy vitality in the forces which influence our national welfare, whether in the province of legislation or of Christian philanthropy.”133 Such claims of significant involvement in Aberdeen affairs have not, however, been confirmed by Scottish scholar I.G.C. Hutchison, who has largely dismissed the role of local gentry and aristocrats. Resident professionals ruled the town he described.134 Ultimately, however, they lacked the cachet of an historic title, which ensured that the Earl of Aberdeen and his spouse could never be entirely ignored.

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Cities were, the Aberdeens increasingly understood, a central battleground of the modern era. As Ishbel observed elsewhere, London in particular formed “a part of the very life of the people who had the largest stake in the country and who counted for something. Nobody could well come to the front without participating in it to some degree.”135 In the course of their regular parliamentary sojourn, the young reformers sought to influence the powerful. In this endeavour, they joined with urban reformers such as Ishbel’s uncle Quintin Hogg and Lord Shaftesbury who lived virtually next door in fashionable Grosvenor Square.136 For all their opportunity, cities were nevertheless suspect. Aberdeen’s support, like that of Shaftesbury’s, for the Society for Promoting Industrial Villages in 1883, exemplified recurring preferences for small-scale and rural solutions to the dangers set out in exposés such as Andrew Mearns’ The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (1883).137 The Society typically favoured an essentially pastoral idyll, which included “schools of three grades, a public hall, public libraries, art galleries and museums where practicable, provident dispensaries and sanatoria, public baths and wash-houses, and co-operative stores; social clubs and coffee taverns would be provided but public houses were, of course, prohibited.”138 The couple’s visits to commonplace responses to urban distress, such as a “Home for Incurables,” only confirmed the dangers of impersonal solutions. Drummond conveyed their horror in writing to Ishbel: I had an extraordinary account of your visit to the Incurables last Saturday … that awful place (I know it) needs all one’s nerve. Do you not think the word “Incurable” should be buried out of sight, and something substituted with at least one glimmer of hope in it? The Edinburgh one has the awful word carved in great letters across the front. I never pass it without shuddering. There is a great indelicacy and want of fine feeling still about much of our philanthropy. There is in Glasgow a Home for receiving and reforming women when they are released form prison. Of course it is called the “Prison-Gate Mission.” The very Bibles the poor wretches use have the word Prison branded on them – the one word one would wish them to forget and leave for ever behind them.139

The Aberdeens always preferred more focused and more intimate initiatives, such as London’s Home for Working Boys and the Ragged School Union, where John followed Shaftesbury as president. These they trusted could preserve dignity and hope. The significance of personal involvement by leaders was clear when Aberdeen asked another Scot with interests in reform, Lord Rosebery, to speak to East Londoners who were described as “very appreciative

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of notice from high quarters,” all the more so as they were likely to “think they are overlooked & forgotten.”140 Since poor housing was closely associated with poor wages, the couple intermittently tried to build relationships with urban workers, just as they had on their estates. In 1879, in a typical gesture of sympathy and largesse, they entertained “conductors, drivers, and stablemen employed by the General Omnibus Company on the Kensington and Hammersmith routes” in London’s “new Coffee Palace.”141 Lord Aberdeen’s appointment to the Royal Commission on the Loss of Life at Sea in 1884, which was terminated by his appointment as lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1886, like his presidency, in commemoration of his lost sailor brother, of the Friends of the Mission to Seamen, followed up interest he had already demonstrated as the chair of the House of Lords Royal Commission on Railway Accidents. In each instance, he struggled to create a meeting ground between the interests of industry and those of the public and the workers. On urban streets, however, the Earl of Aberdeen rarely engaged with labour militants. Rising class-consciousness could hardly be congenial for a peer who preferred to place his trust in the power of evangelical community. Children were ultimately his preferred constituency. Both Gordons became early patrons of the Society for the Protection of Children, alongside the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, the old Marjoribanks connection.142 The earl also joined Shaftesbury in supporting a non-sectarian colony home for “little boys,” some orphaned and some with military fathers. Youngsters were placed in groups of thirty presided over by house-fathers and -mothers and “given complete freedom to choose from among agriculture, baking, bootmaking, carpentry, printing, tailoring, engineering, gardening and laundry work for their apprenticeship.” Like many others of its kind, the home sent boys to Canada.143 John Gordon also became an early backer of Emma M. Sterling, superintendent of the Edinburgh and Leith Children’s Aid and Refuge, who set up a Nova Scotia shelter in the 1880s.144 In 1884, the couple once more joined Shaftesbury in endorsing the support of the National Association for Promoting State-directed Emigration and Colonization for the departure overseas of “524 persons, principally belonging to the working and provident population of London and country.”145 Canada was again sized up as a solution to overpopulation and poverty and a guarantee of future prosperity. Such initiatives envisioned the creation of a respectable industrious masculinity equipped to resist contemporary immorality. In 1881, Ishbel heard her husband offer a typical reminder to London’s Home for Working Boys. At issue, he insisted, was “true manliness.” This ideal, far from being incompatible with religious faith, was “essential to the Christian character.”146 Its cultivation, as

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in the Boys’ Brigade and later the Boy Scouts, which he supported for similar reasons, promised good husbands, fathers, and citizens, just those men who properly matched the products of the Haddo associations. These were just the stalwarts that John Gordon celebrated in describing the ideal police constable: he should combine strength and vigour with tenderness. The duties of a policeman were not merely to check and overawe and control those who desired to break the law; but he was also in the position of a protector of the helpless and destitute … [with] part of their duty to be on the lookout for an opportunity to give advice or assistance to any persons who might be in a position of difficulty through their being strangers, or in consequence of other circumstances … a kindly word of advice [or] a kindly regard where he could to persons who were needing his assistance, would only increase the efficiency with which he would be able when required to bring to bear the strong arm of the law which was in a manner entrusted to him. (Applause.)

In crediting the Policemen’s Christian Association with inspiring just such desirable conduct, John reminded listeners of the essential spiritual foundations of superior male character.147 Even as her husband concentrated on boys and men, Lady Aberdeen turned most often to girls and women. In the early days of their marriage, they nonetheless most often stood together on platforms. That partnership was especially visible in support for the “white life for two” or the social purity movement captained in Britain by feminist activist Ellice Hopkins (1836–1904).148 Soon after their marriage, the increasingly confident young wife had horrified her parents when inspired by William Gladstone’s earlier (and much criticized) work with London prostitutes and her husband’s support, she took up the cause at the Strand Rescue Mission.149 In 1883, after an inspirational address in Aberdeen by Hopkins, the countess hailed “those who had in charge the Rescue Home in this city, and how they had steadfastly worked for years in spite of great difficulties.” She rejected silence about the “great national evil” of prostitution and endorsed mothers as the appropriate educators of sons. In taking up the cause, Ishbel became both the pro tem secretary and the president of the Aberdeen Ladies’ Union (ALU).150 A few months later, the young countess, now at the end of her own child-bearing, announced that Hopkins’ visit had produced “a large number of men [who] came forward and applied for cards indicating their wish to become members” of the Aberdeen White Cross Union. Lord Aberdeen joined in subscribing to five principles: “I acknowledge it to be my duty as a Christian, and I promise by the help of God, to (1) treat all women with respect, and to endeavour to protect them from ruin and degradation;

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(2) to endeavour to put down all indecent language and coarse jests; (3) to maintain the law of purity as equally binding upon men and women; (4) to endeavour to spread these principles among my companions, and to try and help my younger brothers; (5) to use every possible means to fulfill the command, ‘Keep thyself pure.’”151 In proclaiming this particular masculine identity and morality, he won the hearts of many feminists but located himself on the margins of much male and aristocratic society. It would also help place him and Ishbel in opposition to the radical Liberal MP Charles Dilke (1843–1911) who became notorious in an 1885 divorce trial that split his party.152 The Earl of Aberdeen’s views were sufficiently unusual to attract the attention of the French satirical newspaper, Le Figaro. In April 1884, this spotlighted the Scottish peer under the title, “Coming Men,” and the Aberdeen press quickly picked up the assessment. After comparing John, rather to his detriment, with his francophile grandfather, the prime minister, and deprecating apparent submission to Gladstone as “the custodian of his political conscience” and the “narrow-minded” nature of “some of his views,” it concluded that good works and lack of “self-indulgence” made him Shaftesbury’s obvious successor. The relative insignificance of that role was, however, conveyed in the final judgment: “If it is not open to him to achieve greatness, why should he not struggle after goodness?”153 Whether published in France or the United Kingdom, such conditional endorsement conveyed the ready doubts about good works as a route to dominant masculinity. Partnership with Ishbel anchored Aberdeen in a self-consciously progressive union at the height of what John Tosh has identified as the British world’s celebration of domesticity as “the goal of the conventional good life without distinction of class.”154 As the decades passed, however, Aberdeen suffered recurring caricaturization as abnormally uxorious and thus somehow lacking the “right stuff ” for manly independence. The courage of his public commitment to social purity’s “white life for two” nevertheless provided essential support for Ishbel’s foray into feminism. For that the Aberdeen Ladies’ Union provided an early training ground and platform. Like the later Council of Women movement with which she would be closely associated, the ALU aspired to oversee a confederation of societies. Affiliates like the Girls’ Friendly Society and the Young Women’s Christian Association collaborated to support the Union’s free labour registry, working girls’ club, and various emigration, education, and recreational programs. The Union also created a “Lily Band” to serve children employed part-time in local industries and collected some 500 signatures demanding better protection for women for a petition presented to the House of Lords by the earl in 1885. In the first decade of her marriage, Ishbel’s presence seemed almost ubiquitous

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in the City of Aberdeen’s causes. One 1884 visit typically saw her contribute to YWCA discussions about sending “several Gaelic-speaking mission women to some of the towns along the coast during the fishing season where large numbers of women, many of them Highlanders, are employed in fishcuring,” attend meetings of the Ladies’ Association on Foreign Missions, and visit a Day Nursery and Infants’ Home.155 As it matured, the ALU made a revealing change of name to the Aberdeen Union of Women Workers, a title that betokened upper- and middle-class women’s claim to useful labour. Later again, it would form part of the National Council of Women of Great Britain.156 By the mid-1880s, Ishbel’s good repute was such that the Scottish Liberal chief Lord Rosebery could jest that city burghers would “I am sure, if it were permissible” give her “the suffrage also – (laughter and cheers).”157 Ishbel herself always claimed the title of worker, a label that both resonated with her Christianity and suggested solidarity with her sex. She might be an aristocrat but she too yearned to be a toiler for the Lord. That claim to inclusion reflected as well her unwillingness to entirely separate the “callings” of domestic servant, housewife, and female activist: the first might become the second and the third, and each required proper instruction and support. Whatever their particular role, all women were properly allied in the grand scheme of uplift. Cross-class alliances were the goal at Haddo, but they mattered just as much when she championed Shetland’s hosiery knitters and Irish lacemakers and condemned the exploitative Scottish “truck system,” that paid workers in goods, with a substantial markup, rather than fair wages.158 In such causes, Ishbel sought to demonstrate the utility of responsible ladies. Education was key to producing the community she envisioned. Barred from university herself, the young countess quickly supported its benefits for others. In 1885, while presiding over Edinburgh’s Association for the University Education of Women, she described purposes that resonated with earlier initiatives on Gordon estates: new options would equip women to contribute to knowledge, to improve as wives and mothers, and to better organize “philanthropic and religious works.”159 Once again, as well, she assumed that “ladies” had special obligations that came with privilege, namely, to employ advantage to “think for the hard-pressed working woman who has no leisure for thought, no chance for action.”160 Ishbel herself embarked on a “correspondence course and examination papers in biology” under the tutelage of a sympathetic reader at the University of Oxford.161 Such improvement in capacity, she assured listeners, never threatened essential womanliness. She singled out feminist veterans such as the founder of the Glasgow Association for University Education (1877),162 Anna Lindsay (1845–1903), as firm evidence of excellence in both family and public life.163

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In Scotland, as elsewhere, demands for university admission were closely tied to the campaign for the vote. Its first franchise society appeared in 1870 under the presidency of Edinburgh’s Priscilla McLaren (1815–1906), sister of Liberal politicians Jacob and John Bright, and wife of Duncan McLaren (1800–1886), variously the Scottish capital’s Liberal MP and lord provost.164 Alongside her crusading daughter-in-law, Eva Muller McLaren (1852/3–1921), Priscilla would become Ishbel’s colleague and sometime critic in the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation, itself one of the nation’s leading suffrage societies.165 There were also inspirational early victories. In 1872, the Education (Scotland) Act allowed female “owners or occupiers of property above £4 annual rent” to vote and run for school boards.166 Seventeen were elected in 1873.167 By the 1870s, Ishbel saw Scots joining mass public demonstrations and contributing some two million signatures to suffrage petitions.168 As she took up social purity, women’s work, and rights to education, the young countess effectively enrolled in a course in earnest militancy. Soon enough she too endorsed representation in local government. The times required new solutions: “our mothers and grandmothers worked nobly along the lines open to them, but the world grows wiser.”169 From the outset, this dutiful daughter and responsible aristocrat emphasized that women deserved the vote because they had public work to do; explicit claims to absolute equality were far less visible. The Liberal Party In the 1880s, the Gordons identified the Liberal Party as their particular instrument for political change. Only the international women’s movement would ever be its equal, and that allegiance was in the future. While the Marjoribanks had long been Liberal activists, the men as politicians and the women as hostesses, John’s conversion coincided with his growing disagreement with Conservative foreign policy and his mounting enthusiasm for domestic reform. In Scotland, the Liberal Party was by no means a radical choice. It owed much to great landed magnates such as the Duke of Argyll and Lord Rosebery, who helped keep it “conservative and deferential.”170 It largely accepted the British Empire as a useful moral and economic enterprise in which Scots properly played a substantial role. Henry Drummond’s civilizing faith only further rationalized that enthusiasm.171 For much of the nineteenth century, official Liberalism found it possible to cooperate with the Labour movement in causes such as parliamentary reform and local government. Growing conflict over land and industrial legislation tested that alliance. Only when most of the great Whigs deserted their old allegiance in the split over Ireland did the “New Liberalism,” with “its use

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of biological analogies of social interdependence to justify state intervention as a means of effecting reform,” promise “to resolve, or at least circumvent” the divisions of class.172 This was exactly the perspective that the Aberdeens favoured when it came to combatting the appeal of labour and socialist parties for ordinary people. International affairs offered another field of concern. In the last half of the 1870s, John Campbell Gordon was appalled by Disraeli’s pro-Ottoman policies that effectively saw Britain acquiesce in the face of Constantinople’s suppression of rebel – and largely Christian – European provinces. He was similarly outraged by the invasion of Afghanistan, another part of the “Great Game” that aimed to limit Russian power after the Crimean War. The so-called Eastern Question – in brief, the difficulties posed by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and its impact on the balance of power in Europe – raised for Aberdeen key issues of “justice peace & liberty,” which he termed in 1878 “the ideal of my life in Foreign Policy,” which should not descend to the mere balance sheet of a “business.”173 Such views left him ready to shift allegiance. In 1880, he publicly campaigned for Gladstone in the Midlothian election campaign that denounced Disraeli’s adventurist foreign policy. For Gordon and his countess, Britain’s role in global affairs ought to be essentially humanitarian. War and even occupation – as would shortly occur in the case of Egypt – might sometimes be justified but only as a means of advancing civilization and for the long-term benefit of the conquered. The Aberdeens were thus among those Liberals whom Jonathan Parry has identified as seeking “to combine patriotism with a vigorous defence of constitutional and Christian principles, in order to rally the party, to educate the electorate, and to recover a reputation for world leadership on Liberal terms,” in other words, to offer “a counter-strategy to Disraeli’s confused and artificial attempt at national aggrandisement.”174 Liberalism’s appeal for the couple depended similarly on a commitment to domestic reform that “involved a constant and usually fairly successful search for national and public rather than a sectional and class-ridden political image.”175 In 1883, Gordon described his new creed for Scotland’s Young Liberals. “Calm and rational judgment,” rather than mere zeal, made liberalism the best antidote to the evils of the day. Socialism or revolution was not inevitable: “surely history and experience show that convulsions of this sort are brought about, not by the introduction of reforms – not by the increased recognition of the rights and the claims of the masses – but by ignoring their claims and turning a deaf ear to their demands.” Listening to the applause of his audience, he defined a reformer as “a man who, having undertaken to repair a rickety house, determines to cut away a useless partition here, to remove a dark staircase there, and entirely to abolish certain unsanitary arrangements elsewhere.”

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He urged listeners to join “the ranks of thoughtful and progressive Liberalism” and cautioned against “the inherent selfishness of mankind” with its “tendency, often perhaps unconscious, whether in the case of individuals or of classes, to usurp more than their rightful share.” True liberalism offered a balanced doctrine that should prevent any “dominant minority” ignoring “the claims of a numerical majority, as has often happened in the past” or any “numerical majority” overriding a minority. In particular, he recommended the reform of municipal government and of liquor licensing, housing initiatives, and Church disestablishment.176 Cautious and reasoned improvements in the interests of the majority ensured a safe rather than a catastrophic future. Haddo House correspondence documents the Aberdeens’ recurring contacts with academic and theological liberals. The classicist and Aberdeenshireborn James Donaldson (1831–1915), a professor of humanities at Aberdeen University and later principal of the University of St Andrews, itself a liberal pioneer in women’s education, was one among many to encourage reform sympathies.177 In 1884, following up on earlier advice, Donaldson counselled close attention to popular opinion. Should “the people” meet “dogged opposition, it is not unlikely that they would urge the abolition of the House of Lords & of the throne: and some of the Tories by their rash utterances are fostering this feeling.” Aberdeen, Rosebery, and other Liberal peers could, he suggested, “save both Lords & throne” by the pursuit of progressive policies.178 The Edinburgh correspondent of the London Times underscored the role of the Aberdeens in averting potential social conflict. They occupied “a unique position in Scotland” in enjoying in large measure the confidence of the people … In Aberdeenshire they have inaugurated a new order of relations between rich and poor. By personal example, they have shown the nobility and gentry that high position and large possessions entail great responsibilities, and in their dealings with the working classes they have constantly aimed at giving a practical turn to the teaching of the national bard – “the glorious privilege of being independent.” Their names are associated with numerous practical schemes for bettering the condition of the poor … as well as the encouragement of industry and thrift, and the restoration of the old attachment between master and servant … On more than one occasion he was subjected to severe criticism for the Liberal views which he held on Church questions, and particularly bitter was the onslaught made upon him by the Tories on the occasion of his action elsewhere in favour of the admission of Mr Bradlaugh to his seat in the House of Commons … Lord Aberdeen’s political service has also been of great value in Scotland. Since his adherence to Liberalism, and his association with Mr Gladstone, he, more than any of his peers, has been a connecting

Forging a Partnership, 1877–1886  105 link between what the Scotch people call the Whigs and the Independent or Advanced Liberals.179

In the Lords itself, Aberdeen placed himself squarely on the side of reform of that body. While reassuring members that “vast sections of the community, especially of the great middle class, regarded this House with a steady, if somewhat passive, feeling of friendliness and confidence,”180 he warned that sympathy would evaporate if peers resisted the democratic tide. His typical interventions advocated recognizable liberal causes. Concerned with “the deleterious effects produced on the health of young women by constant standing in shops,” he reported consultations with “more than 100” employers. While nothing came of that initiative, he insisted that the provision of seating benefited London firms who wanted better employees. Similarly marshalling evidence, he credited “a medical man of great experience” with proof positive that regular meals improved “the health of young women” and contended “that the protection of life” constituted “one of the first duties of the Legislature.”181 The same inspiration prompted advocacy of a higher age of sexual consent. Rejecting the arguments of opponents, he argued that “the present amount of evil was not inevitable; and men of sense and education were banding themselves together with strong determination to protest against and eradicate such a pernicious and demoralizing idea as that these evils were inevitable, and to protect girls, whom all regarded as children, from temptation, to which, by common consent, they ought not to be subjected.”182 In related sympathies, the earl championed Scottish interests, which he believed often went ill-served or ignored in Westminster. In 1878, the Lords heard him present a bill to ensure that the north could borrow money for industrial schools on equal terms with the south.183 Later, he endorsed a measure, in opposition to the powerful Duke of Argyll, allowing Scottish tenants greater liberty in leaseholding, arguing that “he was not sure that an occasional resort to a Court of Law was such an unmixed evil as some noble Lords seemed to suppose.”184 His preference for local input and control meant support as well for a Cabinet secretary for Scotland in 1885.185 Such was the regional Liberal lord hailed by the Family Churchman as someone whose “name has been long favourably known in the religious, philanthropic, and political worlds. Though still a young man, he has led a life of great activity and usefulness, and while he represents one of the oldest families of the British aristocracy, he has thrown himself into the front of numerous movements for the welfare of the people, and for the amelioration of social wrongs, and the redress of social grievances.”186 Ultimately, John Campbell Gordon stood among a small group of progressive peers who could rarely check the reactionary tide that

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David Cannadine has excoriated in The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. His persistence, even when his class as a whole came under sustained political attack,187 nevertheless contributed to Liberalism’s ability to dominate Scottish politics into the twentieth century without the explicit Labour pact required in much of England.188 When Gladstone decided to advocate Home Rule for Ireland in 1885, he split the Scottish party, already deeply divided over any disestablishment of the state church. Leading Whigs, led by the Duke of Argyll, departed to sit as Unionists and eventually very often to merge with the Conservative Party. The same issue cost the Liberal Party the powerful Birmingham radical Joseph Chamberlain, who offered a famous denunciation of the aristocracy in 1884 – “who toil not, neither do they spin” – just the identity in other words that the earnest Aberdeens wished to repudiate.189 In time, Chamberlain’s populism invigorated the Tories while its loss contributed to the Liberal Party’s inability to outflank the Labour Party when it emerged in 1900. The combined exodus left Gladstone loyalists heavily invested in and diverted by a highly divisive Irish policy. Some scholars have argued that this commitment helped keep Liberalism in the hands of a faction that could not come to terms with the challenge of labour. In a rare instance of a scholar focusing on the Gordons, I.G.C. Hutchison has suggested that “much of the failure of radicalism to capture the Scottish Liberal party in the 1880s and 1890s may be ascribed to the influence of … the Aberdeen group [which] provided a solid centre weight in Scottish Liberalism, balancing not just the radicals but also the Liberal Imperialist section of the 1890s.”190 Whatever the truth of that charge, the flight of the still more Conservative Whigs put a premium on remaining Liberal peers for Gladstone and successive party leaders.191 Aberdeen’s marriage to the sister of the powerful Edward Marjoribanks, a stalwart of Scottish and English Liberalism, and the couple’s adulation of Gladstone similarly kept them to the fore. In the midst of a household of young children, Lady Aberdeen emerged as a valuable addition to the Liberal forces. She won early plaudits as a political hostess ready to challenge Tory ladies. Their London home saw her rallying partisans in invitations to “the wives and daughters of the gentlemen who support Mr Gladstone with their vote.”192 Such was the grease that helped keep political machinery on track. Soon enough, however, franchise reform required far more organized mustering of support. In 1884, the Conservative Primrose League admitted women as “Dames,” but their influence was contained by subordination in mixed meetings. The first local women’s Liberal associations appeared early in the 1880s. In 1887, they formed the National Women’s Liberal Federation. Four years later, its Scottish counterpart emerged. Both bodies would see Ishbel as president.

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Falling in Love with Ireland In the general election of November 1885, the first in which almost all adult men could vote, Gladstone won a minority and relied on Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891),193 leader of the Irish Party in the House of Commons, to prop up his government. The introduction of the Government of Ireland Bill in April 1886, with its promise of a separate assembly and reservation of certain powers, notably, of peace, war, and trade, to Westminster split Liberals and the nation and dramatically changed life for the Gordons. Although the bill and eventually the Liberals in the July 1886 general election were defeated, these Scottish aristocrats developed a fierce loyalty to peaceful devolution within the Empire. When Aberdeen, a peer without diplomatic or Irish experience,194 accepted Gladstone’s unexpected offer of the Irish viceroyalty, the course was set for international careers that few would have imagined. The choice to become Home Rulers placed the couple on one side of a deep divide in Britain and the Empire as a whole: like many others, they would be “virtually ostracized by their own friends and relations – the cleavage between the two parties and the intensity of feeling surpassed anything in the memory even of those people who remembered the bitterness which existed at the time of the Reform Bill [of 1832].”195 The earl’s uncle, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon remained unconvinced by Home Rule while the countess’s father stood against both the Aberdeens and his wife and eldest son. Nor was Lady Aberdeen initially very happy at her husband’s acceptance of the post. She had held sentiments common to her class: “What a pity that an earthquake does not swallow up Ireland bodily!”196 As Catherine Hall and others have confirmed, nineteenth-century England readily constructed the Irish as subhuman and in need of discipline.197 Antipathy had only grown with the 1882 assassination of the Irish viceroy, Lord Cavendish, husband of her much-admired friend Lucy. As late as 1886, Ishbel confessed to having “registered a solemn vow never to set foot in Ireland.” She feared the lord lieutenancy would require “giving up of all one’s liberty to be like State prisoners” and wondered whether they were “strong enough to bear failure? We are not dwelling on the danger – we do not think of it – but all seems dark ahead and I just feel overwhelmed … Then tomorrow I am going to interview Cardinal Manning198 about Ireland. Certainly the idea of our going there had never occurred to us and it was the very last post one would have chosen. So that one feels it all the more a direct call which one can only obey blindly, plunging into the unknown.”199 Aberdeen himself wrote to his friend, the leading Scottish Liberal, the Earl of Rosebery, confessing his own surprise at the appointment and affirming that he “would very much have

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preferred an undersecretaryship in the hope of earning a character.”200 In a typical act of reassurance and faith, another frequent correspondent, Henry Drummond, nevertheless embraced bringing liberalism to the neighbouring island. Congratulating John Campbell Gordon on a speech favouring labour reform, he predicted that it would confirm “the impression more and more that it is Christianity that Ireland needs to see; and presently you will be able to do anything with these people.”201 The Irish Freeman, the print voice of Irish parliamentary nationalism, provided extensive coverage of the appointment to a position judged pre-eminent “among the doomed institutions of the country.” The editorialist sniffed that “Lord and Lady Aberdeen have been associated with a good deal of religious and benevolent work, all very good in its way, no doubt, but not of particular interest on the west side of the Irish Channel.” He nevertheless agreed that the Presbyterian high commissionship had been “distinguished by a broadly general and liberal spirit far in advance of that of any of his predecessors in the same office.” The writer was more intrigued by the Gordons as landlords. Their “practical sympathy” for tenants and labourers and work with the Haddo House Association and the Young Women’s Improvement Association were all deemed useful training.202 Across the sea, the English newspaper, The Spectator, characterized response to the appointment as ranging from “scorn and mockery” to “faint praise” and “amused surprise.” Yet it, too, concluded “the career of Lord Aberdeen has been creditable to himself, and useful to the country.” He was given high marks for demonstrating “that he can form his own judgment, take his own line, and act not according to custom and precedent, but according to his own conviction of the duty falling on him.” His “tact and courtesy,” like his history as “one of the best” landlords, would similarly stand him in good stead.203 A New York Times correspondent, a regular guest at Haddo House, was equally positive, arguing that Liberalism had been strengthened by the loss of the Whig “tumor” and had now “an unimpeded prospect of doing good work for the first time in its history.” He scoffed at “reports of weakness” emanating from “Tory papers.” He singled out Aberdeen as “more discussed to-night than any of the exalted” Gladstone appointments. The Scot was “said to be extremely able, wealthy, and devout, with almost extravagantly serious views of the responsibilities of his position in life. He has democratic convictions. Certainly the family has produced greater numbers of distinguished statesmen and soldiers than almost any other in Scotland, and though consenting to remain outside the Cabinet and be sent to pave the way for the abdication of the viceroyalty, it is believed that he will contribute affirmative strength to the work of the settlement of other questions.”204

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The Dublin correspondent of the anti–Home Rule London Times was far less sanguine, hailing the appointment as “unexceptionable,” though “nothing can be alleged against him.” Revealingly, the writer also wondered whether Aberdeen would “be content to do the rather limited work which his friends cut out for him, and to take little more than a formal part in political affairs.”205 Indeed, it was just this restricted ambit that was anticipated by senior Liberal strategists. Leadership in Ireland, whether in education or land reform, was instead expected from the experienced former Liberal viceroy, Earl Spencer (1835–1910),206 and the new Irish secretary, John Morley (1838–1923),207 a tough-minded middle-class Liberal – both in Cabinet – rather than a “dummy Lord Lieutenant.”208 Spencer remained powerful because many leading Liberals, including the Gordons, understood “Irish self-government as an essentially conservative measure that would marginalize extremism.” The alliance of the Liberals and the Irish Parliamentary Party under Charles Stewart Parnell was intended to “provide an effective bulwark against republicanism and dominate all other strands of Irish nationalism indefinitely.”209 Despite such overall strategy, Gladstone admitted that John Campbell Gordon had gone “to Dublin with a most gallant spirit & appears to be doing right well there.”210 By the late nineteenth century, the Irish viceroyalty embodied the conflicts and the contradictions of London’s relationship with what was effectively its nearest colony. Like governors general and lieutenant governors elsewhere, the appointee represented the sovereign and assumed significant ceremonial functions. In that sense, the position held prestige, conferred authority, and required considerable expenditure, often from the incumbent’s private purse, a drain that would contribute substantially to the Aberdeens’ growing financial problems. In contrast to the Irish secretary, who provided policy leadership in Parliament, the lord lieutenant was supposedly non-partisan. Miscommunication about exact duties was nevertheless commonplace. The Aberdeens soon proved to be far more active than Morley desired. Indeed, Ishbel Gordon had embarked unwittingly on her career as one of the great “new” viceregal ladies, who combined expensive tastes in both ornamentalism and welfare monarchism. Ironically enough, Morley’s mistrust resembled the anti–Home Rule conclusions of Queen Victoria who was ultimately “furious” about “Aberdeen’s betrayal of her and her position in making himself ostentatiously Gladstone’s representative, not hers.”211 In February 1886, the Aberdeens’ term began with great ceremony and seeming promise. Ishbel and the children entered Dublin in a carriage drawn by prancing horses, while John rode ahead on a spirited charger. Despite the military accompaniment, the overall effect was essentially domestic. A gaggle of offspring dressed in Irish linen signalled domestic harmony in the Empire as

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in the Aberdeen home. A brighter version of the familial idyll embodied by Victoria, Albert, and their many offspring, the Scottish aristocrats presented a domestic remedy to the wounds of imperial militarism and landlord cruelty. In the grandeur of Dublin Castle and Phoenix Park, Lord and Lady Aberdeen immediately set about to conciliate conflicting factions and promise the responsible government already granted to more distant imperial domains ruled by white settler populations. The earl’s twelve aides-de-camp and the countess’s several ladies-in-waiting, together with the formal etiquette of court, not to mention the presence of troops and detectives, nevertheless reminded nationalists of long-hated authority. At the same time, arch-Tories and anti– Home Rulers automatically distrusted the new mouthpieces for the Gladstone they loathed. Viceregal invitations to either side immediately posed questions of loyalty. As an American noted, “Presentation at the Viceregal Court, indeed, is a privilege much sought for by the Irish; not by all classes but by all those who are on the border line between the classes and the masses … Now passion runs too high, the nobility see with dismay the Home Rule flag flying over their own headquarters, and most of them were absent.”212 On viewing this spectacle, ultranationalists in contrast saw only obsequious actual or would-be office-holders dancing to a viceregal tune. While that newspaper correspondent downplayed Aberdeen “as a figure in a pageant,”213 the lord lieutenant tried to shift the character of the pageantry. For St Patrick’s Day, he eliminated the trooping of the colours and offered instead a ball in honour of the saint.214 Later, at the meeting convened by the mayor to address Dublin’s desperate poverty, he rejected convention by accepting a supporting role even as he personally donated £1,500 to the relief fund. Equally controversially on that occasion, he publicly placed himself on the side of a new deal by introducing himself to Michael Davitt (1846–1906),215 long associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood (commonly known as the Fenians), frequent political prisoner, and by this time ally of Parnell. Staunch Unionists saw such action, and much else, such as the playing of the anthem “God Bless Ireland” and receiving addresses from “Rebel Cork,” as only further confirmation of disloyalty.216 Diehards were no happier with his consort. Lady Aberdeen quickly emerged as the highly visible face of liberal political winds. Drawing directly on her own decade of activism in country and city, she challenged mean spirits and embodied a caring imperial elite. As the journalist for the New York Times reported: “I do not think there was a day while I was in Dublin that Lady Aberdeen was not visiting a hospital, or opening a bazaar, or giving away medals, or engaged in some work of active charity.”217 She initiated visits throughout Dublin’s slums, seeking out women and children, and, with her husband, advanced into the impoverished rebel west of Ireland. Everywhere, they carried the message of

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what has been termed “welfare monarchism,” or practices that put the Crown on the side of public and private relief, a program for which one authority has observed they were “ideally suited.”218 Obvious sympathy with those in distress made the Aberdeens’ effective apostles of the still greater promise of Home Rule. At a meeting of the Girls’ Friendly Society, Lady Aberdeen invoked typical ecumenicalism, defending both Catholic and Protestant charities as essential to progress and demonstrative of the potential for common purpose. To her largely Anglican audience, she emphasized shared commitment to “the grandeur of a life of work” and urged them “to remember that the object of their Society was to prevent the waste of woman, the waste of her work, of her influence, of her life.” She was heartily applauded and then cheered by the spectators along her route home.219 Similar enthusiasm wherever they travelled won over the impressionable Aberdeens. The countess began regularly invoking her Irish heritage to fuse their identity more closely with the Celtic cause. In just over five months, she and the earl launched themselves on a love affair that ended only with their deaths. The Aberdeens’ priorities during their first tenure of office were clearly political conciliation and rural poverty even as Ishbel introduced her passion for handicraft revival already demonstrated in Scotland. Lace and linen manufacture promoted through the Irish Home Industries Association was to supply income and pride. That strategy was not new. Mrs Alice Hart (b. 1850) had founded the Donegal Industrial Fund in 1883 in a similar effort at economic uplift for impoverished peasants.220 Lady Aberdeen, however, brought viceregal prestige and enhanced connections. These helped ensure that Edinburgh’s May 1886 International Exhibition of Industry, Science, and Art provided a major platform for Irish products. Her Dublin garden parties offered other opportunities for productive display, now on the very persons of Ishbel and guests.221 This demonstration of what has been termed “ornamentalism” endeavoured to reconstruct the imaginative bonds of Empire. In Ireland, this meant identification with legendary courage and industry. When John presented himself in up-to-date poplin as an Irish gentleman and Ishbel dressed in a medieval costume embroidered with designs from the iconic Book of Kells for a spring party, they married the modern and the ancient and invoked the possibility of peaceful collaboration within a reformed imperial world.222 Gladstone’s electoral defeat ended such initiatives. The summer 1886 departure of the Aberdeens has been variously interpreted. Some observers, such as the conservative Times of London, dismissed suggestions of gratitude and regard as no more than “the instability and, we fear we must add, the insincerity of the Celtic character.”223 The same city’s Daily Express suggested that the

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farewell involved few “respectable citizens” and not “the professional and commercial classes in Dublin, those who have the largest stake in the country, and the deepest interest in its welfare.”224 In stark contrast, another metropolitan daily, albeit one far further from the halls of power, the Penny Illustrated, claimed “golden opinions from all classes” and added “a faithful likeness” of John Gordon to its own “National Portrait Gallery.”225 The nationalist lord mayor of Dublin believed that citizens offered “a reluctant farewell” to well-intentioned visitors.226 More to the point from his perspective, the Aberdeens were appreciated because they constituted “a sign and a token of a speedy restoration of the right of self government to our country.”227 Another nationalist suggested that the imperial unity could be the ultimate beneficiary if the “interests and rights” of the Irish people were everywhere accepted as they had been under the Home Rule viceroyalty.228 The poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), apostle of the Irish cultural renaissance, proved less sanguine. He dismissed the couple as essentially patronizing, “as if we were some new sort of deserving poor,” even as he admitted their earnest sympathies.229 Overall, responses were deeply dichotomous: ironically enough, for all their good will and good works, the viceregal partners generated further demonstration of divisions within and over Ireland. The Aberdeens remained undeterred as they faced the 1886 general election. In a passionate address to a Scottish Liberal Club, John condemned the occupation of Ireland. British policies and politicians were depicted as inhumane, in the past destroying Irish industries and worsening the famine even as many “cruel” landlords evicted tenants. He described hatred festering over generations and rejected prejudice that blamed Irish poverty on “improvidence” and “early marriages.” He endorsed “not a policy of despair,” but of hope, one “in accord with the best traditions and the greatest services of Liberalism (cheers). It was magnanimous – it was Christian.”230 In the next month, he spoke to the National Liberal Federation in Glasgow, where he hailed previous Liberal triumphs such as Catholic emancipation, expanded democracy, the protection of women and children, and reform of the criminal code and foresaw more. Seeking allies for Irish nationalists, he asked: “What would Scotland have been to-day had it not been for the existence, the expression, and the recognition of national sentiment?” For the Scots, as for their Irish brethren, “Home Rule was not a panacea, it was only a good mode of solving a political problem (cheers).”231 Aberdeen insisted that “one of the first and foremost effects of the carrying out of a policy of conciliation implied by the granting of a domestic legislature and administration for Ireland would be to check and abolish any real movement toward separation. (Cheers.)” And once again, the earl endorsed imperial federation for

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“not only the strengthening of the Empire” but promoting “the peace of the world. (Cheers).” He placed “the underlying tendency and genius of Christianity, which is certainly democratic” at the base of Liberalism’s appeal to “the working classes,” who would rally to moral leadership.232 While partisan crowds applauded, Scotland’s Unionist nobles linked such speeches “to the continuance of law-breaking and disorder in Ireland.”233 The Aberdeens would not be readily forgiven. While the comparison with Scotland, and later with the imperial dominions of settlements, would be regular for the Aberdeens, the situations were never analogous. As Alvin Jackson has carefully outlined in his The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707–2007, Scottish nationalism was long compatible with closer association with London and Empire; its Celtic Irish counterpart was not. The power of the Protestant Ascendancy and the delay of Catholic emancipation combined with economic differences to ensure that Dublin would not become Edinburgh.234 Ironically, the appointment of a Scottish lord lieutenant of Ireland only confirmed fundamental differences. When Gladstone lost the election, Lord Salisbury and the Conservatives took their turn with Ireland and appointed the great Irish landlord and fervent Unionist, the sixth Marquess of Londonderry as lord lieutenant.235 The best man at Aberdeen’s wedding quickly replaced Morley as chief secretary (1887–1891) and was soon christened “Bloody” Balfour by Irish nationalists.236 A policy of conciliation and self-government had to await a renewed test when the Liberals returned to government in 1892. Just as George Dangerfield hypothesized in the classic The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935), Ireland, like reform of the Lords, labour representation, and female suffrage, tested the Liberal Party. All raised questions about proper rule and rulers. While Dangerfield appeared largely indifferent to oppression, Ireland, its Catholics in particular, suffered, as did workers and women, from corrosive faith in the superiority of English, sometimes Scottish, men. As feminist post-colonial scholars have properly argued, “Irish people never achieved equal status, but remained ‘other,’ despite being both white and British citizens.”237 Only an optimistic evangelical faith that celebrated human potential allowed the Aberdeens to escape some part of that bigotry. Imbued with what scholars have termed a “discourse of civilization” or a “civilizational perspective,” they trusted that representative and responsible government could unlock Irish potential. In Ireland, as elsewhere, cultures and races could, with effort, “evolve in progressive stages toward the British ideal.”238 Inequality need then only be fleeting.239 This “liberal model of imperialism, which linked a theory of imperial legitimacy with the project

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of improvement, represented the most fully developed moral justification of Empire in nineteenth-century Britain.”240 The Aberdeens’ commitment also drew considerably on their romantic faith in Celtic qualities of character. They too, after all, believed in the power of race; as optimists, racialists rather than racists, however, they trusted that inferiorities would disappear before the leavening effect of the British imperium. Like the Victorian age’s earlier recovery of the Highland Scot as the antidote to materialism and modernity, Eire’s Catholic Celts promised creativity and passion. Unlike Scotland, however, Ireland was regularly symbolized as female, beginning with the invocation of “pre-Christian goddesses that form the basis for Celtic mythology.”241 For believers in women’s special redemptive nature, the appeal was obvious. Not surprisingly, as Myrtle Hill has recently argued, “tensions between gender and national aspirations would become perhaps the most critical factor for politicized Irish women in the late 19th century and early 20th century.”242 In time, ironically, Celtic romanticism left little room for female independence or appreciation of the particular concerns of the more industrialized and Protestant “six counties” of Northern Ireland, who always remained ironically, at least imaginatively, beyond the ken of these Scottish Presbyterians. A dismal future of lost opportunity was, however, only on the horizon. In the meantime, the embrace of supposed Celtic virtue helped the Aberdeens imagine “dual allegiance, cultural diversity and divisible sovereignty.” That imaginative leap would shape their interpretation of Britain’s global Empire, notably, in its colonies of settlement, in the next stage of their lives.243 The first decade of their marriage indicated that the Aberdeens were not obvious candidates for the hypermasculinized community of great imperial proconsuls. Theirs was a gentler, cooperative creed. The prominent London and Irish-born journalist Justin McCarthy’s inclusion of the former viceroy, alongside prime ministers and senior Cabinet ministers, in his British Political Portraits in 1903 suggested that alternative: “The Earl of Aberdeen will always be associated in my mind with a most hopeful season of our political life, a season none the less cherished in memory and none the less auspicious because its hopes were doomed to temporary disappointment.”244 The couple’s friend Lord Rosebery similarly captured the spirit associated with the Aberdeens in private letters to them during the Home Rule debates of the 1880s: “I envy you for your goodness, & your tolerance to those, like me, who are not good” and “the desire to do good and to do one’s best always succeeds in the long run, but not always as in your case in the short run.”245 When the Earl of Aberdeen befriended engine drivers, assisted his tenants, and held his hand out to Irish trade unionists and the Countess of Aberdeen worked with maids, Irish farmwives, city prostitutes, and women workers, they

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presented the possibility of political conciliation. Like their mentor Lord Shaftesbury, both Aberdeens tried to “put the Lords on the side of democracy … by reworking traditional notions of feudal responsibility and paternal concern.”246 Even as they invoked more egalitarian partnerships and “steadfastly refused to regard all foreigners automatically as rivals or enemies,”247 however, they belonged to an “extended supra-national elite”248 that often took for granted the right to rule. The next stage of their public careers, from 1886 to 1898, would see the Aberdeens explore the meaning of opportunity and obligation at home and in the wider Empire.

Chapter Four

Extending the Field of Labour, 1886–1898

The loss of the 1886 election to Conservatives and Liberal Unionists devastated the Aberdeens. That December, encouraged by their friend Lord Rosebery, the future Liberal prime minister, they headed to Suez and beyond in search of edification and consolation. This therapeutic trip initiated explorations in imperialism, liberalism, and feminism that culminated with their Canadian 1893–98 viceroyalty. Entering his forties, the earl, while still nervous on many occasions, seemed to have grown into his title as a senior Scottish Liberal peer, and his consort, in her thirties, had survived the perils of child-bearing and early child-rearing to win recognition as a talented, reform-minded countess. Despite health and financial concerns, the deaths of family members and of Henry Drummond and W.E. Gladstone, and the surfacing of public smear campaigns, they emerged as a leading couple in a transatlantic liberal elite. By 1898, life seemed far more promising than it had in the first half of 1886. This chapter begins with the Aberdeens’ search “for some definite purpose”1 in India, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States during 1886–87 and continues into their Canadian tours between 1890 and 1892. They became enthusiasts for a decentralized imperial federation in which Ireland would join Canada as a manifestation of the benefits of that “commonwealth of nations” hailed by Lord Rosebery in Australia in 1884.2 The next section returns to Britain, where the Aberdeens worked all the harder as social reformers and Liberal activists. Commitment to the new Women’s Liberal Federations placed women’s rights alongside Irish Home Rule as key determinants of a better day. The third part of the story addresses the role of Ishbel Gordon in the rise of international feminism, notably, in the International Council of Women, which first elected her president in 1893. From that point until their deaths some four decades later, she and indeed John would never leave the feminist spotlight. The last section turns to Canada, which proved a test case for their understanding

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of imperialism, liberalism, and feminism. Like Ireland, the Dominion touched their hearts. In every setting, the Gordons displayed an earnest enthusiasm and generated controversy as they sought to direct the forces of change. From Ireland to the World: Travelling in Search of Liberal Imperialism Following a brief sojourn at Suez, British India was the Aberdeens’ first major stop on their imperial itinerary. The Empire’s “crown jewel,” the subcontinent was arguably the foremost source of British prestige and consequently served as inspiration for many of the era’s great proconsuls. Family links to the by then defunct East India Company and long-standing interest in Indian evangelization gave the travellers their own special interest in the Raj. In Calcutta and elsewhere, they visited schools, missions, and historic sites. Although daunted by the imperial charge of “civilizing” non-Europeans, John Gordon remained determinedly optimistic, suggesting: “On the educational side alone the influence thus exerted cannot be overrated … Non-Christian parents must be appreciating, not only the efficiency of the education given, but also the moral influences which exist at a mission school … the manifest intelligence and bright aspect of the girls seem to me very encouraging.”3 The couple identified strongly with liberal friends and hosts such as Lord and Lady Reay who governed at Bombay. The Reays’ decision to bar a British “lady” who refused to sit next to “a native judge of excellent standing who happened to be Mohammedan … from the list of persons to be invited to Government House” expressed their views precisely.4 They were also discouraged by reports of irresponsible Indigenous elites who “have no desire to forward movements for the advancement of amelioration of the majority of the people, for instance reform of child-marriage, technical education etc. – they want power and employment for themselves.”5 The path to a liberal imperial world necessitated a generous ecumenicalism and dutiful elites. The subcontinent apparently failed on both counts. India’s challenges failed to raise Ishbel from the depression provoked by Liberal electoral defeat. On viewing the Taj Mahal, she recorded that “it seemed to hold out an unattainable perfect pattern, and therefore to bring a sense of one’s own dismal failure.”6 In describing the experience in a British newspaper for girls, however, she typically emphasized the monument’s inspiration. A young reader would thank her for such journalistic updates, concluding: “You are our leader, we try to do as you would, we read any word of yours, and your photographs! … I know most good people are discouraged sometimes. I think you have one of those strong natures that is not easily cast down.”7 Camouflaging distress was, in fact, a key feature of Ishbel’s public life.

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Despite receptions that marked John as a potential viceroy, India ultimately provided little temptation for the Aberdeens. The only exception was the subsequent decoration of their London mansion where “ceiling panels” were “modeled from windows around the tombs of the Queens of Shah-Ahmed at Ahmedabad, the leaded glass from the designs of the tombs of Yufus Mooltan; the exquisite lattices hail from the Punjab, the fire dogs from Nepal, and the tiles from Mooltan” in what has been hailed as “pure and perfect Orientalism.”8 They were far more interested in the colonies of settlement. Like their inspirations, Liberal MP Charles Dilke’s Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries during 1866 and 1867 (1868) and historian J.A. Froude’s Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies (1886), the Aberdeens preferred transplanted settler colonies as “spaces for moral regeneration and political desire; sites for the projection of imperial zeal.”9 India posed the contradictions of rule over non-European majorities they preferred largely to avoid. For reformers deeply invested in the homeland, such sites never offered sufficient promise of national redemption. In this choice, they, like other optimistic contemporaries, confirmed the Anglocentric “Settler Revolution” or hypercolonization so effectively described by James Belich.10 A letter written by Lady Aberdeen en route to Australia, which Henry Drummond described as “the lightest and brightest you have written me for a year,” signalled the high hopes that often informed the couple’s assessment of the so-called white dominions.11 With the federation of the Australian colonies still in the future, John and Ishbel moved from one colonial welcome to another, taking special stock of emigration’s outcomes. Although John’s uncle, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, had been sensitive to the plight of Indigenous peoples in the Pacific colonies, Aborigines and Maoris remain so far as I can discover effectively invisible in accounts of the 1887 visits. The Irish and Scots, who routinely provided enthusiastic welcomes, above all caught the travellers’ eyes. Since colonial newspapers had followed the Irish viceroyalty with considerable interest, the Aberdeens met sizeable crowds. While John Campbell Gordon initially refused to talk politics, he found himself “recognised and worshipped as the touring representative of Mr Gladstone’s glorious Home Rule policy.”12 He proved less shy in applauding ecumenicalism. In speaking at St Andrew’s College in New South Wales, while Ishbel attended an African missions meeting, John saluted Australian Presbyterians: “They had taken advantage of the facilities afforded for obtaining freedom from those obstacles and stumbling-blocks to union which unhappily had been so very conspicuously absent in what was certainly to them the home of Presbyterianism, Scotland, and to some extent had been obstacles in the North of Ireland.” To cheers, he went on to endorse the “further union, federation, or – by whatever name it might be called – combination or amalgamation of interest between

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the colonies, and it might be on the part of the Empire as a whole.”13 In the so-called convict colony of Tasmania, he proved more explicit. Irish residents were hailed as representative “of the benefits of such self-government, and also as reminding the public, other than Irishmen, of the fact that the natives of Ireland are recognized as good colonists, good citizens, and loyal subjects.” His conclusions extended beyond the Antipodes: “before very long there will be a large removal of that prejudice which undoubtedly still, to a wide extent, exists against the granting of some such self-government to Ireland as that which is enjoyed by the Colonies.”14 New Zealand provided similar opportunities. Speaking for Ishbel and himself, John described being “struck by the fact that Colonists had respect for each other’s opinions, so that out here there was an absence of that want of good temper and bitterness of feelings so noticeable at Home.”15 He further suggested that England needed to take responsibility for “mistakes and errors” in the “past administration of Ireland.” The only strong government was one “that rules by and through the consent and good will of the people of the country. (Applause.)”16 Such sentiments hit a popular chord and implied Aberdeen’s discomfort with Britain’s autocratic rule in places like India. One New Zealand politician and Home Rule advocate voiced the common refrain in concluding: “It was such men as Lord Aberdeen who showed that Federation had an existence, and that the colonies were the very bulwarks of the Empire.”17 Such welcome by the Celtic diaspora lifted the spirits of the earl and his countess and deepened their attachment to its romantic nationalism and to a federal future for Britain and its Empire. Crossing the Pacific to Hawaii and then to the United States, the Aberdeens met similar receptions from San Francisco to New York. In the Californian city, John became “the celebrated ‘Home Rule Lord Lieutenant.’” Despite his attire – “an English cut slate coloured sack suit, Piccadilly collar, polka dot necktie, soft light felt hat, and patent leather boots with light tops,” and his appearance (“He is tall, light of build, and possesses handsome, clear cut features”), and his voice “as soft as that of woman” – all of which invoked effeteness for many North Americans – he was credited with “a careful political education, acute reasoning powers, and keen observation.” In this period, as this same journalist revealed, Ishbel’s reception tended to be unreservedly positive: a vigorous-looking woman, quite tall, but with a well-proportioned, supple figure. She was dressed in a grey traveling dress, covered at the throat and shoulders with a white lace fichu secured by a magnificent diamond pin. She wore a plain straw hat adorned with small red feathers partially hidden beneath several folds of Limerick lace. She is as tall as her husband, but her movements are character-

120  Liberal Hearts and Coronets ized by a grace that is both natural and charming. She has a large oval face, hazel eyes beaming with intelligence, a mouth that indicates great firmness of character, and blonde hair of rich growth. Her lovable disposition, coupled with the affable temperament of her esteemed husband, has partially been the means of accomplishing the pleasant results with which their history abounds.

The interview also offered John opportunity once more to assert a “manly” faith in strong government “that rules by and through the consent and good will of the people.”18 Here was an aristocrat that democrats could embrace. Good spirits survived uncomfortable visits to the Texas and Dakota ranches where Coutts and Archie Marjoribanks were enjoying lives as remittance men and family wastrels. Their loyal sister interpreted their predicament as largely due to “the crude ways of Americans,” a response that captured the suspicions of much of Britain’s official class about the rising power of the upstart Atlantic rival.19 A rendezvous with Henry Drummond, himself in the midst of a successful American lecture tour, nevertheless introduced the Gordons to a congenial community of religious liberals. By the time they returned home, the former lord lieutenant waxed positively on both Americans and the support for Home Rule. Good ties with the United States were also recognized as conditional. They required for Ireland “a judicious and liberal granting of autonomy … not unduly postponed.”20 Once home, the Aberdeens jumped again into progressive and Liberal politics. Soon enough, however, they had once more to retreat. Ireland’s predicament was only one source of upset. As a party stalwart and champion of the Women’s Liberal Federation, Ishbel felt particularly betrayed by the adultery scandal of Irish nationalist leader and Home Rule ally Charles Stewart Parnell. Like the divorce of Charles Dilke a few years earlier, the Parnell tragedy threatened the Liberal project of moral leadership and conciliation.21 The Aberdeens’ friend Lord Rosebery proved a similarly frail reed as Gladstone’s successor. Such individuals, like the sceptical clerical protagonist in Mrs Humphry Ward’s Robert Elsmere (1888), the best-selling novel devoured by Ishbel, demonstrated the weaknesses of elite men. She feared the threat to social peace and good government when “many of the best people withhold from what they feel the contamination of politics. Yet in them lies the one hope for the country, if they will only come forward as a duty, mixing with the working men, fighting their battles, leading them in the right way.”22 Lady Aberdeen’s invocation of elite obligation was always as much or more about class as it was about gender. Both women and men, from Queen Victoria on down, bore the heavy responsibilities of rank. These required that they guide the nation past the shoals of revolution into the harbour of social harmony and improvement.

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Despite Drummond’s reassurance that “in Him is no darkness at all,”23 the Dilke and Parnell scandals helped keep Ishbel regularly swept by “ tempests of doubt” about her religious and political faith.24 That despair mounted alongside personal anxiety about the health of their eldest son and her mother, doubts about her father as a husband, and fears about precarious estate revenues.25 By October 1889, Ishbel Gordon fainted at a large gathering and was consigned to rest from public duties for at least a year. A trip to the Italian Riviera and the introduction of a woman suffrage bill by friendly Liberal MPs26 failed to dissipate “constant worry, endless toil, perpetual disappointments.”27 Her invocation before Glasgow mill girls of work for its gift of “self-mastery, a solace in anxiety, a refuge in grief ”28 proved equally unavailing. A destination seized upon by many Scots and Irish as an antidote to the ills of the “old country” offered a remedy. In the summer of 1890, John took Ishbel and the family to Canada for rest and recuperation. That trip, and a second one a year later, introduced a new realm of personal and political inspiration. Canada allowed the Gordons, who took with them would-be emigrants from their own estates, to confirm the benefits of new imperial homes.29 Lady Aberdeen recorded both visits, first in her magazines, Onward and Upward and Wee Willie Winkie, and then in Through Canada with a Kodak (1893). Investigations began on the steamship Parisian. Just as she had done on the Pacific and Indian oceans, Ishbel made friends with children and passengers in third class, whom she portrayed as heading to “endless openings.”30 Just as critically, the couple encountered Sir John Sparrow Thompson (1845–1894), Canada’s Conservative minister of justice, future prime minister, and soon admired friend. Once in Quebec, in a typical exercise in adult education, she offered her readers a quick history of French Canada culled from lectures by one of the province’s leading francophone historians. Much like Scottish crofters, Quebecers appeared “a thrifty, contented, law-abiding and religious people.” With their church and culture respected, there could nowhere “be found more vocal subjects of the Crown.” In a clear message about British politics, readers were assured that revolutionary France was anathema for the fortunate residents of self-governing lands.31 From the moment they stepped ashore, the couple sought out Scottish emigrants, particularly young female servants. Although reservations appeared later, first reports often portrayed happy fates. The daughter of an Aberdeenshire tenant, employed by a good mistress, was typically found “happy and bright, and quite a Canadian,” giving her verdict in favour of the “new country” most emphatically.32 The former tenant’s industry and dedication met rewards less available in the homeland. For a short while, Ishbel and John settled with their children at Highfield House in Hamilton, Ontario, where the Dominion’s governor general (1886–93),

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Lord Stanley of Preston (1841–1908), had secured them a comfortable home. The bustling industrial city, nicknamed “Canada’s Birmingham” and rife with Scots – its very name linked historically to the Gordon clan – took them up with enthusiasm but, as a family of “scientific entomologists,” they found special pleasure in hunting butterflies and moths, which readers were assured were killed humanely and in no greater numbers than needed “for our cabinet.”33 Claiming to feel just like Canadians, the Aberdeens praised “a freeness, a sense of equality, a consciousness that everyone will be taken just for what he or she is worth, and nothing more or less, which cannot altogether be attained in the old world, and which must always be refreshing to anyone of independent spirit.”34 A Scot correspondent, similarly at home in the new land, had already glimpsed a great future: But this country is so like a vast Haddo that I cannot help thinking of you at every turn. And I am only echoing a thought which has arisen in many minds when I say that you ought to be here. I never could have imagined a field so ripe for fulfillment as regards the special powers and likings that I remember long since. The ideal Governor General of Canada just now would be one who could drive an engine, supposing that he combined your other faculties ... If the idea has never crossed your mind before let it have entrance now … To me it seems almost a glimpse of the obvious that you should some day rule Canada.35

Whatever they felt about such a prospect, the Aberdeens proved determined explorers. Leaving their offspring at school and with governesses, they set out by their favourite mode of travel. They rode the new transcontinental railway westward with an African-Canadian porter they typically awarded the epithet of “faithful.”36 Winnipeg’s Christian women busy with the “orphans and aged poor” soon sparked interest in sending parcels of edifying reading materials to isolated settlers. Prompted by Lady Aberdeen, London’s new magazine, the Review of Reviews, published by their friend William T. Stead, broadcast the appeal widely and secured the success of the new Aberdeen Association for Distribution of Literature to Settlers in the West. Ishbel foresaw its deliveries tempering the “stern life” of pioneers and ensuring no submission to “a mere passion to get on and to make money.”37 The plutocrat’s daughter trusted that recipients would be saved from the modern malady of materialism and likewise the appeal of the American juggernaut. The Canadian prairies introduced the Aberdeens both to crofter settlements, some of which they had helped subsidize, and to the First Nations, staggering under the historic defeat of the 1885 Rebellion, the betrayals of Ottawa, the onslaught of railways and settlers, the loss of free range, and the disappearance

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of the buffalo.38 As always, when facing the vulnerable, the couple showed ready sympathy. They also believed they saw history inevitably unfolding. Despite what the visitors interpreted as the good will of missionaries and governments, North American natives were destined to fall “before the forces of civilization,” “doomed” by the advance of those “predestined” to develop the country.39 In stark contrast, the now ever-present “Scotchmen” would have everything “to do with the making of Canada, and happily they have for the most part left their mark on her for good.”40 Under their rule, the prairies would prosper as part of the project of “multiplying the population and replenishing the earth.”41 The Aberdeens, however, fell in love with Canada’s westernmost province, buying sight unseen acreage in the interior of British Columbia that they named Guisachan, after Ishbel’s Highland home. The second half of Through Canada with a Kodak opens en route to that favoured destination in 1891, where the Chinese man Foo and the Indian boy Willy attended to their needs, in much the same way as servants did on their Scottish estate. Chapter 13 promised readers “The Indians of Canada” but began with a lengthy discussion of “Chinamen,” deemed “a strange people between whom and ourselves there seems to be a gulf fixed” and yet “depending so largely on one another.” Ishbel admitted ignorance of their “Celestial Empire” and suggested that these Asians despised Europeans as “heathens.” Despite such recognition of another perspective, Chinese newcomers in her account emerged solely as sojourners, never as potential fathers of the nation.42 That role was reserved for Europeans and preferably the Scots. The West Coast Indigenous nations presented a different picture. Now “disinherited,” “stealing, gaunt and mournful,” no longer “sovereign,” their fate was to be preserved in museums.43 Their only chance of redemption lay in the commitment of British newcomers “to enter into their ideas and conceptions, to gain their confidence, and consequently their co-operation in the work of their own elevation and civilization.”44 In contrast, like many others finding prairie peoples more evocative of the “noble savage” than those of the coast, she celebrated Crowfoot (Isapo-Muxika; c. 1830–1890), of the Blood tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Here was a courageous leader who recognized European occupation as “for the ultimate good of the country.”45 Neither his integrity nor that of an earlier British ally, Tecumseh (c. 1768–1813), could, however, turn history’s tide. Despite her admission of distinctive tribal traditions, Ishbel relied on contemporary science to assess North American nations as largely primitive matriarchies that properly succumbed to the more advanced civilization represented by European patriarchy. While she nowhere appeared to note the comparison, many observers, including Canada’s first

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prime minister, John A. Macdonald, in fact, linked Highlanders and North American natives as “savages,” both of whom had ultimately to accept the English face of modernity.46 The Aberdeens’ purchase of Guisachan in what is now Kelowna and then of the Coldstream Ranch, near Vernon, BC, was designed both to rescue Ishbel’s brother Coutts from American misadventures and to cash in on an anticipated land boom. In fact, they joined a host of aristocratic experiments that failed even as they asserted settler dominion.47 Their construction of a wood-framed bungalow ironically evoked the Indian Empire as it supplanted a pre-existing substantial log house. This had been left behind by the Scottish, Sylix, Secwepemc, and Metis family of John Baptiste McDougall, a successful Hudson Bay fur trader, and his Okanagan wife, Emelie Topa, who sold their farm to the Aberdeens and then moved across Lake Okanagan.48 Although by 1896 Guisachan was reported to employ some 400 to 500 Indigenous hop pickers, the earlier residents quickly became otherwise largely invisible to the newcomers.49 The arrival of the Aberdeens, whose retinue included a coachman and a footman, like that of the middle-class diarist from imperial Ontario, Alice Butler Barrett Parke (1861–1952), who viewed Indigenous residents with “curiosity, fear, revulsion, and superiority,” reinforced the creation of “two distinct societies with fixed boundaries” in the Okanagan region. By 1892, only 852 Aboriginal residents lived there, scattered among thirteen bands.50 The Aberdeen presence, first as entrepreneurial aristocrats and then as the viceregal couple, reinforced the ties linking the Pacific “edge of empire” to the heartland; neither location honoured North America’s first peoples.51 Hopes for creating a community of fruit-growing imperial landowners on small allotments that invoked farmers on their Scottish estates soon enough fell foul of bad management, the demands of orcharding in a near-desert, and poor transportation to markets. Their substantial investment produced dividends but only after the Aberdeens had sold out in the early twentieth century.52 For a short time during their Canadian viceroyalty, however, both Canadian ranches would offer some safeguard from public burnout. Proprietorship also encouraged personal investment in Canada as a fountainhead of imperial rejuvenation where outdoor pursuits reaffirmed masculine prowess.53 Like a Quebec hideaway in the Gaspésie, they left the family with a treasure trove of intimate memories even as they irritated politicians who wanted immediate replies to official correspondence. When they returned home, both John and Ishbel became ardent supporters of the Imperial Federation League and the Royal Colonial Institute.54 In an 1891 speech to the latter, presided over by an earlier Canadian governor general, Lord Lorne (1845–1914), Aberdeen insisted: “Just as Canada had a history, so

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had she also a destiny of her own.” Citing George Grant, Presbyterian, imperialist, and feminist principal of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and author of Ocean to Ocean (1873) – a paean to the Dominion’s potential55 – John Campbell Gordon championed a “British nationality.”56 He nevertheless recognized French Canada as “a striking illustration of the results arising from an enlightened and liberal extension of rights and privileges in all matters of local government, and the institutions, language, and traditions of any particular race.” Characterizing the French-English divide as “a race difficulty” much like that between Blacks and Whites in the United States, he foresaw both “diminishing.”57 The future lay with racial conciliation. Reform and Liberalism On home shores between trips to North America, the Aberdeens returned to progressive and Liberal campaigns. That politics began in their household arrangements. As an admirer pointed out: “the Aberdeen children are being brought up on eminently sensible and practical principles … Beside ordinary lessons with tutors, governesses, etc., Lord Haddo is learning a trade, and both he and his sister can cook.”58 The foundations of the apprenticeship of Dudley, the second son, with an engineering firm, rather than university, were also laid. Their parents prized teaching their youngsters, even as John’s father had done. When the family came to Canada in 1893, Ishbel prepared her eldest son for entry examinations for McGill University, and the entire family joined in writing and acting in plays for private performances – patterns that had characterized family intimacy since the 1880s.59 As parents and reformers in the 1890s, the Aberdeens clearly regarded themselves and were now widely acknowledged as a team. The Aberdeen Weekly Journal saluted both, “a man and woman together,” as full heirs of the aristocratic reformer Lord Shaftesbury. In them, “we have the young couple surrounded by loving children, a beautiful and united family carrying on the work to which he devoted every hour of his life.” Here was a modern example “of perfect equality in matrimony, and of complete mutuality in public life which has hitherto been realized only in the home.” They provided a “glorified, version of Castor and Pollux. Mrs Booth did this in the Salvation Army. Lady Aberdeen is doing it in politics and in society.” Nor was Ishbel’s prominence to the detriment of her husband. His support meant she could offer a “brilliant” demonstration of “true womanhood” even as he led in philanthropy.60 Such claims of comparability and compatibility were common. Occasionally, however, signs surfaced that some observers rated the countess higher. When the Earl of Aberdeen unsuccessfully contested the lord rectorship of the University of Glasgow

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against their Conservative friend Arthur James Balfour, one newspaper was ready to conclude: “The Liberals have a fairly good candidate in Lord Aberdeen. Lady Aberdeen would have been a better.”61 In these years, however, invidious comparisons remained rare. Wherever they laboured, John and Ishbel remained deeply self-conscious about the duties of their own privileged class. They heartily approved of the decision of their good friend, failed Liberal candidate in 1886, and future Canadian aide-de-camp, Scottish secretary, and son-in-law, John Sinclair,62 to take up residence at Toynbee Hall settlement house in Whitechapel and to initiate the London Playing Fields Society in 1889. Lady Aberdeen’s advocacy of the ’88 Club for Britain’s elite young women, like her later foundation of Ottawa’s May Court Club for a similar group, sent the same message: girlhood is always a strange difficult time of transition … And the natural difficulties which accompany the time of girlhood are intensified a thousand-fold to girls of our class by the artificial conditions and restrictions which are made to surround us during that period. Other girls on leaving school begin their training for their life’s work, and the realities of life come home to them day by day in their natural course. But on leaving the schoolroom no such training awaits us. What habits of work we have learnt are all to easily forgotten in the round of what purports to be enjoyment and pleasure, and what is more or less put before us are our business for the next few years … a life in which there seems to be little or no serious and fixed purpose, and where one is often required to seem one thing, whilst feeling and being another … the only true solution of life is – SERVICE.63

As ever, work was all-important in giving meaning to life and justifying rank and privilege. For the Aberdeens, the Haddo House Club remained the first focus of their own commitment to social collaboration. As their hosting of the Protestant evangelists Moody and Sankey on their estate in January 1892 confirmed,64 the Club breathed the spirit of Christian activism. Ishbel identified it as a domestic version of the humanist Stanton Coit’s “Neighbourhood Guild,” which found expression in the first American settlement house, in New York City in 1886.65 Like Coit, she trusted in its “self-governing, constitutional character” and contended that “the greatest praise given to the Club has been all unconsciously uttered by one of its own members when speaking to a friend of its results. ‘One can be a servant here and yet one can be a man!’ Do not these words justify the experiment?”66 The Onward and Upward Association’s work with girls and women was equally successful. By 1894, it boasted “8,600 associates and members and 120 branches, including two in Canada and one in South Africa.”67

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The Aberdeen effort to empower their staff through adult education and mutual support resembled what William Lubenow has discovered of other Victorian liberals who credited the politically unenfranchised with unrealized “capacities for participation in public life.” Coachmen and maids were not to be sidelined in modern democracies; such men and women were imbued with both “notability and respectability.”68 Some beneficiaries clearly prized their involvement. One veteran wrote much later to Lady Aberdeen, crediting the Association with giving her “high ideals just as I was starting out in life when I needed guidance more than I knew.”69 Ishbel also repeatedly acknowledged her own benefits from relationships. Members of the household association offered her family “true friendship” or “God’s next best earthly gift to a true marriage (marriage being indeed but the highest form of friendship).”70 She further stressed that members’ expressions of support and sympathy were especially welcome when she, like they, faced difficult times.71 The management of the family estate nevertheless caused constant worry. Desires for improvement could not be easily reconciled with erratic revenues and expensive tastes, notably, for house building and renovation. The popular press began to circulate unprecedented rumours of unhappiness on Aberdeen lands.72 In 1888, the Earl of Aberdeen used the occasion of a local Agricultural Association dinner to explain his position. Competition from the United States and falling prices made him wish for a buyer “of means” to do better by his tenants. He promised that he would not “allow the estate – to pass into the hands of a rack-renting proprietor … [or] an absentee proprietor” and confessed that his own “mistakes or errors” were “due to absenteeism” on political business. If he could not find a satisfactory buyer he preferred selling to his tenants in an experiment in “peasant proprietorship.”73 Rumours and realities of sales became a constant of their lives. While trying – and largely failing – to bring expenditures in line with income, both John and Ishbel took up reform causes elsewhere. Most efforts focused on the British Isles. The promotion of Scottish and Irish handicrafts, largely by women, in urban markets typified linkages they attempted to foster between rural dwellers and metropolitan consumers. Their personal investment was suggested in 1893, when the Aberdeens paid a year’s salary for a permanent secretary for the Scottish Home Industries Association.74 Ishbel herself assumed the presidency of its Irish counterpart and, despite her hatred for sea travel, regularly promoted its interests in Dublin and opened a London retail store. Such elite encouragement of handicrafts was complicated. As Elaine Cheasley Paterson has suggested, it reflected the faith of “many nineteenth-century social reformers … that rich and poor share a common culture and heritage that were physically realized in art objects. This shared culture was meant to

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help transcend class divisions and to foster a unified nation.”75 At least in Lady Aberdeen’s mind, however, artisans were not to be wedded to the past. They were expected to embrace new patterns and methods in the production of popular as well as luxury goods. The young countess foresaw a wide range of products, including “dress materials of every kind, knitted goods, underclothing, etc., and it is by the sale of these that we hope to benefit Irish workers.”76 In 1893, she typically regretted the absence of factories in the south of Ireland. With their appearance, she foresaw “improved” towns, where “the people would have more than agriculture to depend upon for their support.”77 That vision went substantially beyond mere romanticization of the Irish even as it promised enhanced solidarity.78 Sympathies for Ireland’s Catholics continued to antagonize anti–Home Rulers throughout the Empire. Belfast’s grand master of the Orange Lodge rejected handicraft campaigns as identified “with a school of politics whose principles and designs are so hateful to that section of the Irish people – the Protestant and loyal Irish – who have promoted Irish industries and made Ulster and other parts of Ireland prosperous without any eleemosynary appeal either to Parliament or to the charity of the world.” He saw only a “scheme of treachery and ruin for Ireland in which the malinger of England and everything – Mr Gladstone – is at present engaged.”79 Ishbel tried to soothe such ire by citing Conservative supporters, such as Arthur James Balfour (in fact, a leading opponent of Home Rule) and, when in 1893 she set up the model Irish Village at the Chicago World’s Fair, she insisted that Ireland was not presented as “an object of pity, but rather as an object of envy, inasmuch as it shows the beauty and intrinsic merit of the goods produced even by her peasant cottage workers.”80 The grand master’s reply allowed no quarter: “her ladyship should know there are Irish people who scorn to have their country made the beggar nation of the world, and who have made Irish industries live and flourish under the Constitution of the United Kingdom, which her ladyship and her fetish Mr Gladstone are doing their best to destroy.”81 As a representative of the significantly industrialized northern counties, this Belfast critic detested what he viewed as the Aberdeens’ preoccupation with an outdated rural peasantry. This debate, carried on in part in the press, typified the bitterness evoked by competing versions of what Ireland was and could be. The energetic Aberdeens also campaigned well beyond their own estates and Ireland. October 1887 was not unusual in seeing them touring Lancashire cotton mills, where the countess addressed a largely female audience of workers. She applauded what she interpreted as mutual good will of employees and employer and “hoped that place was turning out men and women of whom the country might be proud.” Like domestic servants in the Onward

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and Upward Association, they should feel pride at work well done.82 Education repeatedly surfaced as “the best means of aiding her own sex.” It benefited both women who needed to make their living and the well-to-do who could be trained to assume the duties of public service for which they “may be competent for discharging better than men.”83 As Lady Aberdeen reminded the Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women in 1889, “women could not escape the social problems of the time.” The rich needed to reject a morality that saw them “taught more or less to sell themselves for wealth and position.” Pioneered by “brave” souls, higher education promised a superior womanhood for the middle and upper classes. Not surprisingly, Ishbel firmly rejected claims that “women’s minds could not stand the strain of higher education.” She was just as adamant that “trade unions [and] cooperative societies” were equally essential in ensuring that female wage earners reached their full potential.84 A politics that considered women of all classes both workers and responsible citizens explained Lady Aberdeen’s honorary presidency of the Glasgow Protective and Provident League, presidency of London’s Women’s Industrial Council, and advocacy of trade unions more generally. She embodied the claims of cross-class sisterhood that Rosemary Feuer described some years ago in tracing many feminists’ shift from opposition to the Factory Acts to the endorsement of organization.85 The Gordons’ luxurious new house in Grosvenor Square offered a venue for a conference on women’s trade unions in 1889. Their friend, the Anglican social gospeller Canon Henry Scott-Holland used the occasion to champion organization since “there could, he said, be no fair competition between combined capital on the one hand and hungry women on the other.”86 The Aberdeens similarly supported the 1889 London dockers’ strike as an inspiration for women in “sweated trades.”87 Ishbel took the opportunity to invite Tom Mann, a prominent socialist leader, to speak about that conflict to a “fashionable gathering” at her home where he “denounced the Church for its deadly apathy.”88 Meanwhile, a middle-class fundraiser for the dockers wrote to John making clear the relationship between a responsible aristocracy and social peace: You are personally known & beloved in the East of London, & therefore any gift from you would be doubly welcome; & you know from your own experience better than I can tell you how unfounded is the accusation that the more intelligent working-men have any hatred to the aristocracy or even the rich. On the contrary nothing is more touching than to see their charity & generosity to those who might be considered their natural enemies; & their ready docility to acknowledge a superior. The smallest kindness from such seems to move them deeply.89

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Three years later, Ishbel hailed Glasgow’s Protective and Provident League as a sign of “the grand principle of human brotherhood, of each working for all, and all for each, so that … all the trades might be better, and that from that betterment the country at large and even the race, should be advanced.”90 The same year brought the couple to the Manchester Girls’ Institute, where they were welcomed “as good friends to the movement.”91 As Ishbel remembered of this time, she “was receiving much valuable though painful education regarding the conditions under which so many women workers earned their living.”92 The countess’s embrace of unionization expressed an evolving sense of sisterhood that combined what has been identified as “both active strains of the women’s movement – equal-rights and evangelical/philanthropic.” These “coalesced in an effort to aid their ‘working sisters’ both practically and politically.”93 Although Ishbel early on identified a role for government in legislating better conditions, she always counted on individual and collective self-help. In speaking before the Women’s Protective and Provident League, she rejected the “great prejudice against combination among working people.” Workers needed to combine to negotiate with capital. She further argued that unions protected “respectable employers” who otherwise could be undercut by unworthy rivals paying only a “pittance.”94 Repeated observation of abuses explained her persistent advocacy of the Women’s Trade Union League.95 In the late 1880s and early 1890s, John Campbell Gordon’s energies were scattered across a wide range of causes where religion was often not far from the surface. His support for the Society for the Relief of Persecuted Jews typified one strain of his faith.96 He was also explicit about religion’s special benefits in tumultuous times. Like his wife, he saw faith as supplying crucial social cement. In presiding over a meeting hosted by London’s Associated Workers’ League for General William Booth (1829–1912) of the Salvation Army, Aberdeen emphasized religion’s benefits for the more powerful: “every man or woman who joined the Salvation Army became ipso facto a supporter of law and order” and an opponent of “Nihilist doctrines.”97 Later, laying the cornerstone of the City of Aberdeen’s new Salvation Army premises, he hailed “soldiers” who have “raise[d] those classes of the people which have been the despair of statesmen and philanthropists.”98 The same enthusiasm underpinned his support for groups such as the Boys’ Brigade with its combination of “patriotism, morality, and religion” in “Christianity of the most manly type.”99 Churches remained, however, only one part of Aberdeen’s response to distress. Organization was again part of the solution. In 1890, the earl endorsed the Scottish Shopkeepers’ and Assistants’ Union. It would, he hoped, improve

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wages, hours, holidays, and conditions. He particularly congratulated the Union for admission of women to its benefit society.100 London’s Working Men’s Club and Institute Union recognized sympathies by having Lord Aberdeen open its London Exhibition some months later.101 As a member of the Select Committee on the Sweating System, which began sittings in 1888 and reported in 1891, the earl also sought female witnesses to enlighten the Lords about abusive conditions.102 Not surprisingly, he insisted that “combination” of workers was “an established fact” and urged employers to recognize unions.103 The hopes that sometimes came to rest with him were suggested by a request from the “Amalgamated Society of Scottish Railway Servants” to make their case during an 1891 winter strike. His ultimate impotence was also evident when their employer, the Caledonian, continued to refuse to negotiate.104 Perhaps not surprisingly, Lord Aberdeen more often assumed private and public duties on behalf of women and children. Very typically, in 1890–91, he succumbed to a private request to serve as a trustee for a widow’s charitable bequest and found himself overwhelmed by appeals from orphanages, hospitals, and other such initiatives.105 Such duties were pursued alongside his personal enthusiasm for groups such the King Edward Ragged Schools and Missions in London’s Spitalfields district where he succeeded Lord Shaftesbury as president.106 Involvement in the Society for the Protection of Children further confirmed his reputation as a noble who personified “noblesse oblige, and strives to set a mark on his generation by personal service for his fellow men.”107 In their commitment to the causes of women and children, in particular, the Gordons repeatedly made a case for state intervention. As advanced liberals, they took for granted the need to regulate labour, immigration, housing, and parenting. Political power was obviously critical to such management, and local electoral franchises became an early target. They supported friends such as Sinclair and Rosebery in elections for the London County Council, a focus of much reform hope in the 1880s and 1890s. More controversially, they, like long-time mentor Lucy Cavendish,108 endorsed female candidates for local office. In December 1888, the countess championed female county councillors as an expression of women’s public duty. Candidature was the logical successor to charities undertaken by “our mothers, and grandmothers, and greatgrandmothers.” The modern world required attacking the “cause of the evils of poverty … prevention rather than cure.” And, once again, she asserted that better-off women had special obligations on behalf of others “who can only support us by their intelligence and sympathy.” The privileged had “the honour of giving our education, our leisure, our freedom from care and power of work, to better their condition and to put them in a position of helping themselves.”109

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In January 1889, the fact that she was not a ratepayer on her own account deterred Lady Aberdeen from contesting London Council elections. Despite their prioritization of duties not rights, Ishbel and London’s women candidates – all Liberal Home Rulers like herself – encountered bitter opponents who saw only “indecorum” and enhancement of “fierce party strife.”110 While much effort focused on domestic issues, the Aberdeens remained fascinated by the wider Empire and world. Injustice everywhere drew censure. Their support for the Anti-Lynching League, which included Ishbel on its Women’s Auxiliary Committee in 1891, as it raised money to combat “the murdering of Southern negroes,” evoked long-standing evangelical and liberal causes.111 Alongside Henry Drummond, Ishbel also courted support for Indian students in England and India’s child widows.112 Mistreatment of defeated Zulus in South Africa was similarly denounced as unbefitting a civilized empire. Drummond wrote plainly to a sympathizer when he described for Ishbel the efforts of Harriette Colenso, daughter of a rebel Anglican bishop of Natal, to win support for the Zulus, arguing: “Our treatment of ‘black men’ in general is most inconsiderate, unjust, and tyrannical, and we seldom make any allowance for native ideas, customs or traditions, and apply English technical law with rigid and unsympathetic severity to people who should be judged by other standards.”113 The hosting of “two young Zulus,” candidates for missionary training, by John’s mother, the dowager duchess, confirmed the continuing family commitment to Christian uplift in Africa.114 Ultimately, for such liberal imperialists, Britain’s measure was tested by its treatment of the vulnerable both abroad and at home. The associated requirement of oversight by a foreign, albeit well-intentioned power during perhaps an extended period of transition to self-rule was largely taken for granted. The Liberal Party remained the chief custodian of their hopes for improvement in all realms. Confident that “Liberalism is the Christianity of politics,” Lady Aberdeen held “that the principles of Liberalism will, if truly applied, bring happiness and justice to every class of society, equal absolute justice – no class exclusiveness, no supremacy, the common weal the main object. In the pursuit and application of these principles, women have equal duties with men, and can only fulfill them to their families and homes if they fulfill them as citizens.”115 The party itself, however, struggled to channel diverse demands for change and function as more than an unsettled coalition of “faddists.”116 Divisions over the relationship with Whig aristocrats and with organized labour, Home Rule for Ireland (and, by extension, that for Scotland and the rest of the Empire), and the role of women in the party and in government all involved the Aberdeens.

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Whigs and Labour The so-called classes and the masses remained uncertain allies within the Liberal Party. In these years, many of the former fled as Unionists, ultimately for the most part into the Conservative Party, while many of the latter found their interests better met in emerging labour or socialist parties. Only uncertainly did a “New Liberalism” offer seeming common ground for progressive aristocrats and cooperative workers. Dedicating themselves to carrying on Gladstone’s moral crusade and checking the tendencies of his successor Lord Rosebery to dilettantism and egoism, Ishbel and John stood among the evangelically minded leaders of the first group in Scotland. Their outreach to workers invoked crossclass social harmony under moral leaders. In some ways, they represented an older collaborative politics found in the earlier history of the Liberal Party.117 For a time, new Liberalism’s enthusiasm for unprecedented “state intervention” appeared to renew that old alliance and heal social division.118 As David Powell has suggested, however, the emergence of a more classconscious labour movement in the 1880s and the Scottish Labour Party in 1885 portended a different future.119 At the same time, threats to landed property associated with Home Rule, the Crofters’ Party, and the popularity of American land reformer Henry George (1839–1897) fuelled growing aristocratic reservations.120 The Gordons’ support for unions and sympathies for tenants put both of them in these years, however, on the side of “collaboration in the national interest.”121 Like their friend Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Scot who would succeed the quixotic Rosebery, they championed a “‘classless’ vision of Liberalism over the – as they saw it – ‘class-based’ theories of socialism.”122 Such sympathies help explain why the Scottish Liberal Association was sometimes more progressive than its southern counterpart. In 1891, its Glasgow conference endorsed the eight-hour day, church disestablishment, the abolition of the Lords, and woman suffrage – a more radical agenda than the party’s Newcastle Program accepted by Gladstone.123 Ultimately, however, despite the “cult of the ‘The Grand Old Man’ which, in the east of Scotland, had become invested with the significance of a political religion,” the aristocratic-labour politics of the Aberdeens proved “an unwieldy alliance undergoing a process of secession and disintegration following internal dissension.”124 Home Rule All Round? The Scottish “Home Rule” movement provided still further opportunities for Liberal internecine friction. The 1880s saw considerable rural unrest in the Highlands with the return of several Crofter MPs in 1885 and a Scottish

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Home Rule Association a year later.125 In 1885, Liberal leaders like Rosebery, Argyll, and the Aberdeens supported the creation of a Cabinet secretary for Scotland as one remedy for discontent. Nevertheless, such initiatives remained overshadowed by the Irish question. In the pages of the Westminster Review, Lord Aberdeen endorsed devolution as part of the gradual and general “movement towards Federation … a phase in a great political evolution” of the Empire but insisted “the question of Home Rule for Scotland is entirely different in character and urgency from the question of Home Rule for Ireland.”126 He never endorsed Scottish independence or a separate parliament, a posture that for obvious reasons readily seemed hypocritical to Irish Unionists.127 In Scotland as elsewhere, Irish Home Rule proved deadly for Liberals. As Frances Balfour, the Duke of Argyll’s daughter, remembered, it invoked extraordinary passion, broke “old comradeship, and the way of looking at political life.”128 Nor were such recalcitrant Whigs as her father the only opponents. The leading liberal ideologue, Oxford professor, and anti-suffragist, Albert V. Dicey,129 argued in England’s Case against Home Rule (1887) that “larger multi-ethnic states” were “inevitable” and Ireland needed not independence but English investment.130 Like those in the Irish Nationalist Party, however, Home Rulers in general wanted self-government within the Empire.131 Such was the aim of John Morley, who became Irish secretary upon the Liberal return to power in 1892. The Aberdeens believed they deserved the Irish viceroyalty and felt sure of Irish support. The countess, for example, would be given the Freedom of the City of Limerick in 1894. But Morley, a powerhouse in Gladstone’s last Cabinet, brooked no such earnest rivals. Lady Aberdeen’s appearance at Queen Victoria’s first 1888 Drawing Room “in a dress flamboyantly embroidered with Celtic motifs” conveyed just that determination to make waves, which Morley abhorred.132 In 1892, he vetoed their reappointment, noting in the process (in a revealing demonstration of misogyny) that “Lady Aberdeen had better take care how she behaves to me in the future about Female Suffrage – or I am d––d if they shall have Canada either, which they want very much.”133 The Aberdeens acquiesced to “losing” Dublin because of their devotion to Gladstone, but their enthusiasm for Home Rule remained undimmed. When they accepted the Canadian viceroyalty, they readily viewed it as an opportunity to support “Home Rule All Round” within the colonies of settlement. That prospect helps explain why they declined the more prestigious offer of Indian proconsulship. Such views, for all their frequent privileging of European peoples, placed them clearly on the edge of much of their own class. In 1893, the House of Lords defeated the second Home Rule Bill by 419 votes to 41. Rosebery’s lacklustre succession to Gladstone when the Conservatives returned to power under Lord Salisbury in 1895 only confirmed a party in disarray.

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The “Woman Question” Official liberalism’s sorry state was further demonstrated when it came to the woman question that had been unsettling British politics since mid-century. Nor were the causes of Ireland and women ever entirely distinct. As Ishbel observed in a speech to the Inverness Women’s Liberal Federation in 1891: “it was specially appropriate that so many women had been called for the first time into the field of politics to help the Irish cause, for they must admit that men had not been very successful in their treatment for hundreds of years of Ireland and the Irish.”134 A year later, she typically endorsed Home Rule “all round,” once again with the conspicuous exception of Scotland, as involving not only the Empire but also women and the “labouring classes.”135 The Aberdeen mentor Gladstone was never, however, a friend to female enfranchisement. At best, he lacked any “sense of urgency.”136 Although it has been suggested that he opened doors by adopting a crusading moral politics that attracted activist women, his welcome remained meagre.137 Far more significant for Gladstone and most Liberal leaders was the practical benefit of women’s allegiance. The 1885 introduction of near-full male franchise meant that parties required additional organizational support. Conservatives were first off the mark with “dames” allowed to join their Primrose League in 1884. While various Liberal initiatives had appeared as early as 1880, the Women’s Liberal Federation (WLF) was not founded in England until 1886 with the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation (SWLF) appearing six years later. Ishbel was an early president of both. While Liberal Party leadership wanted little more than grassroots aid and increased donations, she anticipated opportunities for women with “the leisure, the opportunity and the power” to promote reform. If they failed, “then let them be very sure” that “time would bring fruits of their selfish absorption to their children and their children’s children.”138 Right from the beginning, female suffrage sparked fierce division.139 By 1888, when the countess chaired “a small influential gathering” of her sex to discuss extending the franchise,140 that cause already numbered many veterans. A year later, the London County Council elections produced victories for Liberal women.141 Ishbel embraced such campaigns since “the way to get more [rights] was to use to the uttermost every privilege they [women] had.”142 For suffragists, “local government was one of those small keys that help to unlock large doors.”143 The question of the parliamentary franchise at Westminster was, however, for a time more troubling. Important activists like Lucy Cavendish argued that, while women had special concerns and expertise in local matters such as health, education, and recreation that deserved electoral recognition, the running of the Empire rested more properly with men better educated to

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its duties.144 Lady Aberdeen had some initial sympathy with such distinction between local and parliamentary franchises. In the Women’s Liberal Federations, whose tendentious politics was avoided by Cavendish, the countess assumed the role of moderate. Although Claire Hirshfield’s treatment of the Federations and suffrage remains superb, she neglected Ishbel.145 The latter’s loyalties to Gladstone and her brother, Liberal Whip Edward Marjoribanks, as well as her own devotion to Irish Home Rule curbed the countess, but she remained a powerful figure, who worried, as did many in the party, lest any limited enfranchisement benefit only betteroff women who might more likely vote Conservative. In March 1889, she described reservations in speaking before the newly formed West Edinburgh Women’s Liberal Association: But I think the reason why it is desirable that the franchise should be extended to women is not so much that women, whose position and possessions give them already influence to a certain extent, should be able to express their political opinions, but that the women who have no possibility at present of influence otherwise should be able to make their opinions felt … And we who are better off should claim for them this right. And therefore it is that I, for one, should prefer to wait to see the franchise extended to women until a more extended franchise on another principle is extended to men and women alike. (Applause.) And then my dream is that both parties should unite in giving it in the same way as through the magnanimity of Mr Gladstone was done on the occasion of the passing of the Redistribution Bill. (Applause.)146

Such hesitation sometimes encouraged uncertainty about her views. Only this, other than mere mischief, explained the 1889 invitation by John Morley to sign “An Appeal against Female Suffrage” in The Nineteenth Century alongside the prominent novelist Mrs Humphry (Mary Augusta) Ward (1851–1920) and 103 other female notables, including Lucy Cavendish.147 The public response to such “antis” from leading Liberal suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett noted that the signatures included “a very large preponderance of ladies to whom the lines of life have fallen in pleasant places.”148 They had clearly failed the test of moral leadership. Aberdeen’s firm refusal to Morley revealed the middle ground she attempted to claim: I cannot sign the document you sent me. I cannot get up any particular enthusiasm on the subject, either for or against, and I hope that the suffrage may not be given to women for some time yet … At the same time I cannot agree with Mrs Ward in her conclusions … The arguments which she uses to show that women

Extending the Field of Labour, 1886–1898  137 are unqualified for using the Parliamentary vote rightly and wisely surely apply to a large portion of the present electorate. The reasons which cause her to desire that women should take their full share in the State of social effort and social mechanism surely leads to only one conclusion, more especially at a time when, as you so often point out, the legislation is likely to become more and more social and less and less strictly political in character. Again, Mrs Ward says that we are invited to embark on certain changes “because a few women of property possessing already the influence which belong to property – feel themselves aggrieved by the denial of the parliamentary vote.” This appears to me to be mostly unfair. It is certainly not for any advantage that might come to women of the upper classes that I, for one, claim that women have an equal claim with men as citizens to the franchise and to the expression of an opinion as to how they shall be governed. I think that we women who have leisure and means have our full share of influence and that it matters very little to us if we have the vote or not. But it is not so with the working women and it is they who suffer most from any defective legislation, they and their children and their homes; and they have no means of making their voice heard. The most intelligent of them feel this keenly and I frankly own that it is this consideration that has made me feel that I must join the ranks of those who contend that it is only justice to treat men and women as human beings with equal rights and claims, and then let nature work out her own laws in assigning to each those functions which each can best fulfill in advancing the welfare of the state. I detest these “women’s questions” pitting men and women against each other as if their interests and their duties could be apart. I shrink from them all and long for the time when the law will recognise no sex. You will see therefore that I will only become keen on the question when the time comes for something like manhood suffrage to be granted. And so I give plenty of time to cry and to preach “Educate, educate, educate” in preparation for that time! Meanwhile I cannot oppose the concession of the principle which seems to me only justice, although being a Liberal, I may wish to see the concession delayed, lest the interests of Liberalism be imperiled. Mrs Ward’s arguments seem to be precisely those that are used by Unionists against the claims of Ireland to Home Rule. The Irish may have local selfgovernment, but not Home Rule. Women may vote for School Board, municipal, County Council, but not for Parliamentary elections … you only have to put the world “Ireland” for “women” and “England” for “men,” to make a paragraph for a Unionist speech.149

For all its obvious truth, the comparison with Ireland did not convince her correspondent. The link, however, signalled that the 1886 viceroyalty had proved a consciousness-raising experience for the countess.

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Ishbel’s recurring caution nevertheless regularly irritated less constrained feminists. As Liberal suffragist Priscilla Bright McLaren pointedly observed in March 1889, “simple, untitled” citizens had pioneered in demands for the franchise and her sex suffered “far more harrowing” abuses than Ireland. She urged Lady Aberdeen to use the WLF to unlock “the very door which must open the suffrage to women. I trust she will have the courage to open it. When she does, she will find a reception awaiting her greater than has ever yet been accorded to her by her grateful countrywomen.”150 Short months later, Ishbel nevertheless rejected a motion for the WLFs to endorse suffrage. Partisans received instead her pledge to tackle women’s “lack of political education” and reminders of Gladstone’s acceptance of female county councillors.151 By the winter of 1890, she judged only its local associations, not the entire Federation, ready to endorse the vote.152 Lady Aberdeen found, however, that many suffragists “wished to be regarded as something more than the mere auxiliaries of the party Whips and the National Liberal Federation.” She also admitted to Glasgow Liberals that “an enlightened and sensitive patriotism” proclaimed the doctrine of political equality between men and women, and held up woman suffrage as the central and most important object to be arrived at. She showed that though meanwhile she was working for a practical good – the liberation of Ireland from coercionist administration – which seemed within reach, and though she feared that for the present the political enfranchisement of women could not be regarded as directly attainable, she is heart and soul with reformers like Mrs McLaren, who not only believe in political equality as a right, but are convinced that its recognition by the State would powerfully contribute to the national well-being.153

In Edinburgh, the forceful McLaren responded by acknowledging Lady Aberdeen’s role in generating a larger constituency “than ever could be got together by the Women’s Franchise movement, and these thousands of women, in place of requiring to be dragged into public life by a few earnest workers, now cannot be held back.”154 Keen suffragists always remained far from convinced by Ishbel’s tactics. Condemnation by Eva McLaren, Priscilla’s daughter-in-law and the WLF’s honorary secretary, of “the noble ladies who rule and do most of the talking” struck close to home: Not to put too fine a point upon it, the enfranchisement of women does not suit the book of Mr Edward Marjoribanks, MP, who is the chief puller of the Gladstonian

Extending the Field of Labour, 1886–1898  139 strings in Scotland. So Lady Fanny, his wife, who, with her sister-in-law, Lady Aberdeen, shapes the courses of the Scottish Liberal women, boycotts the cause that ought in the nature of things to be nearest their hearts … They scorn the delights of the ballot box for the sake of the success of a Great Party (we quote Lady Fanny), and their only reward – and that a dubious one – is the hope of securing “prosperity to their country, and the continual betterment of the condition of its inhabitants” (we quote Lady Aberdeen). It is truly a wonderful spectacle this of the banded and sweetly shrieking Liberal sisterhood giving up all for the sake of Home Rule … The Women’s Liberal Association is neither more nor less than a farce.155

Complaints eventually produced results. Under Lady Aberdeen as first president, the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation adopted a founding 1892 constitution pledged to suffrage and “the removal of all legal disabilities on account of sex.”156 An amendment that made suffrage a condition of support to Liberal candidates, since “the wrongs of women were as great, or even greater, than those of Ireland,” nevertheless failed to pass.157 Even as Ishbel and Eva congratulated the US State of Wyoming’s new women voters, the WLF endorsed universal suffrage but, again, not as a “test question” for Liberal candidates.158 While claiming not to yield to anyone in advocating votes “on the widest possible basis,” the conciliatory Ishbel emphasized tactics, not principle. Requiring electoral aspirants to accept the female franchise as a condition for WLF support still constituted too dangerous a threat to party unity:159 Lady Aberdeen explained her own position as a moderate in bitter debates: I was elected President of the Executive [in this case of the WLF] unanimously, and was there put at once into a neutral position between the two parties. I have striven to maintain that neutral position rigidly, feeling that thus I could best serve the Federation and the Liberal cause. I was thus often debarred from expressing an opinion … Both sides had organized themselves into parties and met as such independently of the Executive, coming to our Committee meetings with a policy already prepared … If we could all have come to the meetings with our minds open to consider the questions we had to settle without previous bias, without seeing in each motion a motive, without having talked it all over before, we should have been able … to work harmoniously together for a common cause … Our object should be so to act that the breach may be healed … I am certain that the feeling in favour of the Suffrage is growing very rapidly amongst women, more especially since they were admitted to the other local franchises. It is impossible it should be otherwise. You may find thinking women against it amongst the upper and middle classes, but never amongst the working classes, numbers may

140  Liberal Hearts and Coronets be indifferent to it, or have never given the matter a thought, but those who think are for it.160

Grumbling suffragists had to take comfort from the re-election of the countess “when the Anti-Suffrage party did their best to wreck the labour of years”161 and agreed “it is not too much to say that during that time she suffered persecution for her faith.”162 More outspoken feminists like Scotland’s medical pioneer Dr Elsie Inglis nevertheless remained deeply dissatisfied with Ishbel’s performance: “women are awful fools to truckle to their party, instead of putting their foot down about the Franchise. You would certainly hear more about wife murders than you do at present, if the women had the vote.”163 The Countess of Carlisle, outspoken suffragist and Home Ruler, took over the English WLF when Aberdeen left for Canada in 1893, but dissidents deserted to create the non-suffragist Women’s National Liberal Federation (WNLF) with some “10,000 members and 50–60 branches.” Their departure left the WLF “even more militant,” albeit still wedded to supporting non-suffragist Liberal candidates on the hustings.164 For all that caution, their “general bias in favour of state intervention and a sympathy for trade unions” meant that both the SWLF and WLF stood “on the left of the party,” providing firm allies to the “New Liberalism.”165 Martin Pugh has suggested that the practical contributions of women Liberals made it impossible for the party’s anti-suffrage leaders to entirely repudiate them or their campaigns.166 With friends and families divided over suffrage, and in both the Liberal and Conservative parties, Ishbel stood in the heart of a storm that contributed to her persisting migraines. She nevertheless considered the “two Women’s Liberal Federations a wonderful school of training” which “was made more practical by the repetition of discussion at both English and Scottish federations with the variation of thought to be expected, and again by seeing how these subjects were viewed by the audiences of working women whom I had so often to address … we had to do our best, and to accept the verdict of the majority. This provided a healthy atmosphere.”167 The International Council of Women On the horizon lay still greater opportunities for education in compromise. From 1893, the International Council of Women would profoundly shape the Aberdeens. The origins of the Council movement lay largely with US suffragists, but 1883 meetings with English, Irish, and French suffragists in Liverpool confirmed transatlantic ties.168 Long-time American activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) set out to recruit

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both the uninvolved and “wild women,” those so infuriated by “the prolonged oppressions of their sex” that they might otherwise join “Nihilists, Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists, in defence of the most enlarged liberties of the people.”169 In rejecting such class-conscious politics, they presented themselves and women in general as “workers” in the great cause of human betterment, an inclusive liberal identity similarly prized by Ishbel. The Council was intended to serve as “a confederation of workers committed to the overthrow of all forms of ignorance and injustice.”170 For many early advocates, such as the leader of the American Woman Suffrage Association, May Wright Sewall (1844–1920), the ICW had the potential to be profoundly radical, designed to “rouse women to new thought … intensify their love of liberty and … give them a realizing sense of the power of combination.”171 Such founders assumed “a latent constituency for women’s votes” that could be wedded to a broad agenda of progressive reform.172 To extend the appeal, they adopted a critical “General Policy”: “This International Council is organized in the interests of no one propaganda, and has no power over its members beyond that of suggestions and sympathy; therefore, no National Council … shall render itself liable to be interfered with in respect to its complete organic unity, independence or methods of work, or shall be committed to any principle or method of any other council, or to any utterance or act of this International Council, beyond compliance with the terms of this Constitution.” The overriding obligation was to “further the application of the Golden Rule to society, custom and law: DO UNTO OTHERS AS YE WOULD THAT THEY SHOULD DO UNTO YOU.”173 Such deliberately broad, ecumenical, and non-partisan framing of the ICW mandate did not include explicit commitment to women suffrage. This deliberate omission reflected suffragist founders’ fear that too strong a feminist message would deter recruitment. As Sewall remembered, the goal aimed to affirm “likeness” not difference.174 Awareness that long-time American activists like themselves were especially suspect prompted a search for an international leader with impeccable credentials. In 1888, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, an old hand of English suffragism, was the first choice, but she rejected the feminist ecumenicalism of “the triumphal event.”175 Accused of “smug national self-congratulation,” she held it “quite impossible that English women and American women should have anything in common.”176 After that snub, the Americans continued with the tireless Sewall, aided by the charismatic Frances Willard (1839–1898) of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and first president of the National Council of Women of the United States, to seek international support. In 1893, they manoeuvred to hold the ICW gathering at the “World Congress of Representa-

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tive Women” during the Chicago Columbia Exposition. Caution was needed because the president of the Board of Lady Managers, Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849–1918), deplored any hint of suffrage or radicalism.177 Sewall, now president of the American National Council of Women, and others found themselves choosing between Lady Somerset, leader of Britain’s WCTU, and Willard’s friend, who was considered more radical, and an alternative whom some observers judged a “relatively unknown Scotswoman.”178 In fact, Ishbel came well credentialed to Chicago, as representative of the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation, the Society for Promoting the Return of Women to All Local Governing Bodies, and the Women’s Franchise League of England. The future founder of the International Council of Nurses, Englishwoman Ethel Bedford Fenwick (1857–1947), nevertheless warned that Lady Aberdeen’s “political opinions would alienate people” while a representative of Australian women worried that “we have a powerful anti-Irish party which would have great objection.” In return, however, British writer, Mrs (Florence) Fenwick Miller (1854–1935), countered that “no name was more universally respected or less associated with sectional interest,” while the always influential Anthony concluded: “a woman who is neither specifically temperance nor suffragist, who is not a hobbyist of any particular sort – will help the work much more.”179 Lady Aberdeen won twelve votes to nine. Anthony’s acuity was confirmed by a New Zealand journalist’s admiration for Ishbel’s “quiet, sensible speech” and “quiet, ladylike dress.”180 She would serve as ICW president for extended periods: 1893–99, 1904–20, and 1922–36.181 During her first term, the ICW expanded to include ten national councils, beginning with the addition of Canada, in 1893. ICW growth reflected many forces, including the determined cultivation of a broad constituency by American pioneers, but Ishbel’s social and financial capital was powerful. The trilingual countess and her energetic multilingual secretary, Teresa F. Wilson, who very unfortunately seems to have largely disappeared from records, possessed hard-to-match resources of time and talent. The title itself opened doors, such as those of Augusta Victoria (1858–1921), Empress of Germany (1888–1918), and her grandmother-in-law, Britain’s Queen Victoria. In her first term, Lady Aberdeen manoeuvred, much as she did in the Women’s Liberal Federations, to conciliate on the left and the right. The vote was still considered too divisive for official endorsement, but suffrage societies joined as affiliates and members in general were encouraged to debate the merits of enfranchisement. Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish women were similarly persuaded to jettison antipathy in a common commitment to human improvement. National differences, commonly so divisive, were to be celebrated rather than impede the exchange of views.

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Under Lady Aberdeen’s leadership, the ICW became a clearly imperial operation, most obviously British but more generally European in its perspective on the world. Such an orientation made the so-called precursor of the League of Nations little different from other contemporary initiatives of its age. Canadian historian Joan Sangster has aptly described the range of possibility as a “double-edged sword”: “On the one hand, there was the appeal of transcending the nation, creating solidarity, and working collaboratively for equality, though on the other hand there was a danger that international efforts would simply reflect, or worse, perpetuate colonialist agendas, or even diminish feminist goals.”182 The judgment of Ishbel, like that of the American founders, that global cooperation demanded circumspection produced a more conservative orientation than some feminists were prepared to accept. The first years of the ICW nevertheless saw it battling pervasive suspicion and misogyny. Only slowly, and even then partially as a result of its colonization by more conservative women in some countries, did the ICW and its councils win public acceptance. Even so, some governments such as those of Germany and Russia remained deeply suspicious. Pervasive hostility made Aberdeen seem an effective choice as first president. The 1893 Columbia Exposition evoked many of the contradictions that characterized global relations among women. While the ICW pondered its future, a closer spotlight shone on Ishbel’s model Irish Village complete with a replica of Blarney Castle. Although it had a rival in Chicago with still another British philanthropist’s Donegal Village, Lady Aberdeen’s endeavour attracted most notice.183 Conflicts over Home Rule were centre-stage with John facing accusations that he had allowed the British Union Jack to be superseded by the Irish Harp flag. Symbolic representation of the relations of Empire was heavily gendered. Conceived by Ishbel to showcase Indigenous talent and products, the Irish Village asserted an overwhelmingly positive, but also highly romantic, picture that focused on industrious and attractive young women, far removed from revolution or famine. These colleens, like Highlanders before them, were recuperated within the context of imperial benevolence. Just as Fenians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood were gendered male, as were the military Highlanders, prosperity in Chicago became effectively female and domestic. The incorporation of this “new Ireland” and the integration of its women in particular into the imperial family were further confirmed when Ishbel herself announced that “she was proud” to describe “herself as three-parts Scotch and one Irish.”184 Her body, like those of the young women she had brought to the Fair, evoked both assimilation and conciliation. She and they constituted “living proof of what conversion to the English way of life could achieve.”185 Ireland’s men need only follow.

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The pat/maternalism of the message at Chicago and elsewhere was obvious, but it was accompanied and complicated by the Gordons’ insistence “that Ireland’s full industrial development can only come under a complete system of self government.”186 Unspoken but obvious was the corollary that civilized government benefited from the participation of industrious women. That image was far away from the portrait of primitive womanhood represented in the Native American and African villages that competed for attention alongside “the specially constructed and unfortunately named ‘White City.’”187 Irish women and the nation itself, unlike other colonial “others” were not static artefacts of the past, though the presence of the countess did suggest that elite imperial support was essential to their evolution. Without it, “Ireland’s industrial revolution was as distant as Africa’s.”188 Ishbel’s presidency of the ICW conveyed the same message about the relations of responsible elites and subjects. The Canadian Test Case While in Chicago, the Aberdeens learned that Lord Stanley had resigned and that the governor generalship of Canada was now, courtesy of Prime Minister Gladstone, John’s. If the World’s Fair proved a heady and sometimes taxing experience, a further imperial proconsulship would test their mettle. The lessons at Holyrood and Dublin were influential for “colonial governance” was “often a relative and comparative endeavour – one that was dependent on fruitfully imaging the lessons that could be learned and transferred between differently constituted colonial spaces.”189 Canada in the 1890s was challenging. Like Ireland, it presented brawling protagonists, divided over religion, region, nationality, and the appropriate roles of women and men. It also offered the further trial of justice for Aboriginal populations, a cause that never engaged the otherwise liberal Aberdeens absorbed as they were with European disagreements. The divisive “Manitoba Schools Question,” which pitted Catholic against Protestant, French against English, and Liberal against Conservative, was the leading political issue, even as the earlier assassination of Young Irelander and subsequently ardent apostle of Canadian moderation, “Father of Confederation,” Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825–1868) still darkened a domain deemed “a land of Celtic exiles.”190 Ardent apostles of both Irish unionism and Home Rule kept the Dominion almost as unsettled as the British Isles.191 The last great Indigenous revolt led by Metis Louis David Riel in 1885 further haunted Canadian politics, but its repercussions for the most part hurt only increasingly displaced Indians and Metis. Bitter divisions impeded Canada’s effective address of new immigrants, growing urban distress, and mounting capital-labour conflict. By

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the time the Aberdeens arrived, the long domination of Sir John A. Macdonald (1815–1891) and the Conservative Party was disintegrating. As John T. Saywell, the editor of Ishbel’s Canadian Journal, concluded “the 1890’s were in some ways the most critical years in the history of the Canadian nation.”192 Right from the outset, the Aberdeen appointment stirred considerable interest. On the one hand, the hometown Aberdeen Weekly Journal described sad farewells from Haddo House even as it concluded “that the wide embracing liberality of thought and feeling characteristic of your Lordship and Lady Aberdeen, the sympathy with the less fortunate of your fellow creatures, the active benevolence, the care, the thoroughness, the energy which you have devoted to the many philanthropic schemes in which you have been interested, will not cease or fall from you in the new and enlarged sphere of action and influence to which you have been called, but that all classes without distinction of sect or party in the great and growing colony of the west will have occasion to recognize your earnest desire to be helpful to those among whom your lot is cast.”193 Many Irish nationalists tended to be equally positive. Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal continued its long-standing favourable assessment: “If Lord Aberdeen is only half as successful a Viceroy in Canada as he was in Ireland, the people of the Dominion will deserve to be congratulated.” It further approved that “Lord Aberdeen’s interest in Ireland did not cease – as is the usual case with a departing Viceroy … He has ever since maintained a close connection with Ireland, and aided in the most practical way many projects for her advantage … He seems, somehow, to belong to us, as if he had spent in Dublin half his lifetime. Much of the success of Lord Aberdeen in Ireland – probably he would himself be disposed to say most of it – was due to the great tact, high intelligence, and constant energy of his wife.”194 A commentator in the English Illustrated Magazine similarly hailed the appointment. Canadians, notably the French, who were patronized in much the same way as the Irish might have been, could only benefit from Lord Aberdeen’s guidance: He goes to Canada as no former governor has done, with sympathies well attuned to Canadian life. As a representative and patriotic Scot he is assured of the support of those fellow countrymen of his who really form the backbone of the Canadian people. As an ex-Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland he has special claims upon another large section of the Canadian people, while his decided renouncement of all partisan associations removes any want of sympathy from those to whom the Battle of the Boyne is the greatest of victories and July 12th the day of days. Among another great section of the Canadian people, the French Canadians, Lord Aberdeen is as yet known only as a passing visitor, but they do not forget the appreciation he and Lady Aberdeen have shown of the good qualities of Jean Baptiste – his

146  Liberal Hearts and Coronets thrift, contentment, attachment to home and faith, and probably from no part of Canada will be warmer welcome forthcoming than from the bit of mediaeval Europe which Canada possesses in the Province of Quebec.

John himself might have particularly enjoyed the metaphor that portrayed the new viceroy, like the northern Irish grandee Lord Dufferin195 before him, as “the oilman superintending the working of a complicated mass of chain-driver machinery. He walks about with his little oil-can in his hand and pours in a drop here and drop there as the creaking of a joint may require, while the height of his skill is attained when by vigilant watching he keeps the wheels and cogs free from dust.”196 Here, it seemed, was the Scot abroad at his best, the technologically advanced apostle of a shared democracy of merit. William Stead, the Aberdeens’ reform ally and editor of the influential liberal Review of Reviews, provided the most extended salute. Hailed as goodlooking and athletic, John Campbell Gordon was credited with the “administrative genius and statesmanlike ability of the [Aberdeen] Prime Minister, the earnest piety and catholic evangelism of [his father] Lord Haddo, while he is by no means devoid of the love of action and adventure which was so strongly developed in his brother [the sailor earl] George.”197 The muckraking journalist mused equally enthusiastically about Ishbel even as he “outed” her as a feminist: “Of course, like others who have taken any interest in the amelioration of the conditions of life, Lady Aberdeen believes firmly in woman’s suffrage.”198 Much of Canada’s own Scottish and Irish disaspora joined in the approving chorus. The Conservative, vigorous railroad entrepreneur, philanthropist, and later friend to both Ishbel and John, Donald A. Smith, Lord Strathcona (1820–1914), understood that “the fact of Lord Aberdeen’s being a great favourite with Mr Gladstone will not predispose many in his favour, but I believe he is earnest and industrious and a Scotsman of rank and lineage, which in itself signifies a great deal. Then, as I need hardly remind you, there is her ladyship.”199 The Scottish connection proved from the beginning a major inspiration for welcome. Suspicion nevertheless sometimes surfaced. From Melbourne, Australia, a newspaper invoked what eventually became a commonplace discourse of masculine inadequacy in sneering: “Lord Aberdeen is a weak, aimless little man, admirably suited to fill the post of secretary to a free library in a provincial town.”200 The London correspondent of New Zealand’s Dunedin Star drew on that former colony’s experience with Aberdeen’s uncle, Lord Stanmore, whom British settlers detested for his sympathy for the Maoris, to flaunt similar reservations and invidiously link these to Ishbel’s obvious strength: “Now, Lord Aberdeen … is as simple, unaffected a man as ever filled high office … [and

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whether he] proves a strong enough man for Canada or not … the countess of Aberdeen’s powers of organization amount to genius.”201 An editorial in The Scotsman went so far as to question Aberdeen’s loyalty, spreading the rumour that he had “refused to allow the Union Jack to be hoisted over the Irish Village which he and Lady Aberdeen have established at the Chicago Exhibition.”202 A survivor of the trials of Holyrood and Dublin, John Campbell Gordon knew the dangers of too open partisanship. For nearly two years, Liberal prime ministers Gladstone and Rosebery could offer friendly advice, but the return of Britain’s Conservatives to power in June 1895 eventually left him continuously nervous about his role as the Crown’s representative in a self-governing nation. At the 1893 Dominion Day celebration in London, he firmly committed himself to political impartiality. As the Queen’s representative, that “vital connection between the trunk of a mighty tree and one of its most magnificent branches,” he agreed “he must hold himself aloof from anything approaching even an indication of any sort of political predilection.”203 That resolve did not last long. Upon disembarking in Quebec City, he dedicated himself to the “service of Canada” but the pledge now suggested an active role: “To vindicate, if required, the rights of the people and the ordinances and the Constitution, and lastly, to promote by all means in his power, without reference to class or creed, every movement and every institution calculated to forward the social, moral, and religious welfare of all the inhabitants of the Dominion.”204 When he spoke alternately in French and English in Montreal, a practice he would continue in the province, the die was further cast. He positioned himself, as the appreciative mayor and Conservative politician Alphonse Desjardins (1841–1912) noted, as a champion of “le grand et noble principe” of equality between French and English.205 French Canadians also readily approved of the Aberdeens’ commitment to Ireland.206 As a powerful Quebec newspaper nevertheless emphasized, as had the Irish nationalist press in the past, welcome to Britain’s representative was highly conditional: “quand le Canada français devint partie de l’empire Britannique, son peuple reçut une garantie de l’application de ce principe [of equality]; et que toujours depuis ce temps-là les Canadiens se sont montrés fermes dans leur loyauté et dans leur attachement à notre ancienne et glorieuse constitution.”207 Right from the beginning the new incumbent merited approval inasmuch as he positioned himself as a defender of French Canada’s constitutional rights. The Gordons were quickly charmed by Gaelic Quebec, in both its French and Scottish manifestations. The Catholic seigneurial class had far more appeal than dour Orangemen. They found it harder to favour the still frontierlike Ottawa or ambitious Protestant Toronto with its claim to Anglo-Canadian hegemony. As with much else, settling in was treated as an educational exercise,

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with the children and John studying French, although Ishbel’s needed little improvement. The two eldest sons soon headed back to English schools, only to return for relatively brief sojourns, but Marjorie and Archie stayed for tutoring by their parents and governesses. Both younger children were home-schooled in a mix of academic and practical knowledge – from the classics to making beds and family theatricals – that was the ideal of the progressive educators of the day. When the family moved to its Quebec fishing camp and BC ranches, the youngsters settled into a highly disciplined regime of recreation and edu­ cation that Ishbel prized, designed, and often taught. John often led instruction in horsemanship, skating, toboganning, and fishing, but he was also an enthusiastic advocate and performer of family plays.208 Lady Aberdeen immersed herself in Canadian history and the dances and music of her new land even as John confirmed masculinity in athletic pursuits. In other familiar patterns, Ishbel took charge of the Haddo House Club for Ottawa staff, an ecumenical chapel, elaborate entertainments for duelling factions in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, and extended official stays in Halifax and Victoria. As part of the continuing effort to salvage her wayward brothers, Archibald Marjoribanks became an honorary aide-de-camp to John. Only when ensconced in their Okanagan ranching or Gaspésie fishing retreats was a day likely to pass without public tasks. Even there, regular dispatches endeavoured to keep the couple up to date. Duties were divided in an arrangement typical of many marriages: John concentrated on public affairs, taking “things lightly” in terms of family finances and obligations, while Ishbel sometimes felt she would “fairly sink under the load” of managing houses, staff, and domestic life in general.209 While Canadian formalities were nowhere near as strict as in Ireland, they proved frequently irksome. As Ishbel reflected of one trip: “We live our days to the tune of ‘God Save the Queen,’ from the moment the train stops till it departs, and one sometimes wonders inwardly whether the moment will not arrive when instead of keeping up an inane smile, we will not seize someone and turn them round and shake them or do something desperate.”210 Such dreaded ornamentalism nevertheless served both to inspire the loyalists and intimidate the enemies of Empire. Like the earlier viceregal couple, the Marquess of Lorne and Princess Louise, the Aberdeens extended the dream of imperial fellowship to the Pacific coast where settlers indulged their hopes of grandeur in union with a Greater Britain.211 As with most matters regarding the Aberdeens, reception of their public efforts proved mixed. On the one hand, Conservatives saw hobnobbing with noisy crowds and trade unionists, not to mention informal relations within the Haddo House Club, as reducing viceregal dignity to a level indistinguishable from or worse than American populism. Critics on the left saw an entirely

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different liability. A British reporter suggested that the Aberdeens were in danger of seeming a “grotesque” transplant from Ireland, one which was “absurd, offensive, and wholly out of touch with the best Canadian ideals.” They were admonished to cast off “the imported ostentation, class distinctions, and general social tomfoolery which seems to be on the increase at the capital.”212 Assessments increasingly scrutinized the roles of wife and husband. Canada offered a broad stage for “a “new kind of viceregal woman,” committed to far more than familiar good works.213 The energy and interests of the countess made her almost a “Governess General” as John T. Saywell later dubbed her. Like Victoria’s consort Albert, Lady Aberdeen could not be overlooked when it came to considering politics.214 Yet, John himself proved no slouch. In negotiating the often conflicting agendas of the four prime ministers – Conservatives John Thompson (1892–94), Mackenzie Bowell (1894–96), and Charles Tupper (1896), and Liberal Wilfrid Laurier (1896–1911) – John has been described as “the most overworked governor in Canadian history.”215 He seemed often in constant negotiation and consultation with politicians of every stripe. Both Gordons proved far more than imperial ciphers when it came to serving their new land. Canadian Liberalism For all their initial protestations, Conservative prime ministers, and close friendship with John Thompson and his family, the Aberdeens decorated their Ottawa rooms with pictures of Gladstone and soon enough preferred the handsome, articulate Liberal leader Wilfrid Laurier who worked his charm on them as he did on the nation. Their Canadian sojourn offered plentiful opportunities to fly their preferred flag. Causes such as civil service reform and commutation of death sentences, in the case of the arguably insane Valentine Shortis, an Irish immigrant and murderer,216 were typically embraced. Progressive sympathies were also signalled when they softened the previously hard line they had taken in the Dilke and Parnell marital scandals. By publicly accepting Adeline Davis Foster (1844–1919), the innocent party in an earlier divorce, feminist, and wife of a senior Conservative minister, they challenged the ostracism demanded by Agnes Bernard Macdonald (1836–1920), widow of the former Conservative prime minister.217 In terms of Canada’s future, the politics of the Aberdeens was most visible in their embrace of a limited multiculturalism, which liberal Canadians came eventually to identify as central to a distinctive national identity. Much like D’Arcy McGee, the martyr to Fenianism, the Aberdeens imagined a collaborative future for Catholic and Protestant, and French and English and all the

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nationalities of Europe, or at least their northern manifestations. That dream would eventually evolve to include official bilingualism and multiculturalism, and, later still, the vision of three “founding” nations (Indigenous, French, and English), but that day was still distant. In the 1890s, the Aberdeens took for granted the superiority of white and, more particularly British governance as a sign of civilization. They personified a “cosmopolitanism,” which recast “older evangelical ideas” about common humanity to envision a “British imperial federation [that] might serve as a model for the world.”218 Within this, diverse communities considered capable of evolution could preserve culture and language. Less fortunate groups must, however, disappear. To Ireland’s former viceregal couple, Canada’s French-English Confederation compact demonstrated the potential of the British Empire. Here was more “home rule all round” for those groups presumed politically competent. The broad ecumenicalism and humanitarianism of friends like the Catholic convert John Thompson and the Protestant Henri Joly de Lotbinière, former Liberal premier of Quebec, captured for them the possibilities of Canada. Once again, as well, they readily thought in terms of stereotypes with the modern businessman de Lotbinière emerging as “very dearest & cheeriest of old French seigneurs.” They nevertheless accepted the modern message he had to deliver: “He says the Protestants have & always have had more than their share of office and influence … It is the Irish Orange business over again.”219 Not surprisingly, the Aberdeens regarded the outspoken Orange Order and the Protestant Protective Association as little more than a “religious and racial cancer.”220 Religious toleration remained a prominent part of their message. Just as they regularly spoke French, they courted Quebec’s Roman Catholic elite from bishops to nuns. Nor was Christianity the sole beneficiary of their ecumenicalism. In 1894, the Aberdeens publicly attended Passover Eve services as part of their determination to generate a broader sense of national solidarity.221 Whether Catholics or Protestants, Scots stood alongside the French as expressions of the preferred nation. The wearing of Highland dress by the earl and his sons right from the beginning underlined the Celtic connection between the old and new worlds. Of all the British, the Scots were the most often recognized and celebrated. While Lord Aberdeen observed that “when we celebrate our attachment to Scotland, it is not with any idea of disparaging other nationalities, which, hand in hand with us, we trust will continue to build up the prosperity of this great Dominion,” his very presence confirmed the centrality of the Scot to the Canadian story.222 As always, too, toleration of diversity had clear limits. For all their close relations with individual Americans, the Aberdeens feared their influence. The countess typically insisted that such newcomers discard all republican ideas

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upon arriving in a country where “freedom and liberty exist for all.” If not, they should “be dealt with ruthlessly,” by which she seemed to mean expulsion.223 From the viceregal point of view, the American Declaration of Independence’s embrace of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was far inferior to the British North America Act’s commitment to “peace, order, and good government.” Americans could, however, repent and join the superior Canadian experiment. Options were far more difficult for North America’s Indigenous nations. For the Aberdeens, Indians always remained on the margins. In numerous visits to industrial schools, reserves, and exhibits of Native crafts, as with the Regina Territorial Exhibition in 1895, the couple participated in a “planned and staged display of contrast between the ‘civilized’ and the ‘primitive,’ with the overall goal of showing how the hardy White pioneers had transformed the West.” Medals and prizes for Aboriginal men and women never challenged dispossession.224 Indians, like the Chinese, ultimately served merely as “picturesque” signifiers of other, less modern, worlds.225 Their patronage of E. Pauline Johnson, the Mohawk-English writer and performer, was friendly but did nothing to dispel the Aberdeens’ effective dismissal of Indigenous claims to consideration as equals. Both John and Ishbel interpreted the recurring Cabinet crises of 1893–96, centring formally on Conservative Party leadership and solutions for the Manitoba Schools Question, as a struggle over the heart and soul of the new nation. As in Britain, education supplied a political flashpoint. Would French Canadians retain their rights to Catholic institutions in the west or would these succumb to prejudice? Politics were far from clear-cut. Although the divided Conservative Party endeavoured to duck responsibility by referring Manitoba’s termination of language school rights to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, eventually it hoped to retain Quebec votes by disallowing the offending legislation. Laurier, leader of the long-standing provincial rights party, chose the “sunny way” in promising, in opposition to the Catholic bishops, to find a compromise with Manitoba. Thus, ironically, the Conservatives appeared to back diversity in the national interest and Liberals conformity to the provincial majority. Where exactly the future of a multicultural state, favoured by the Aberdeens, lay was far from clear. In face of a deeply divided political elite, the governor general became increasingly critical, first in supporting particular Conservative candidates for the prime ministership and then in encouraging religious and ethnic commu­ nities and the Manitoba government to moderate positions. Their antipathy for the bullish Tory Sir Charles Tupper (1821–1915), whom the Aberdeens suspected of corruption and philandering, kept an overwhelmed prime ­minister,

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Bowell, in office throughout 1895.226 Fearing religious war, both husband and wife intervened very directly in Canadian politics, including directing their friend, the independent Conservative MP Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona, to negotiate, ultimately unsuccessfully, with Manitoba.227 Not surprisingly, most Conservatives viewed the viceregal couple with intense suspicion. John Campbell Gordon’s refusal to approve their patronage appointments after Tupper’s electoral defeat raised questions then and subsequently about the constitutional role of the sovereign’s representative. His commitment to act as an evenhanded arbitrator in the public good was nevertheless confirmed when in 1896 Lord Aberdeen proved equally critical of a new Liberal administration’s purge of opponents in public employ. In fact, Aberdeen’s “last major public address” appealed “for civil service examinations, better pay for civil servants and judges, and a general curtailment of the spoils system.”228 Ishbel never stood apart from the political turmoil as her resistance to Tupper and preference for Laurier demonstrated. Like other consorts of Canada’s governors general, she supplied a highly visible manifestation of the close ties between the political and domestic. In the House of Commons, which her husband only visited to give the Throne Speech, Ishbel, like her predecessors, had “a chair” which “stood between the Speaker and the government benches.” Lady Aberdeen did not give speeches but she “chatted quietly to government and opposition members alike. Because of her strategic position in the House, she overheard a variety of secrets from the government benches.”229 Like the viceregal Lady Dufferin (1843–1936) in the 1870s, who had been termed her “husband’s discreet operative,” Ishbel imbibed lessons in Canadian politics which she passed to John, underscoring the familial nature of much imperial power.230 That essential authority was further suggested when she felt free in the case of the Manitoba crisis, to write to Rosebery, still Liberal leader but no longer prime minister as of the July 1895 election, asking him to come to Canada to mediate and forestall any threat of westerners seeking “annexation” to the United States rather than accepting remedial legislation.231 In Canada, as in Ireland, the Aberdeens determinedly set about to foster common purpose and a liberal nation. This inspired their official residence not only in Ottawa but elsewhere in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and British Columbia. They used the occasion of the annual Quebec Carnival to recognize “Her Majesty’s French-Canadian subjects,” whose loyalty is “undoubtedly a source of pride and satisfaction to Her Majesty as it assuredly is also to the British people as a whole.”232 In Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, they hosted balls with themes of national grandeur and common heroism that distracted “from all the painful & humiliating episodes of the present political situation.”233 As an admirer put it, the Aberdeens provided a “means of bringing together

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in kindly personal intercourse people of different races, creeds, and political views, cementing the ties of common citizenship, both of Canada and of the Empire.”234 The representations of nature and human relations in the dress balls employed gender and race as key political texts. The Toronto gala’s celebration of “One Queen, One Empire” asked “women to literally embody the natural resources of each specific dominion, while men would proudly act as their discoverers and exploiters.”235 In the invocation of Empire, white male colonizers, aided and abetted by inspirational and industrious women, who carried their own message of civilization, effectively displaced both Natives and nature. Such messages naturalized the survival of a nation threatened by the American claim of “manifest destiny.” Canada’s future lay with a reformed Empire, one in which, as Lord Aberdeen’s creation of the Canadian India Famine Relief Fund in 1897 recognized, ethical behaviour was paramount. Canadian Charity, Reform, and Feminism Just as in the United Kingdom, the Aberdeens employed good causes to build community sinews. Many initiatives were discreet. Private papers have left a trail of appeals, often answered with kind words and cold cash.236 John’s seemingly innocuous donation of the Aberdeen Cup to the Royal Canadian Golf Association, founded in 1895, provided a more public demonstration of fostering well-being and excellence. Such examples of responsible leadership was intended to inspire the Canadian elite, which the couple, and especially Ishbel, often found negligent and arrogant. Cooperation not individual charity was always their preferred solution. Unions were once again to be important in improving conditions. When Ishbel received a deputation from Toronto’s Women’s Protection Association asking her to consider the sweated trades, she concluded that the young country faced “just the same old set of circumstances as at home,” with women workers being treated equally badly by employers.237 She urged labour activists to organize women in Ottawa’s Government Printing Bureau, while John asked the federal government to reinstate striking postal workers.238 Leadership from those in power was equally endorsed. Ishbel’s creation of the Ottawa May Club aimed, once again, to direct the “vast power” of privileged women to the assistance “of other classes.”239 Rank required the exercise of duty in the public interest in Canada as in the old world. Great hopes rested, once again, with women. Before arriving in 1893, Ishbel had already glimpsed the Canadian women’s movement, notably, in Winnipeg and at the Chicago World’s Fair. The defeat of the 1885 federal franchise legislation

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had left the Dominion’s feminists hard-pressed.240 Many would have agreed with London’s Woman’s Journal that “the average Canadian woman is very conservative. It is a hard thing for her to loosen the old conventionalities, the old-time proprieties.”241 American feminists often echoed that appraisal. One Canadian at the Chicago meetings remembered that “a female shook her umbrella at me and bawled … ‘You Canadians are indifferent. You must be aroused. You must vote!’”242 She also admitted “the American woman’s mind is made up on lots of questions which we are just beginning to tackle.”243 Not surprisingly, many Canadian feminists viewed Ishbel as God-sent. For them, as for an Irish contemporary, “She had no understudy, nobody could take her place. The meetings were dull and dead without her. As soon as she arrived it was like the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. Everything that had been dead and duty came alive: the clock had struck, and all was life and energy.”244 They anticipated an ally in an aristocrat hailed as “among the most ardent advocates of Women’s Suffrage” in a list that included British feminists Mary Wollstonecraft, Lady Mary Montagu, Harriet Martineau, and Josephine ­Butler.245 Almost immediately upon arrival, Lady Aberdeen offered practical support to Canadian feminists already planning a northern expression of the international council movement. In October 1893, she became founding president of the National Council of Women of Canada in Toronto. Her acute sense of tactics was demonstrated by the appointment of Lady (Annie) Thompson (1845–1913), wife of the prime minister, and Madame (Zoe) Laurier (1841–1921), wife of the leader of the Opposition, as vice-presidents-at-large, and the wives of the lieutenant governors as honorary vice-presidents for their provinces.246 This powerful lineup signalled unprecedented respectability for organized women. The first nationally organized affiliates to the NCWC included the obviously praiseworthy and mainstream Aberdeen Association, the Women’s Art Association, the Girls’ Friendly Society, and the Dominion Order of King’s Daughters, but also the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association. Only the latter could raise eyebrows. Its adhesion nevertheless provided a crucial endorsement of a larger agenda. Despite considerable persuasion, Canada’s largest women’s society, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, remained aloof, fearful of compromising its commitment to Protestantism and to temperance.247 A year of recurring conflict over whether to introduce meetings with an audible recitation of the Lord’s Prayer revealed a fragile hold on ecumenicalism, further suggested by the proud boast of the Ontario vice-president that the NCWC brought “Catholic, Protestant, Jew and Gentile” together “in a practical Christianity.”248 Divisions were so feared that the early pamphlet, “Hints on How to Organize New Local Councils of Women,” concluded: “It is not wise to form a Local

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Council unless it seems possible to secure the adhesion of representatives of the different sections of the people of the district.”249 The carefully elaborated federal structure, modelled on the ICW, which permitted local and national affiliates near full-autonomy, provided prized safeguards for those who feared advanced feminism. Even then many Catholic bishops warned the faithful against the Council. A leading activist from London, Ontario, herself an early graduate of Queen’s College in London, England, summed up commonplace fears: “There were some amongst us who felt just a little bit afraid of what membership in it might entail. Should we become ‘emancipated’? … Would that curious conglomeration, ‘the new woman,’ be evolved among us? Should we hustle one another at the polls, and cry aloud for woman’s rights, with a good many other, ‘Should we’s’ which all met your speedy negative, almost with the first word which fell from your lips.”250 In the 1890s, the NCWC, for all its deliberate caution, scared many Canadians. The determinedly and strategically motherly Aberdeen proffered a familiar fourfold invitation. The first principle involved a claim for the value of women’s work. As she emphasized at an agricultural fair that awarded prizes to male farmers while ignoring farm women: “I think, the gentlemen here to-day would probably own that without the co-operation – the active co-operation – of their wives and daughters they would not have gained the success which they have been able to speak of to-day. (Loud applause.) Some people are afraid that the education and other advantages which women enjoy nowadays will prevent them from taking the same interest in the home as heretofore, but I think no fear need be felt, because if their education and progress are worthy of the name they will understand that it will be their chief glory to devote all their new advantages, their knowledge, education, and training more and more to the home.”251 Later, when opening a creamery, a business that represented the shift to male control in the dairy industry,252 she emphasized that the domestic arts, from tanning to milking, had been “essentially a part of woman’s work from the beginning, and she must keep it in her hands, although welcoming the co-operation of men. (Cheers).”253 Domestic servants represented only one more expression of respectable labour and their uniforms, like those of nurses, recognized skill and respectability.254 Lady Aberdeen’s continuing endorsement of better training and education for women both in schools and universities and in groups like the Canadian Handicrafts Guild similarly took for granted the importance of both paid and unpaid work for all classes of women.255 The NCWC itself was simply one more expression of the diverse forms of female labour. Ishbel insisted that non-partisanship made the NCWC a supremely suitable vehicle for women’s talents in a divided nation. Both non-political and ecumenical,

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it could transform “diversities” from a “weakness” into a “strength.”256 At the formation of the Montreal Local Council, in 1893, she pointed to the value of a safe place to consider and debate national interests. The NCWC offered occasions to learn from “what others are doing.” In place of jealousy and competition there would be “help and support.”257 This message resonated in a country seeking to consolidate power over an immense landscape where the population was both diverse and uncertain in allegiance and the politics fierce. The third justification fundamental to the NCWC centred on its extension of “woman’s first duty and mission” to home and family. Without the strength of an organized movement, women could not safeguard their households.258 Women needed to share knowledge of “the world, its thoughts, its activities, its temptations” in order to battle threats to their own hearths.259 Gathered in a non-partisan alliance of workers, the NCWC and its constituent bodies provided the most efficient way of mobilizing female domestic and intellectual influence for the greater good. In the process, members could become the “‘Foremothers’ of a great nation.”260 The NCWC’s final principle pledged its cooperation with men. The sex wars that many contemporaries associated with the New Woman were utterly repudiated. Council organizers were firmly told: “it is generally found desirable to invite some of the prominent men present to say a few words at some stage” and “it is most essential that men in the district should understand the object of the Council from the outset and be willing to cooperate with it.”261 Women were not to go alone into a better day. In face of intransigent opposition, male allies were all-important. This principle, like the others, committed the NCWC to a constant round of education and to advances that depended upon conversion of the initially reluctant or antagonistic in matters from the franchise to equality in employment. The aim, as with Ishbel’s efforts in the British Isles, was the legitimation of women’s public sphere where their merits as engaged citizens could be demonstrated. The studied caution of NCWC tactics would be a bitter or impossible pill for radical spirits more critical of the status quo. Like feminist critics of the Women’s Liberal Federations, they readily saw toadying to powerful conservative forces. In her work with the NCWC and elsewhere, Ishbel shared an evolving “transatlantic persuasion” of liberal ideas with many Canadians.262 Like Nova Scotia’s Eliza Ritchie (1856–1943), the first Canadian woman to earn a doctorate in philosophy and a leading pioneer of the NCWC, the Dominion’s liberal and progressive forces were readily familiar with prevailing social theories. Influenced by Henry Drummond and other liberal theologians, Dr Ritchie typically joined Lady Aberdeen in embracing female altruism as “the greatest force in most of the social movements of our day.”263 She, too, insisted upon

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the “intellectual clarity that enables us to recognize the value of points of view far removed from our own” and emphasized that “careful preliminary investigation, the patient waiting upon experience, an acceptance of the inevitable going slowly as the price of going surely, are necessary conditions of making real and permanent progress.”264 With women still denied basic human rights, such a maternalist ideology drawing on the latest religious and social thought made a powerful claim.265 Not surprisingly, Ritchie proved an earlier admirer of Aberdeen’s assertion of public space for responsible women citizens. As she traversed the Dominion proclaiming the newly formed Council as a practical symbol of the capacity of modern womanhood, Lady Aberdeen forced opponents to ponder how to reconcile their resistance to equality with loyalty to the Crown. Conversion did not come easy. As her confidante and secretary explained: “there were many difficulties to overcome in Canada, difficulties arising from the difference of race and religion between the British and French colonists. The Council took the initiative in women’s work, but it did not start any propaganda in which all women could not join. It was thought by many that there was no work in which all women could join, but the experience of the Canadian Council disproved that, because among its members were Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, and persons representing all shades of religious opinions.”266 Just as in Ireland, Catholic exclusion was a special worry. In recommending bringing “them along gently and not bewilder[ing] them,” Ishbel’s mentorship could seem patronizing. It also reflected anxiety about Protestant intolerance.267 She was “wild” when she discovered in Montreal “women like the Bishop’s wife and the Presbyterian minister’s wife not only not able to speak French but not able to understand it.”268 She had her allies check that Catholic affiliates to Toronto’s local council met “anything like cordiality.”269 Regional differences proved just as challenging for a would-be national federation. In trying to get an officer from Montreal, she wondered why Ontario members failed to see that all “officers should not be in Ontario.”270 Her public admiration for Catholic sisterhoods reflected her confidence in strategies of incrementalism and cooperation. Nothing less would counter prejudice. Only repeated promises of non-partisanship and maternalism in the context of the national or white settler project secured a significant membership among the ambitious middle class. Even so, the difficulties proved tremendous as the case of the Local Council of Women established in Vernon, a small town in the interior of British Columbia, demonstrated. While many men looked forward to community improvements, notably, in public health, their resistance to feminism regularly surfaced with suggestions that women avoid “cackling on platforms” and remain “at home attending to their domestic affairs.”271 Ultimately, many women declined even Ishbel’s blandishments, finding divisions between

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Protestants and Catholics and between rank-and-file and would-be upper-class members abiding obstacles and their own labours already sufficiently onerous. Ultimately, only relatively few Canadians readily had the energy, the time, or the inclination to contest power with male politicians. For all its growth spurt during the Aberdeens’ tenure of office, organized feminism remained a minority project. Yet, if many Canadians remained outside Lady Aberdeen’s activist community by inclination, critical groups were also, for the most part, left uninvited. Indigenous women, like those of Asian and African origin, ultimately remained largely objects of pity and occasional care. Poor and working-class Canadians similarly found few opportunities to partner. Canada’s “Parliament of Women” frequently proved only slightly better than its official male counterpart in incorporating diversity. That recognition would await another generation. Ultimately, the NCWC largely organized those women whose position obligated them, Aberdeen believed, to assume responsibility for leadership in making a better world. Others often appeared more beneficiaries than colleagues, or to use a familial metaphor that Ishbel would have liked, “young sisters” who needed their elders’ protection and guidance. The NCWC nevertheless assembled in many sites across a broad landscape significant numbers of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish women within the European population. This was an unprecedented achievement. Without the infusion of five years of Ishbel’s energy and cash, much less would have been achieved.272 Leading Canadian feminists understood their debt. Dr Augusta Stowe-Gullen (1857–1943), who brought the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association into affiliation with the NCWC in 1893, described how Ishbel’s “courage, energy and indomitable will” battled “narrowness and prejudice” even as her rank attracted additional recruits.273 Another firm middleclass suffragist, Dr Elizabeth Smith Shortt (1859–1949), hailed Ishbel’s patience in dealing with opponents, other “vivid souls, whose information fell far short of hers.”274 The adherence of the rare Canadian “suffragette,” Flora Macdonald Denison (1867–1921), similarly reflected trust and recognition that Ishbel heightened chances of victory.275 Champions had, however, a significant wait for the endorsement of suffrage. Despite demands for factory legislation, a higher age of consent, maternity services, public health and recreation initiatives, and much else, the vast majority of which required political action, the NCWC never led demands for the vote. Its middle-class power base in central Canada, so often far removed from suffragists associated with progressive farm and labour movements, remained frequently risk averse. For some members, it was sufficient that male friends and relations gave them access to the corridors of political power.276 Although the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association and many local suffrage

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societies affiliated, the NCWC itself did not endorse the franchise until 1910. Until then, it provided a debating forum with its successes occurring most often at the local level. As in the Women’s Liberal Federations, Lady Aberdeen and those in agreement with her awaited the growth of consensus. This depended upon Canadians of different religions, cultures, and regions developing the political will to embrace equality, always an uncertain trajectory. Council activists across the country nevertheless publicized legal disabilities, economic distress, and unmet need among the Dominion’s women and children, and they contributed significantly to mobilizing support for redress. The precedent-establishing campaign of Clara Brett Martin (1874–1923) for admission to the Ontario Bar as a solicitor and barrister was typically made immeasurably easier by the support of Lady Aberdeen and the NCWC.277 Ishbel was especially sensitive to the huge deficit in public health care and, just she as had in Scotland, championed a district nursing program. Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebrations in 1897–98 appeared to offer the patriotic moment and justify initial government support for the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON), an initiative closely associated with many Council activists. Ishbel had in her enthusiasm, however, miscalculated. A swathe of doctors saw only a threat to their income, particularly in maternity care, and authority. It took more than a year of careful politicking, including asking Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) for endorsement, to establish the VON.278 While rural and urban families soon proved beneficiaries of what is sometimes regarded as Lady Aberdeen’s greatest Canadian achievement, VON assistance in securing Canada’s claims to the Yukon Gold Fields, in 1898, transformed it quickly into a patriotic icon. In winning “her” nurses the right to accompany the Canadian Field Force, Lady Aberdeen scored a critical public relations coup. Over the course of a few weeks, the six nurses became the plucky female equivalents of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police and embedded their sex just as firmly as did the Aberdeens’ historic pageants in the national enterprise. And they, too, now in northern gold fields, combatted the American menace. In 1898, the Aberdeens elected to return home slightly early. Both, but especially perhaps John, had found Canadian politics exhausting, and in the context of the bigger imperial picture Ottawa’s conflicts had sometimes seemed like mere squabbles. The Aberdeens were nevertheless confident that they had been a force for good in the Dominion and that Wilfrid Laurier was a proper trustee of their hopes. They felt free to depart. In Britain, aging and ill relatives and floundering estates called increasingly for attention. Canada, like Ireland before it, had also proved an expensive exercise in imperial proconsulship and a return home was hoped to reduce expenses. They also trusted that the British Liberal Party was posed for recovery and they wanted to contribute.

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By the time they departed from Halifax, the public reputation of the Aberdeens was firmly cast as partisanly and sometimes eccentrically liberal. Canadian Tories’ boycott of many official functions matched earlier Unionist hostility to Home Rulers in Dublin Castle. Conservatives did not forgive the couple’s obvious preference for Laurier, a man whose Gallic masculinity and “sunny ways” were similarly seen as suspect by imperial diehards.279 The Aberdeens’ repeated insistence that French Canadians “must always remember that they belonged to the British Empire, and were entitled to share in its responsibilities as well as in its privileges,”280 unsettled proponents of anglophone dominance. These were not the only reservations. By the end of the Canadian sojourn, the Aberdeens lived more than ever in a swirl of rumours about unorthodox, namely far too democratic, relations with their staff 281 and “‘good-goody,’ ‘namby-pamby’” philanthropies.282 As one prominent opponent typically complained in 1895, “Lord Aberdeen is making the office of the Governor General very cheap. He presides at all kinds of meetings, and knocks about in such a democratic way that people will soon begin to think that the office is not so high or important.”283 In fact, John and Ishbel’s reputation for inappropriate behaviour and populism encouraged their successors, the Liberal-Unionist Earl (1845–1914) and Countess of Minto (1858–1940), to determine “to restore order and decorum to social life at Rideau Hall.”284 Enemies did little finally, however, to quench viceregal popularity. As one newspaper observed: “the people of Canada will remember gratefully the kindly presence, the unceasing effort to do good and to leave Canada in some substantial degree better for their relation to it, and the energetic directing to a higher standard, which will deeply mark Lord and Lady Aberdeen’s stay amongst us, and will make their high station perhaps difficult to fill without the risk of tempting odious comparisons.”285 In covering the farewell to a “saneminded and public-spirited” man, the liberal Toronto Globe applauded hopes for “social amelioration, for the modification and obliteration of racial and Creed differences, and for industrial progress and national unity in Canada.”286 Although no public opinion polls existed, approval appeared more common than complaint. For the Aberdeens, the Dominion’s far-flung provinces, religious diversity, and English-French divide promised opportunities for social inclusion and consensus building, just the future they wished for Ireland. In introducing themselves to every region, speaking French, sympathizing with the organization of domestic servants, seeking out Irish and Scots settlers, bringing different religious groups into conversation, imagining a common history, and bringing into being the NCWC and the VON, they embraced an unmistakable liberal humanitarianism. Despite the evident limits of their vision, notably, its disinterest in

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Aboriginal, African, and Asian Canadians as equal partners, it portended a more generous national existence than existed in 1893. That accomplishment was a “bounty” that royal representatives were uniquely equipped to deliver. Apparent success in their second viceregal foray at substituting for the British monarch kept Ishbel and John long-standing enthusiasts of the Dominion. As Lady Aberdeen insisted just a few years before her death, “I have been a Canadian for many years. I shall always be a Canadian.”287

Chapter Five

From Hope to Heartache, 1899–1915

In 1898, the Aberdeens looked forward to returning home. In 1915, they fled Britain for the United States. The intervening years occasioned great hope and ultimate despair. At the beginning, buoyed by Canada’s prospects as a homeruling, multicultural nation under Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and the success of the National Council of Women of Canada, Ishbel and John threw themselves again into the mobilization of Britain’s reform and Liberal forces. The London quinquennial meeting of the International Council of Women in 1899, Ishbel’s re-election as ICW president in 1904, and their reappointment to Ireland after the 1905 electoral victory of their friend Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman appeared to signal great prospects. A decade later, their lives were in disarray. That tumultuous story begins here with family life and then considers the Aberdeens’ engagement with liberal causes, with the International Council of Women, and, lastly, with the lord lieutenancy of Ireland. Family Matters The public commitments of the Aberdeens occurred amid considerable private turmoil. Intermittent bouts of depression continued to dog both husband and wife while family members brought pain as well as joy. Their daughter, Marjorie, remained particularly close to both parents. In a high-profile ceremony blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury,1 Marjorie married the two-decades older John Sinclair, later Lord Pentland, a long-time family friend and prominent Scottish Liberal, in 1904. Although resident in Madras where their father was British governor from 1912 to 1919, the Pentland daughter, Margaret Ishbel (1906–1976), and son, Henry John (1907–1984), provided their grandparents with considerable pleasure, as would their mother’s later efforts on behalf of both the ICW and the Liberal Party.

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The health of the Aberdeen heir, George or Doddie, however, remained worrying. He wished to marry, but the prejudices of the age suggested his offspring might inherit disability. After several unhappy romances, he wed the mother of a friend, Mary Florence Clixby (c. 1858–1937), in a quiet service in 1906 apparently missed by his parents. The May–December union appeared happy enough, but reaction from kin was clearly mixed. A graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, George went on to demonstrate capacity as a member of the London County Council (1910–25, 1931–34). As a widower, he remarried but produced no heir. His brother Dudley succeeded him to the title in 1965. The latter married Cécile Elizabeth Drummond (1878–1948), in a modest wedding in 1907. Their union produced five children, while Dudley distinguished himself as a military officer during the First World War and eventually became a successful engineer and businessman. The family’s high-spirited benjamin, Archibald Ian, was credited with considerable prospects as a modern history graduate of Oxford and promising young banker. Like Dudley, Archie did a tour of duty as an apprentice in the Aberdeen shipyards. His lingering, painful death as a result of a 1909 car accident, preceded by his involvement with the Souls, more particularly with the much older Ettie, Lady Desborough (1867–1952), and with Violet Asquith (1887–1969), the daughter of the prime minister (1908–16), to whom he became engaged immediately before he died, broke hearts.2 The deaths of Ishbel’s sister, the Conservative hostess Lady Ridley in 1899,3 of John’s mother, Mary in 1900,4 of their sister-in-law Fanny, Lady Tweedmouth in 1904, of Ishbel’s mother, Isabella in 1908, and of her brothers, the ne’er do-well Archibald in 1900 and the humbled Liberal politician Edward in 1909, provided other reminders of the brutal tides of time. While pets – the Aberdeens were hailed as in the “front ranks” of Britain’s “doggy people” – always offered major consolation,5 personal losses encouraged Ishbel’s growing interest in spiritualism.6 Like her protégé in such matters, the future Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874–1950), and many others, including many feminists, in her own generation, she found comfort in believing that those who had “crossed over” could still contact the living.7 That philosophy’s democratic emphasis on individual potential and leadership also confirmed that women were “uniquely spiritually gifted,” an obvious reassurance in light of the time’s pervasive misogyny.8 Like the reconciliation of religion and science that Henry Drummond had earlier endorsed, spiritualism promised “a new era, one in which humanity, with spirit guidance, would achieve hitherto impossible levels of development.”9 Seances reassured her that the future might indeed ultimately unfold as she wished. The passing of close kin further affirmed the intimacy of Ishbel and John. As the latter observed, “Well, we all know that a man who is blessed with the

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inestimable benefit of a good wife, but who does not know how to make use of that privilege, shows a large amount of the block-head in his constitution.”10 For her part, Ishbel thanked providence for a husband who supported her endeavours. In these years, their union won recognition as a conjugal ideal for the international women’s movement.11 They found additional satisfaction in the support of long-time family retainers and such distant kin as a woman whose successful begging letters included grateful thanks: “Dear Lord Aberdeen, you are quite different in a queer old fashioned Highland sort of way … you call us ‘cousins,’ and we think you are interested in our struggling history – and I do not think you are ashamed of us, and so we all love you dearly and are very proud of you.”12 Evidence of such personal regard may well have steadied them in face of political setbacks. Familiar Causes and “New Liberalism” Scholars differ as to whether British Liberals during these years were set on a path of inevitable decline or positioned for growth. What is known as “the inevitablist school found that the party was disintegrating before World War One, the conflict only accelerating the process,” while the so-called “accidentalists maintained that the disintegration set in during the war, promoted by wartime pressures, or as the result of political blunders perpetrated between 1914 and 1918.” That debate remains “inconclusive,” but both perspectives suggest the troubled waters surrounding the Aberdeens.13 Their trials remained those of a liberal-minded elite trying desperately to preserve the best of an older order and the authority of responsible chiefs while accommodating demands for justice and power coming from workers, feminists, and Irish nationalists and fending off the champions of totalitarianism and hidebound tradition. Once back from Canada, the Aberdeens resumed philanthropic efforts aimed at reknitting the ties of the upper classes and the masses, importuning the former to assume the duty of moral leadership and the latter to cooperate for social peace and betterment. The couple continued to see women as essential to solutions but once more counselled patience in awaiting the tide of progress. They also again placed themselves on the side of humane imperialism, notably, during the Second South African War (1899–1901), and committed themselves more than ever to “home rule all round” in international affairs. They remained part of a small group of aristocrats who embraced the “New Liberalism” that foresaw an activist state committed to community welfare under moral leaders. Unfortunately for that vision, Liberals remained deeply divided over the relations of capital and labour, women’s rights, imperialism, and Ireland.

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On his Scottish estates, John Campbell Gordon continued as a landlord motivated by a powerful sense of duty. Tenants benefited from familiar subsidization of health and education and could expect sympathy when crops failed or rents proved difficult to pay. In March 1914, Lord Aberdeen engaged in a typical correspondence with his estate manager. He rejected a suggested sixpence advance in salary for his farm labourers as insufficient and unlikely to “produce real contentment” and went on to cite “the experience of some of the best employers of labour on a large scale” who had found that “an apparent extra outlay” was ultimately “profitable” in its production of additional “heartiness on the part of the employees.” Neither he nor Ishbel would “be satisfied with anything less than a contented state of mind on the part of the employees.” Rejecting the arguments of his manager, he further endorsed the payment of the employer’s share under the 1911 National Insurance Act: I entirely adhere to my view that the idea of the Insurance contribution being unfair is not well founded. Thirteen millions of money have been paid out in Insurance, in cases of unemployment, sickness, etc., and I expect that none of the people who have received the benefits, consider that the Insurance Act is objectionable. I think also that a sense of patriotism and concern for the welfare of other people is involved. Thus, for instance, there are plenty of people who, from no fault of their own, are out of employment. Why should not those who have got employment be enabled to help their less fortunate fellow citizens.14

A few weeks later he firmly concluded the discussion about wages, arguing: the extra shilling should be granted. Of course this comes at an inconvenient time, but I have a feeling that hereafter if there is anything to regret, it will not be that the advance was granted … I think we may all feel that for many a year Haddo House has not been associated with anything that could be described as niggardly, and we must maintain that desirable reputation by all means.

He finished by quoting Scripture, “There is that scattereth and yet increaseth, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.”15 The same perspective had prompted John Campbell Gordon to lend his name to support for old age pensions in 1908.16 As the exchange over wages indicated, the Aberdeen landlordism persistently mixed the traditional and the up-to-date. The same spirit was evident when Lord Aberdeen thanked tenants for their support in 1915: “The relations between proprietors and tenants at Haddo combined with a sense of

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honour due to an ancient lineage, a sense of duty and regard to the friends and neighbours amongst whom their lot was cast, and with whom the old feudal relations had been replaced by a democratic comradeship. (Applause.)”17 Such determination to take the high road, further expressed in many private and unheralded acts of individual kindness, confirmed his reputation, as one local postman put it, for kindness, generosity, and “gentlemanly treatment” of those in need.18 Good works persisted in the midst of financial exigency. Extensive Irish commitments, rising costs, and the couple’s seeming inability to budget drove the estate into trusteeship during the First World War when their heir, George, took over management. While the Irish viceroyalty curbed English and Scottish commitments even as it drained his purse, John Gordon maintained his overall insistence on responsible leadership throughout the British Empire. As he explained to senior Liberal statesman and former Irish viceroy Lord Spencer (1835–1910),19 “really big people” ought to lead by example in demonstrating practical sympathy for the “difficulties” facing East Londoners struggling with health, housing, and employment.20 Beyond Haddo, he maintained familiar allegiances as co-president of the Mothers’ Union with its espousal of paternal duty,21 as honorary president of the Boys’ Brigade with its doctrine of “Christian manliness” and enthusiasm for plebicitary democracy,22 and as executive officer of the National Vigilance Association with its opposition to prostitution and insistence on purity for both sexes. The particular commitment of the gentle earl to responsible masculinity was confirmed by his endorsement of flogging for procurers even as he opposed it as suitable punishment for other offenders in military or civilian life.23 His preference in most circumstances for liberality and tolerance was similarly evident in his support for revising the coronation oath of Edward VII. Like that monarch, and many senior Liberals, Aberdeen wished to strip the pledge of all prejudicial reference to Roman Catholics, who should not be made to feel anything but full citizens.24 Similar sympathies for industrial workers encouraged his endorsement of the parliamentary ambitions of another “liberal moralist,” the progressive social historian John Lawrence Hammond (1872–1945).25 A popular journalist of the same persuasion, Justin McCarthy (1830–1912), went so far as to suggest that “not one of the Labor Members, as they are called, of the House of Commons – the chosen representatives of the working classes – could have shown a deeper and more constant sympathy with every measure and every movement which tends to improve the condition and expand the opportunities of those who have to make a living by actual toil.”26 After he left to take up the Irish viceroyalty, Lord Aberdeen found a ready substitute in his son-in-law and former aide-de-camp John Sinclair. That Toynbee

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Hall veteran became Scottish secretary under his mentor Henry CampbellBannerman.27 Always “the boy” to the barely older Aberdeens, Sinclair proved a similarly earnest proponent of children’s welfare, insisting that their “medical and social needs ‘over-rode any consideration of economic utility.’”28 As much as anyone in the new Cabinet after the 1905 election, he embodied the new liberalism of state intervention on the side of the weak. He was also a staunch proponent of legislation tailored to Scottish circumstances.29 His advocacy of the Scottish Education Act of 1908, which provided for improved teacher training and school facilities and meals for students, very much followed the spirit of Lord Aberdeen’s practices on his own estates. So, too, did Sinclair’s support for legislation to secure the land rights of Scottish crofters.30 The Aberdeens and their son-in-law sought to reinforce a partnership between northern Liberals and labour. In the 1880s, the withdrawal of Whig Unionists was a blow to the party, but Liberals continued to dominate Scottish politics, winning in 1905, after a setback in 1900, “not only of a majority of working-class electors, but of a significant percentage of the Scottish middle class, rural and urban.” Sympathies for temperance, small landholders, Church disestablishment, poor law reform, local government, minimum wage legislation, public education, and women suffrage helped maintain alliances.31 Influential groups such as the Young Scots, the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation, and new MPs such as Sinclair saw the future of liberalism as wedded to the support of organized labour. The Aberdeens were part of this camp. Such a perspective was pragmatic as well as principled. In the run-up to the election, Ishbel’s brother Lord Tweedmouth “dismissed as ‘humbug’ the notion” that a Liberal-Labour alliance meant class legislation; without it, however, Liberals could not win.32 After electoral victory, he and other Scots ministers “did not treat union representatives with the aristocratic indifference that had been usual with their Conservative predecessors.”33 Most embraced the 1909 Liberal budget, which “combined the traditional aims of anti-landlordism and temperance with the new theme of redistributive taxation to pay for social reforms like old age pensions.”34 As a result, some historians have concluded that northern Liberals were in good shape, and it was “Labour that was struggling to make the break-through before 1914.”35 Ishbel stood beside John in advocating an active role for governments in addressing national ills. The emphasis of the Women’s Industrial Council (WIC), of which she was sometimes president, on investigation of abusive labour practices and justification of protective legislation typified her preferred strategy: information and expertise would encourage unionization so that workers could bargain for their rights while convincing employers of fairer ways of doing business. In 1902, she typically joined other WIC leaders in “‘quiet and

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amicable negotiations’ with the Lipton [tea] Company to improve conditions for women workers.”36 Even as conciliation remained central to her vision of reformed class relations, she assigned governments a major role. In 1913, she characteristically defended Liberal social insurance legislation not only as obvious protection against economic uncertainty but as a major advance in the battle against tuberculosis, which devastated so many families.37 Liberal Suffragism And, once again, as well, Ishbel turned to women for energy and idealism. Her speeches regularly insisted that her sex’s “special mission [was] … to keep alive Liberalism.”38 Better than many men, women knew the costs of inadequate public services. Edinburgh’s The Scotsman remained as always sceptical, but concluded in 1901: “One thing is certain. The women cannot make a worse job of it than the men have done.”39 Ishbel stressed the influence and efforts of both Women’s Liberal Federations in spreading the activist gospel, but the ardent suffragist Lady Carlisle was president of the WLF for most of this period (1894–1902; 1906–15). The WLF’s endorsement of state intervention in matters from protective legislation and education to equality in pay and divorce made it a key part of the new liberalism.40 Although the National Liberal Federation adopted a prosuffrage policy in 1897, and the WLF agreed to withhold support from antisuffragist Liberals in 1902, the Parliamentary Party remained resistant. Claire Hirshfield has confirmed the mounting frustration and eventual disillusionment of many WLF members.41 Ishbel feared that suffrage militancy endangered Home Rule and cost male support. In a typical exchange just before the 1905 election, the personally friendly but always timid or uninterested (at least with regard to women’s rights) Campbell-Bannerman explained to her: Turning to public matters, I do not expect that a division will be reached tonight on the question of Women’s Enfranchisement. In any case I have made up my mind that it would be too much for me in my position to vote for so big a change, and thereby give rise to an expectation that if any change of government took place it would be on our programme. In such an event we should have too much on our hands as it is … I have indicated my growing favour for the policy: but there I must stop! I merely say this to you as you have been so very kind and helpful about it.42

Even after electoral victory, Campbell-Bannerman would not be drawn. He soon paid the penalty in harassment by suffrage militants. After one incident, he

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demonstrated how little he appreciated the principle at stake, writing to Ishbel that “no cause can be benefited by what is nothing more than a composition of vanity and bad manners.”43 The prime minister received Ishbel’s apology for suffragette discourtesy and, obsessively loyal, she later insisted that his premature death in 1908 combined with “the adoption by the militants of tactics subversive of law and order” and “personal attacks on the new Premier, Mr Asquith, destroyed our fair hopes of speedy triumph, and crystallised opposition behind a Prime Minister whom his followers would not allow to be personally insulted.”44 Other feminists, like Eva McLaren and Lady Carlisle, more accurately represented increasingly impatient women Liberals.45 The anti-suffragist Herbert Asquith continued the prevarication and betrayal of liberal principles even as especially recalcitrant Cabinet ministers attended anti-suffrage rallies. Some WLFers organized a Forward Suffrage Union to cooperate with militants, and by 1912 the WLF executive was driven to offer “its gratitude to the Labour Party for its consistent support.”46 In that year, Asquith’s Conciliation Bill with its limited provision for enfranchisement fell before a concert of progressive and anti-suffrage opponents. For the first, the bill did not go far enough and for the second any concession was intolerable. Even as the government’s Home Rule Bill ignored the issue, “the Irish National Convention, meeting in Dublin, refused to consider the inclusion of women’s suffrage in the measure.” In stark contrast, enfranchisement appeared in 1914 bills for Scottish and Welsh Home Rule, both of which went down to defeat.47 In face of such intransigence, many Liberal women deserted, providing, Martin Pugh has suggested, “a major reason for the party’s protracted decline during the post-war period.”48 In the years before the First World War, the suffrage initiative shifted from women Liberals to the militants of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) led by the Pankhursts, and the constitutionalists of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) captained by Millicent Garrett Fawcett. Deepening militancy in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland only confirmed mainstream liberalism’s loss of critical momentum. The WLFs, so long critical to the strength of their party, were increasingly a spent force. The Aberdeens, who compromised their suffrage principles to prioritize Home Rule and accommodate the Irish Parliamentary Party, contributed to this fall from grace. Liberal Imperialism In these years, the conflicts over Ireland suggested that imperialism frequently proved as divisive as suffrage for the Liberal Party. In Canada, the Aberdeens had gained confidence as imperialists who trusted in good will, conciliation,

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and responsible government. Hopes for a broad cooperative global commonwealth were inspirational but the so-called white dominions and the relations of European-origin communities within them remained their abiding preoccupation. Liberals in general found far more difficulty in developing a coherent common response to the imperialist and international conflicts, from China to Uganda, Cuba, and South Africa, which involved most of the major powers in the period. While all Liberals claimed to hate warfare, few were outright pacifists. The northeast of Scotland was especially heavy with anti-war Liberals, including both MPs for the City of Aberdeen.49 Finally, however, as one scholar has argued with regard to the Second Boer War, “the majority of Liberals solved the dilemma in pragmatic fashion, criticizing the diplomacy preceding the war and some of the methods by which it was fought, insisting on the need to be humane to an enemy with whom the British would have to live in the future, but nevertheless supporting the Government in its war efforts once the Boers had begun the fighting by invading Cape Colony.”50 Most concern focused on British brutality and the fate of the Boers. Black Africans were rarely of equal interest.51 The confrontation with the Boer Republics foregrounded the enfranchisement of British settlers, the relations of different European peoples, and the concentration camps that jeopardized London’s claim to superior civilization. Ultimately, Liberals, divided between those who supported a “fairer” war and those who demanded withdrawal, could rarely mobilize an effective opposition against more stalwart Conservatives. The Scottish Liberal Party entered the 1900 election “divided, defensive and largely leaderless”52 – and lost much of its long-standing support. Whitehall’s resort to military action in South Africa pushed the Aberdeens further onto the margins of the British elite. As Ishbel admitted in addressing the English Women’s Liberal Federation: “It is not easy for us to stand firm. We are called unpatriotic, unEnglish, proBoer.” Lady Aberdeen also invoked gendered scripts that would be her stock-in-trade when she defended the International Council of Women and, later, the League of Nations: “Liberal electors – men – are deserting by the thousand to the Tory camp, our women have stood to their principles.”53 While they knew that some women became jingoes, feminists of the Aberdeen persuasion joined many contemporaries in regarding men as more bellicose. This opinion was very much as well in keeping with popular views that the defence of the Empire was “in a fundamental sense, a test of the nation’s virility.”54 Faced with a divided party, the Aberdeens once more endeavoured to stake out the middle ground. On the one hand, as lord lieutenant of Aberdeenshire, John, alongside other Highland aristocrats, first responded to the call of the hereditary chief of the Fraser clan to raise a troop “from the ranks

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of Highland Stalkers and Ghillies, for service in South Africa, primarily for scouting attached to the Black Watch.”55 He also honoured his county’s volunteers by presenting daggers before their departure and medals upon their return.56 Like many other Scots, he may have initially been buoyed by the promise of “lucrative military contracts, jobs and higher wages” and reassured by the support of the Presbyterian churches and leaders such as Lord Rosebery.57 On the other hand, contrary sympathies soon surfaced. In early 1899, Lord Aberdeen chaired London meetings in support of the International Crusade of Peace, initiated by Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918) of Russia a year earlier.58 While publicly agreeing with Rosebery in affirming the need for “firm determination to support the carrying through of this war to the end. (Loud cheers),” he insisted that the conflict resulted from disastrous government policy and warned about the creation of “a second Ireland in South Africa. (Loud cheers).”59 Many Liberals shared mounting reservations. By December 1899, the new leader, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, came out against the war. In 1901, he “united moderates and radicals against the Imperialists, with his ‘methods of barbarism’ speech”60 and forced the resignation of Rosebery as president of the Scottish Liberal Federation. Campbell-Bannerman and party stalwarts such as Edward Marjoribanks and John Sinclair then refused to endorse Liberal imperialist candidates.61 John Campbell Gordon himself increasingly received appeals against Britain’s management of the war and requests to use his good name in “stem[ming] the tides of hatred & injustice to the Boers.”62 While his individual answers remain unknown, his public appeal for “Fair Play” during the 1900 election suggested his reservations.63 Female activists and suffragists were similarly far from convinced about the war. On the one hand, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Josephine Butler saw support for British intervention as an opportunity to assist oppressed native peoples and to demonstrate women’s fitness for the vote. Opponents, in contrast, “pointed to the British government’s hypocrisy in defending territorial and mineral claims in the name of franchise rights.”64 The Women’s Liberal Federations supplied some of the fiercest critics. Lady Carlisle led increasingly self-confident anti-war forces, who more than ever appreciated the liability of being voteless. In 1901, Lady Aberdeen typically linked the failure to address Ireland’s claim for “freedom and the right of self-government” to official South African policy, which she characterized as “the hunger for preeminence, for aggrandizement, for Empire at any price and at any cost.” She urged Liberals to “demand the application of the principle of self-government everywhere.”65 The enemy was “Patriotism” and the solution “self-government everywhere –

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in Ireland as well as Africa. Home Rule all round indeed must be their cry. (Applause).”66 Two years later, she pointed to wartime atrocities and “the reign of capitalists” in Africa as a sure sign of the desperate need for female voters.67 “Liberal principles” of “justice and liberty” were, she argued, essential to the progress of homeland and colonies. As part of the agenda of a “Christian State” they would “break down all exclusive privilege and … give to everyone the opportunity of leading true and healthy lives, with equal opportunities of citizenship.” “Glory” abroad mattered little if children lived in slums at home. Acknowledging the need for allies, she added that “Liberals could not stand without the Labour party, and they thought that the Labour party could not stand without them … the interests of Liberalism and labour were one and the same.”68 Ultimately, for all the division it provoked, the South African conflict served as a signal reminder of women’s lack of full citizenship. They could neither ensure that the war was waged as they might wish nor prevent the nation’s involvement. Ultimately, the conflict has been reckoned as “a significant turning point in the struggle for women’s parliamentary enfranchisement in Britain.”69 Ishbel remained nevertheless a cautious critic of the conflict. As representative of a belligerent country, she felt it necessary to resign as chair of the ICW’s Peace and Arbitration’s Standing Committee and in 1901 refused to run as an “anti-war” candidate for the presidency of the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation. Believing the officer should properly be non-partisan, she preferred nomination “from an Association which is not strongly anti-war.”70 Family loyalties continued to be influential, and her brother Edward, while sometimes very critical of the war nevertheless was capable of “strongly” defending “the British military record” before the rival Women’s National Liberal Association in 1902.71 No wonder Ishbel frequently concentrated on directing attention from immediate conflicts to long-term remedies, as when she endorsed “devolution” as a solution to future imperial conflicts.72 Ultimately, she optimistically believed that the Boers could be happily incorporated, much as Quebec had been earlier, by a policy of representative self-government.73 After the disastrous 1900 election, both Aberdeens focused on the foreign policy failures of the Conservative administration and distinguished between good and bad internationalism and imperialism. On the one hand, Ishbel condemned “the terrible cruelties and horrors they read day after day in the Balkans” and, effectively, the Balfour government’s support for Turkey.74 On the other, she foresaw greatness for an imperial policy devoted to self-government and democracy. For his part, John joined diverse advocates as an honorary vicepresident for the Balkans Committee of 1906, though that group likewise found little agreement on how to end conflict in that part of Europe.75 By the time

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they went to Ireland, the Aberdeens were having some difficulty in locating secure middle ground between advocates of military solutions and of peace. As with suffrage, they were outflanked on the left by dissidents within and without Liberalism. A contemporary nevertheless optimistically hailed them as successful “in the world of politics and diplomacy.” That admirer appeared to see no contradiction between her portrayal of the countess as committed to “the advancement and elevation of all women of all stations and all races” even while she foresaw mothers providing “for a strong, strenuous race of men to carry on our mighty Empire.”76 The Aberdeens could not escape reminders of imperialism’s underbelly. They already knew of the objections of John’s uncle, Arthur HamiltonGordon, to settlers’ treatment of Indigenous people in the Pacific and their networks supplied other such spurs to conscience. John Still, a godson working with British rubber planters in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), wrote frankly to Lord Aberdeen in Ireland. An amateur archaeologist, Still concluded: “Racial ill feeling is much more obvious here than it used to be, even among our weakbacked Sinhalese … [it is ] becoming apparent even to the densest & most self-righteous English … The Mahomedans like us … the educated Sinhalese mostly hate us. And the large community of Eurasians hate us almost to a man. Personally I find that those who hate us most are generally the best fellows. The rest are weak. It is a subject that interests me immensely, & someday when you are less busy I should like to write more on it to get your opinion.”77 The following year, he described his efforts in gaining “the respect & in trying to gain the affection of the people whose interests seem officially opposed to one’s own.” Like Aberdeen, Still emphasized the value of humane leadership: “the dominant feeling among these people, & probably in India too, is not a great desire for power, but a longing for consideration. English people are not as a rule happy in their manners towards natives. I don’t think any legislation would be really unpopular if enforced by the right men. The peasantry looks upon the law as we look upon the weather as a thing to be abused but not resisted. It is only bad manners which rouse resistance.”78 Like his viceregal godfather, this young man believed that Britain at its best offered excellence in both courtesy and governance. The dilemma for such idealists was that the bearers of Empire regularly failed to live up to professed standards, whether in South Africa or Ceylon, and in any case the recipients of brutality or beneficence normally preferred to rule themselves. The “commonwealth of nations” foreseen by Lord Rosebery conjured up a powerful image of apparent equality and justice that was regularly betrayed in practice. Like other liberal imperialists, the Aberdeens never, however, readily surrendered their faith in incremental improvement and best behaviour.

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International Council of Women Many of the same problems of “progressive” imperial rule were evident in the evolution of the International Council of Women. The first Congress since Chicago in 1893 occurred in London in 1899. It had been delayed a year because the official host, Britain’s National Union of Working Women (NUWW), which after considerable acrimony became the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland (NCWGBI), proved reluctant to concede any power of setting the agenda. Despite the intention of ICW founders, this British federation held little appeal for more progressive women. They already had obvious alternatives in the Women’s Liberal Federations, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the Women’s Social and Political Union, and labour and socialist parties. In many other nations, where the NCWs often stood more clearly on the progressive side of the spectrum, that range of choice was less available and Council attractions were correspondingly greater. Ishbel’s prominence as an NUWW founder did not stop the influential executive officer Louise Creighton (1850–1936), wife of the Anglican bishop of London, fearing “wild and incoherent talk” and attempting to veto “‘Marriage, Divorce, and all the New Woman ideas’” at the London Congress.79 Britain’s ardent franchise campaigners were equally determined: many wanted to deny any platform to opponents.80 Ultimately, rivals were forced to listen to one another. For all “its conservatism and the emphasis that was placed on homogeneity,” the NCWGBI was, at least intermittently, unrivalled in providing an unusual and highly desirable site “within which British feminists could work to establish international networks.”81 Britain’s internecine conflicts had their match elsewhere.82 The result kept the ICW a hotbed of conflicting opinions. Divisions reinforced Lady Aberdeen’s preference for conciliation and patience. At least publicly, she insisted on good outcomes, predicting that the “truest and the best are generally strengthened” by “opportunity of hearing rival views and theories, impartially stated on both sides” and that “the causes, therefore, based on justice and right are bound to win.”83 In that spirit, she hoped to pass on the presidency in 1899 to either a German or a Finnish aristocrat whom she believed more likely to gain broad acceptance in sceptical circles.84 While that plan went nowhere, the London meetings, with the appearance of new councils from Denmark, Holland, New South Wales, and Tasmania, proved a crucial advance in global organizing. As Leila Rupp has argued, structures began to solidify and “substantial issues” came forward with the creation of two International Standing Committees, one on the legal position of married women and the other on peace and arbitration. Ishbel initially agreed to chair and the future Nobel Peace laureate,

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Baroness Bertha Von Suttner of Austria (1843–1914), to serve as secretary for the latter committee.85 This initiative, like the ICW’s good wishes to the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, was endorsed because peace was fondly believed no longer controversial. Greek women’s immediate rejection of such a mandate so long as the Turks “subjugated [their] brothers, women and children”86 and the reservations of the Swedish NCW, then contemplating Norway’s departure from the union of the two nations, soon proved the frailty of that hope. In fact, Aberdeen herself soon resigned on the grounds of the Anglo-Boer conflict, and the committee tottered along without a chair until 1904. As the first international women’s group to adopt peace and arbitration as policy, the ICW had ventured into territory where women, like men, passionately disagreed. The structure of the ICW allowed reports both from existing councils and from vice-presidents or “representative” women from prospective national members. In 1899, the latter included Finland, Belgium, Italy, Russia, France, Norway, India, South Africa, the Argentine, Palestine, China, and Persia (Iran).87 While relations often seemed condescending, there were hints of other possibilities. Even as she appeared to patronize “our charming little Chinese representative, Madame Shen,” who had been selected by the Chinese ambassador to England, Ishbel acknowledged both a “keen, interested face” and a determination “to correct our erroneous ideas about Chinese women being nonentities.”88 Such “talking back” to empire had, however, to contend with the continuing ethnocentrism that plagued relations within the organization. Diverse representation remained a recurring shortcoming with women of European origin regularly seconded to speak on behalf of their soi-disant sisters. The failure occurred at many levels. Individual councils rarely represented their own national diversity. Ishbel’s beloved Canadian Council regularly faltered. As its active honorary president, she had typically to insist on the importance of “a French Canadian delegate” to ICW meetings or, if that were not possible, then someone “from the Maritime Provinces or the far West so as to be as representative as possible.”89 At the 1899 London meetings, despite careful preparation, suffrage provided a battleground. In order to control dissension, no resolutions were permitted and delegates were encouraged to listen politely to all perspectives so that, as Aberdeen explained, “people [could] draw their own conclusion.”90 While she indicated her own enthusiasm for feminist pioneers such as Susan B. Anthony,91 she expected audiences to accept “the solitary instance of a Mrs Moore from Massachusetts,” who spoke as a “member of an anti-franchise society.” Majority opinion was better demonstrated by the heavily attended event organized by Britain’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies at which Anthony spoke and Aberdeen applauded.92

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Despite the reassuring message intended by delegates meeting with Queen Victoria, Ishbel had to defend the gathering. In response to the denunciation of a “new Tower of Babel” by London’s Westminster Gazette, she emphasized adherence to the “golden rule” and invited men to join in “a movement which aims at breaking down prejudice and promoting mutual understanding and more enlightened charity between adherents of different faiths, races, and parties, and of providing a centre around which women of all countries may rally for united effort for those whose causes which appeal to all humanity.”93 To secure respectability, Lady Aberdeen could be brutal. She forced suffragist Dora Montefiore (1851–1933) “to retire from her position as recording secretary” when she was suspected of a liaison with a married man.94 Such conservatism and timidity divided observers. Many committed suffragists would go on to establish a separate international organization to promote the vote. In London, one New Zealander dubbed Ishbel no more than a “luke-warm” suffragist showing “the taint of moderation.”95 Another critic, from quite another position, dismissed the London gathering as offering “vague disappointment and discomfort,” and asked, “Why should the labor of this world be divided into woman’s work as antagonistic to men’s work?” She beheld “only a feminine free-masonry” when women ought be speaking “for downtrodden humanity or neglected justice.”96 The still anti-suffragist (she would recant in 1906) social investigator Beatrice Webb (1858–1943) was equally damning. Appointed as representative of New Zealand by the ICW on account of her recent visit to that land, Webb described “stormy and unbusinesslike” meetings patronized by “duchesses and countesses.”97 Other experienced campaigners, in contrast, accepted turbulence and elite participation as part of the continued need for an incremental, essentially educational, approach to consciousness-raising, which allowed for a range of opinion and the prospect of partnerships. Britain’s long-time crusader against the Contagious Diseases Acts, Josephine Butler, endorsed everyone’s right to speak but also expected “a good Abolitionist representative too” to make the case in London.98 The stalwart Anthony sided strongly with the ICW, suggesting “we have already taken the outer trenches of the world’s thought.”99 Despite reservations about social “slurs, the patronizing of ‘budding celebrities,’ and the arrogance towards the timid and more plainly dressed,” American radical feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was also largely positive. In particular, she recognized Lady Aberdeen as one of “the most impressive women at the convention,” an “able woman, an advanced woman, a woman capable of planning and executing large measures of public good.”100 In 1899, the ardent suffragist, president of the National Council of Women of the United States, and long-time ICW activist May Wright Sewall became

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president. An American delegate remembered Sewall as “formidable” and a “logical successor” but admitted that her victory occurred only after a “closeddoor session” and “competitive and aggressive” wrangling.101 Ishbel’s talent for conciliation nevertheless remained unmatched and her capacity for hard work made her indispensable. It was the countess who oversaw the collecting of submissions for and the editing of the six volumes of reports from the London meetings. These remain a major testimony to a breadth of debate and interest – from equal pay for equal work and state maternity assistance to trade unions and domestic machinery and training. They also introduced an international lineup of both volunteers and professionals, many of whom were global experts on major political, economic, and social issues. While most contributors were mainstream in terms of class and race, their collective appearance in a prominent public forum was unprecedented and deeply inspiring for many observers and participants. Making a favourable comparison between the London meetings and other gatherings, Lady Aberdeen stressed: “the strength and cosmopolitan character of this Congress … it is no local display, no Hyde Park demonstration, no hasty pudding of feminine fads and fancies, so to speak; but a long planned and carefully elected parliament of women workers, intent on doing good and ready to be challenged and catechised.” The ICW offered a significant step forward in the long history of a “few brave-hearted, large-minded women, working here and there in loneliness to carry out ideals which were deemed but madness by those around them.” Now, at last, there was a “formidable array of women’s organizations doing noble service on every hand.”102 The unprecedented assembly of “all sections of workers, from all classes, from all creeds and churches, from organizations holding different, even opposing views, but all pledged to do something, according to their own lights, towards furthering ‘the application of the Golden Rule to society, custom, and law’” testified to human progress.103 Ishbel cited the Canadian Council as proof that ICW internationalism could also nurture national unity. Each Council would “work for the good of their own country first, and then for our common humanity.”104 What went unmentioned was any effective mechanism for dealing with conflict, just the dilemma that has plagued many other global initiatives. The accession of Wright Sewall returned the ICW to its American origins and provided another energetic leader. Although more outspoken, notably, in suffrage matters, than her predecessor, Sewall proceeded warily in face of suspicion about ICW radicalism. In 1900, she supported a campaign of sympathy for Queen Margherita (1851–1926) of Italy, whose husband had been assassinated by an anarchist, in order to demonstrate that “the women of advanced thought who are working for the promotion of human liberty and for the augmentation

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of women’s influence are a conservative and not a destructive force.”105 The same spirit inspired the ICW’s growing emphasis on the gathering and sharing of data, just the consciousness-raising strategy adopted by Britain’s Women’s Industrial Council. By 1904, “bureaus of information” created by councils in Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, and Holland and participation in international fairs, including Paris’s 1900 Exposition Universelle, Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exhibition, “where the first Latin American contacts were established,” and St Louis’s 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition chronicled the breadth of female accomplishment and the justification for full human rights.106 Such showcasing of talent helped produce a further eleven councils (Italy, New Zealand, Argentina, France, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium, Greece, Finland, and South Africa) before the First World War. Not everyone was satisfied. The creation of the decidedly political International Women’s Suffrage Alliance at the 1904 gathering in Berlin demonstrated that the founders’ policy of slow accretion was wearing thin. Those meetings saw a radical German male writer denounce delegates for offering “‘strawberries and cream’” to anti-suffrage politicians and demand the boycott of recalcitrant administrations. The public answer to his unexpected interruption in the proceedings turned the other cheek but was unlikely to satisfy impatient suffragists: “advocates of women’s rights hoped to have an opportunity to meet their direct enemies socially and explain their views.”107 More to the point, seven NCWs successfully moved a resolution endorsing franchise campaigns and the creation of a Standing Committee on Women’s Suffrage. Sewall credited the IWSA’s stimulus for this result.108 Berlin offered evidence of other differences as well. Margaret Bondfield (1873–1953), an English working-class trade unionist, and future Labour Party Cabinet minister, who reported on factories and workshops at the assembly, “felt strongly that it was no place for us.” Amid the “luxury” which “exceeded anything we had ever seen: orchids by the hundred for table decoration, sprays for each guest, many courses, and six glasses for wine, etc., beside each plate,” she “could discover only a few delegates who had practical experience of industrial working conditions.”109 Although contact never disappeared, socialist women had largely concluded that the ICW was irredeemably bourgeois.110 The Berlin Congress also provided an occasion for members to consider how to reconcile nationalisms with internationalism. The Council for Austria, in effect the Habsburg Empire, confronted demands for representation of its national minorities. Conflicts over whether others, beyond Hungary, Austria’s imperial partner, would be admitted to the ICW “foreshadowed the challenge that the ‘colonial question,’ and more generally the problem of territorial (re-) configuration in non-European contexts, was to pose to women’s international

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organizations in later decades.”111 The demands of Austria’s “subordinated nations”112 offered an obvious parallel to the issues of representation and citizenship encountered in Ireland and French Canada. Another challenge for the ICW, as for the League of Nations in the future, was the multiple representation of the British Empire, particularly before the confederation of the Australian colonies. Lady Aberdeen managed to persuade the latter, however, to amalgamate as a single council on the Canadian model. In response to such issues, the 1904 quinquennial created a Committee on Races and Nationalities. When asked to define “nation” for the purposes of representation, it failed, however, to resolve differences. Despite the Norwegian Council’s warning that “the Golden Rule would be better observed by frankness and mutual understanding than by shirking discussion on some points,”113 the ICW finally refused to debate imperial and national hierarchies. When some ICW leaders, marshalled around Aberdeen, tried to make constitutional provision for the affiliation of international women’s groups, including the new International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, as a means of heightening global sympathies and securing ICW leadership, they were overridden. The majority of members preferred the spotlight to remain on existing nation-states and empires. The rousing peace message from Bertha von Suttner advising women to take up new roles and reject war toys and military cadets, which Aberdeen hailed as “quite simply a triumph,” had to suffice in its promise of global cooperation.114 Ultimately, in face of disagreement, the ICW retreated to Aberdeen’s old argument that it must focus on “what united the women workers of the world.”115 Greater decisiveness promised shipwreck. The 1904 meeting returned Aberdeen to the helm of the ICW. Two years later, the Irish viceroyalty curbed her efforts but the new corresponding secretary, also from Aberdeenshire, Maria Ogilvie Gordon (1864–1939), a gold medalist from London University, holder of a doctorate from Munich, and later president of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland, appeared to supply complementary energy and talent.116 The enthusiasms of Ishbel for public health, educational opportunity, and peace and arbitration always remained influential in prioritizing action. Aberdeen’s commitment, and that of her husband, to social purity also explained her representation of the ICW at the 1904 Paris Conference on the White Slave Traffic. That occasion provided an excuse for the British press to contrast her ladylike demeanour with that of suffrage militants who increasingly troubled the public conscience: At the very time when, in London, blind leaders of the blind were trying to open a way for women into the British Parliament, not by reason but by force, and were thus furnishing stronger reasons against woman suffrage than any enemy

180  Liberal Hearts and Coronets ever devised, Lady Aberdeen and true women of the Continent quietly entered a World Parliament and discussed the most fundamental of all questions of government, with tenderness but no tears, with delicacy but no prudery, with the passion of purity but no hysterics, so furnishing, without any special appeal for suffrage, the best of proof that women can participate effectively in the very highest acts of government – those that are diplomatic and international … as the debates got down to the real problem the compliments were dropped, and the women rose as often as the men with as firm appeal to the President for the floor – “Je demande la parole”… In the weight of argument they furnished more than their share.117

In the same pattern of polite, albeit firm, politics, which suggested that ladies were speaking to gentlemen, the ICW under Ishbel’s leadership addressed the Second Hague Peace Conference and joined the Bureau of International Associations in 1907. A year later, Geneva, Switzerland, provided the site for another major ICW reunion. This was extensively covered by American feminist journalist Ida Husted Harper (1851–1931), who celebrated the “solidarity of women’s interests throughout the world.”118 The welcome of “Queens, Empresses, Presidents, and Governments” and the telegraphing of “its proceedings” by the “press of all countries” signalled the unprecedented importance of a women’s gathering.119 Harper emphasized that Turkish and Russian women, finding themselves oppressed by their governments, could look to Geneva for the “warmest sympathy and friendliness.” She similarly congratulated the executive for earlier meetings on the Indian subcontinent “attended by the most prominent of English and Indian women – the families of high officials, bishops, merchants, etc.”120 The Council promised to offer that part of the British Empire desperately needed common ground against the divisions of race and religion. Harper also approved of the visit of ICW treasurer Sophia Vaux Sanford (1848–1938) of Hamilton, Ontario, Ishbel’s long-time friend, to Japan where “members of the Royal Family and other ladies of influence” expressed interest but also cautioned about so “forward a movement.”121 The American was far harsher about Switzerland, which offered many examples of “deep injustice” to women.122 In stark contrast, the sorority of the ICW was applauded as the “most conspicuous example of democracy among women, who are apt to be rigid in maintaining the divisions of caste.”123 Its overall success was firmly credited “to the tact, courtesy and sweetness of Lady Aberdeen.”124 In 1909, the quinquennial returned the International Council of Women to North America, this time, Toronto, Canada, where the NCWC had been heavily lobbied by Ishbel to assume hosting duties. That Council continued to be a source of emotional support and tactical strength, with regular Canadian proxies

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underpinning Aberdeen’s preferences. In Toronto, the creation of Standing Committees on Education, Emigration and Immigration, and Public Health, the latter for which Ishbel became the first convenor, reflected the mainstream interests of most members, and lectures and events were heavily attended. Popular and press enthusiasm was capped by a transnational railway excursion for delegates who could afford the demonstration of Canadian and imperial grandeur.125 The Toronto meetings also saw the first withdrawal. The New Zealand Council had faltered badly after national enfranchisement in 1893, felled, a scholar has recently argued, by fears that it constituted “a threat to family life and, ultimately, to social order and security.”126 While it would rejoin in 1920, its disappearance highlighted the question of the future of women’s organizations once the vote had been won. In 1909, Britain’s increasing suffragette militancy made support for enfranchisement all the more controversial. Conflict saw the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland adhering all the more desperately to neutrality with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage both in affiliation. Such was sometimes the case among other European councils, but the ICW was slowly moving in the other direction. In Toronto, the American suffragist, physician, and Methodist minister Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919) directed a packed suffrage session. Initially far from optimistic, she judged Canadians suspicious and concluded that she had been “asked to preside” over a session “on the artless and obvious theory that I would thus be kept too busy to say much.” Aberdeen initially refused to speak. Thus, Shaw was exhilarated when the countess, accompanied by her aides in their brilliant uniforms, entered the hall … in her usual charming and gracious manner, took a seat beside me on the platform, and showed a deep interest … she was growing more and more enthusiastic … I quietly asked her if she did not wish to say a few words. She said she would say a very few … by this time she was so enthusiastic that, to my great delight, she used up my twenty minutes in a capital speech in which she came out vigorously for woman suffrage. It gave us the best and timeliest help we could have had, and was a great impetus to the movement.127

Before an “audience of women from every part of the world,” Lady Aberdeen could not “keep silent.”128 The logic of her long-time caution was nevertheless made abundantly clear when Canada’s Council waited another year to endorse suffrage. The interval before the 1914 Congress in Rome further boosted the Council family, including the first on the continent of Africa, in South Africa, established

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by British, not Boer or Black, women. The change in the name of the ICW “white slavery committee” to “traffic in women” in the same years nevertheless required some decentring of those of European origins. They remained, however, very much at the helm. In 1913, the French Council, despite its nation’s painful failure to enact suffrage, was sufficiently confident to organize a Congress on Women’s Rights. In Paris, a “delegate from Bombay,” understood to speak on behalf of the women of both India and Persia, signalled the ICW’s complicated relationship to the non-European world. She urged Western members to “take us by the hand, give us your understanding, your ideas and your energies” and “help us to work for the progress, liberation and the future.”129 Such pleas fed the presumption of European superiority. Tsarist Russia’s refusal to permit the establishment of a national council further underpinned the need for the women of more “advanced” nations to help the less fortunate. The ICW also wrestled with its own demons. Although details remain unclear, some members resisted Aberdeen’s continued presidency. At the centre seemingly was May Wright Sewall who circulated a pamphlet, “The Genesis of the International Council of Women,” in Rome. Her intent was, it was suggested, “to bring about the removal of the Countess from the Presidency of the organization, to which post the council plans to re-elect her.” As Sewall argued, it was time for leadership from another nation. Although she did not suggest an American alternative, she warned: “twenty years under Lady Aberdeen has gradually transformed the international Council into a purely English organization.”130 Perhaps in deference to such opponents, Aberdeen publicly claimed to wish to stand aside, but finally she alone had the votes.131 What was also clear was that no one else matched her resources or commitment. The Rome Congress appeared highly successful with well-attended meetings and high-profile representation from Europe’s aristocratic elite. In May 1914, the ICW’s heavily educational mandate in matters from child welfare and rural development to peace, equal pay, and public health managed to seem both significant and yet not too intimidating. The moment did not last. The guns of August ended an era of internationalism presided over by “ladies” as a matter of right. Aberdeen’s faith that the well-born and the well-to-do would meet their obligations to others seemed more and more out of step with the times. For next six years, the ICW barely hung on. During the conflict, it endeavoured, with great difficulty, to stay above the fray and direct attention to postwar planning and reconciliation. Its claim of uncertain middle ground, overseen by Ishbel, frequently aggravated pacifists and belligerents alike. Many European councils effectively disappeared. In 1915, the creation of the far more radical Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in The Hague brought forward another generation of far less patient activists.

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The ICW nevertheless survived, a testimony to commonplace preference for conciliation and fears of “advanced” thinking on the “woman question” but also to Ishbel’s friendships and dedication. While the meeting with Queen Victoria at the 1899 quinquennial, like other efforts to win over European, Indian, and Japanese elites, suggested truckling to authority,132 connections pursued under both Aberdeen and Sewall’s tenure captured strategic space. Many seasoned campaigners appreciated the ICW. Its Finnish treasurer, Alexandra van Gripenberg (1859–1913), known as a “moderate” in her own country, was far from alone in pointing to benefits: “There is so much to learn in England for women of other countries.”133 When faced with tsarist repression, Russian feminists eagerly sought Lady Aberdeen’s support and treasured ICW ties for their promise of a better day.134 As a recent assessment of the Belgium National Council of Women, affiliated in 1906, has suggested, “foreign influences,” such as supplied by the ICW, “were often one of the engines that fuelled the birth and the development of national women’s movements.”135 Ishbel’s energy, rank, and personality help explain her repeated re-election even as her liberal imperialism supplied a creed broad and helpful enough to offer solace to many women living in more patriarchal states.136 The ICW promised a global sisterhood that was often superior to what was available elsewhere, even for the elites of the world. The Irish Viceroyalty The legislative union of 1800 of Ireland and England never delivered on its promise of partnership. As the Great Famine and the land wars had demonstrated, a new arrangement was long overdue. Canada was the model for the Aberdeens. There, as elsewhere, the couple had been keen proponents of the Crown’s duty of service to those of every station. Aided by moral leaders, representative and responsible government would secure harmony. In Canada, this meant the reconciliation of French and English, Catholic and Protestant, warring classes, and women and men. Ireland needed to do much the same in moving towards Home Rule and a separate legislature. John and Ishbel were not alone in their vision of a “‘union of hearts’” in the British Isles.137 Other Liberal imperialists such as Lord Grey (1851–1917), governor general of Canada from 1904 to 1911, made the same connection, as indeed did that overseas Dominion itself, which passed resolutions favouring Home Rule.138 In effect, Ireland constituted a major test for the imperial federation movement endorsed by the Aberdeens, many members of the Irish Party, and prominent Canadians such as George Parkin (1846–1922), the first secretary of the Rhodes Trust. Other “white” colonies – Canada, New Zealand,

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and Australia – won representative and responsible government far earlier and with far less pain. The Emerald Isle, however, constituted a special challenge because the Irish were too often treated more as subject peoples than fellow citizens. Most Home Rulers nevertheless trusted in the promise of Empire in which all would share. While republican nationalists provided a brigade to join the Boers against the British in 1899, the constitutionalists in the Irish Parliamentary Party praised the far greater number of their compatriots found on the side of the Empire.139 Representative government should reward such loyalty. Ultimately, however, the “nearest the British came to effectively binding Irish national ambitions to the Empire was through the medium of Home Rule.”140 Campbell-Bannerman’s and Asquith’s governments had to deliver on that promise. While the International Council of Women became increasingly important for Ishbel and indeed for both Aberdeens in these years, Irish Home Rule remained at the heart of their politics. In December 1905, a second viceroyalty was their reward. The choice of John Campbell Gordon, a man renowned for his mildness and tolerance, surely signalled faith in a peaceful conclusion to the always simmering Irish question in British politics. As it turned out, widespread intransigence, combined with disagreements within the Liberal Party itself, regulary conspired against federal solutions.141 Ultimately, neither John nor his activist wife could change that brutal reality. The Gordons, especially Ishbel, had visited regularly in the interval since their previous posting, but Ireland was changing rapidly. Irish women of all backgrounds were increasingly active contestants in the public sphere. As members of groups such as the Gaelic League (founded in 1893), Sinn Féin (Gaelic for “We Ourselves”; founded in 1905), and the United Irishwomen (founded in 1910), they were becoming veteran campaigners for just the type of rural and urban reforms that attracted the Aberdeens.142 In comparison, the latter’s contributions to progress no longer seemed so significant. At the same time, the slow pace of imperial democratization deepened divisions and left less room for moderates. Just as suffragettes increasingly seized the spotlight from constitutional suffragists, mounting republican sympathies undermined the partnership espoused by the Irish Parliamentary Party. Home Rulers could appear little more than the “green liveried henchmen of the British connection.”143 In the contest for Irish hearts and minds, the couple seemed more and more out of season even as they stood in the crossfire. The response to their appointment was immediately mixed. The Irish diaspora brought them to the eyes of the world. From New Zealand came satisfaction: “Lord Aberdeen is a man who in whatever position he might be placed would work his hardest to try and make things better than he found them. He

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would never stand still or fold his arms ... There is a gentleness about the man that is sometimes mistaken for weakness.”144 The same observer remained sanguine and hopeful as late as 1911, hailing John Campbell Gordon as “a builder up, a man who likes to cement different particles into one great whole.”145 In the British Isles, the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond (1856–1918),146 favoured the appointment, and Freeman’s Journal, the Home Rule newspaper and a long-time supporter of the couple, welcomed their “benevolent intentions.” Indicative of problems to come, however, was the latter’s emphasis on “the gulf between the government of Ireland and the people of Ireland” and that “no change of parties or persons or politics can win the Irish people to a moral recognition of that government until it is made representative and responsible.”147 In 1906, T.W. Rolleston (1857–1920), Home Ruler, Celtic folklorist, and poet, similarly told Ishbel that nationalism had changed greatly since their previous posting. Sinn Féin, which he described as a “relic” of Fenianism, was now a key player with both “courage and brains.” Rolleston saw himself now treated as a “Judas Iscariot,” and he anticipated only hostility towards the Aberdeens. No reputation for good works would suffice.148 In much the same vein, Stephen Gwynn (1864–1950), a Protestant member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, who supported the Gaelic League and a Catholic university, admitted that he had to stay away from their events since “those of us who, in order to try and help have to divest ourselves of a kind of caste, need specially to give no occasion for misunderstanding.”149 The emergence of Sinn Féin, for all its sometimes initally unclear boundaries with the Home Rule position,150 made patriotism all the more a separatist and republican option. As parliamentary nationalists failed to win representative and responsible government, it grew stronger. Even as diehard Unionists increasingly considered military options to defend the British connection, Sinn Féiners “revealed an almost religious faith as they awaited and prepared for a national resurrection.”151 While it had difficulties challenging parliamentary nationalism before 1914, the First World War helped make Sinn Féin “the vehicle of the political campaign for national independence.”152 The humane liberalism of the Aberdeens proved no rival. Their rejection by republicans was part of a larger mismatch. The influential turn-of-the-century Gaelic revival, for all the romantic enthusiasm mustered by the Aberdeens, increasingly decentred Anglo-Irish Protestants, whatever their sympathies for Home Rule, and foreshadowed the reactionary Catholic state that would eventually emerge between the wars.153 Ironically, two key cultural arbitrators, poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) and writer and literary patron Lady Gregory (Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory; 1852–1932), challenged dreams of compatibility and cooperation even as they

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themselves had ties to the old Protestant Ascendancy.154 Their vision of a Celtic future had no place for imperial linkages. With regard to such Abbey Theatre nationalists, Stephen Gwynn signalled their influence in counselling: The natural thing wd [would] be to ask you to go a few times to see them – as I am sure you wd be inclined to do, quite apart from good will. But it seems you can’t go except officially & Yeats has taken so pronounced a line that I don’t see how his company cd [could] take the necessary formalities. If they cd, I doubt whether they would. You see, the young men have been greatly affected by the body of opinion which opposes the parliamentary party on the ground that sending members to Westminster is a recognition of England’s right to govern Ireland & presumably they wd be equally against recognising any viceroy as such.

In the end, he suggested the Aberdeens stay away and merely indicate respect for nationalist convictions. He nevertheless hoped that the couple “may afford a rallying point & common meeting ground for the people in Ireland who at present are kept apart by imaginary barriers.”155 Ultimately, the attempt by some Anglo-Irish to identify with “an Irish civilized past that was Celtic rather than Catholic,” as the Aberdeens did with their Irish pageantry, proved largely untenable.156 Aberdeen’s long-standing campaigns against vice and traffic in women only marked him all the more as a displaced Protestant and proselytizing puritan. In such nationalist cultural circles, the earl easily loomed as a seeming fool, “a reincarnation of Polonius” from Hamlet.157 The feminist nationalist Countess Constance Georgine Markievicz, neé Gore-Booth (1868–1927), dismissed the couple as no more than agents of imperial co-optation,158 while the future first governor general of the Irish Free State, Timothy Healey, characterized Lord Aberdeen as “the ‘decoy duck’ for the Irish,” a man who carried “no guns” in Cabinet.159 It is hard to imagine a more demasculinizing metaphor in a world increasingly taken up with armed conflict. Such republicans dismissed the Aberdeens as tools of Westminster whose good will and practices dangerously raised hopes for a satisfactory solution within the Empire and dampened enthusiasm for independence. A dispute over attendance at a viceregal reception by the Limerick Corporation in 1906 was typical: a nationalist alderman accused the audience of “flunkeyism.”160 Ultimately, ironically enough, like the Unionists, “the last thing the separatist elite wanted was conciliation.”161 The result left little room or respect for the Aberdeens. Even as Irish nationalism seemed increasingly incompatible with the Aberdeens’ hopes, defenders of the Union grew more outraged and desperate at signs of Home Rule. Both the traditional Ascendancy of landowners and

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grassroots Protestants more than ever regarded John and Ishbel as traitors to the United Kingdom. They routlinely boycotted viceregal functions. The old elite was especially offended by the expanded circle of guests in Dublin Castle, for as one traditionalist insisted, “Without being a snob, it was no pleasure, and rather embarrassing, to meet the lady at dinner who had measured you for your shirts the week before.”162 Efforts to simplify imperial ritual and popularize events were similarly dismissed as little more than catering to the mob. Even the earl’s permission for filming of ceremony and “the installation of powerful arc lights for the purpose” was opposed as violating essential tradition.163 While middle-class Protestant Unionists might have sympathized with efforts at modernization, the Aberdeens could not escape their overall reputation as irresponsible champions of priest-ridden traditionalism. Prospects for viceregal success were all the more blighted because British governance of Ireland often put the lord lieutenant and the Irish secretary at odds. The two were required to share responsibility, but its particulars depended very much on the individuals in Dublin and London. Lord Aberdeen found the relationship with the first secretary of his tenure, James Bryce (1905–1907), Oxford radical, imperial federationist, and supporter of Girton College, congenial because of the “rather special personal relations which have been maintained between us ever since Oxford days.”164 However, Bryce’s successor, Augustine Birrell (1907–16; 1850–1933),165 while equally a Home Ruler, proved far less friendly and more readily irritated by the interference and fuss he associated with both John and Ishbel. As conflicts escalated, Birrell and the couple were increasingly at odds. Historians have salvaged Birrell’s reputation for integrity and commended his “greening” of the civil service.166 In contrast, Lord Aberdeen has generally emerged as largely ineffective.167 Ultimately, however, although both men would be blamed for the Easter Rebellion of 1916, that disaster owed much to the fact that the traditional governance of Ireland was “clumsy and liable to work in an inharmonious fashion.”168 High-ranking discussion in 1909 about the possibility of the Duke of Connaught, the king’s brother and future governor general of Canada (1911–16), replacing Aberdeen as viceroy spoke to recurring official dissatisfaction.169 Asquith’s observation less than a year after he effectively fired Lord Aberdeen that “‘the lord-lieutenancy is one of the most anomalous, and from an argumentative point of view, one of the most vulnerable institutions in the world’” summed up an impossible situation.170 Administrative confusion and rivalry were worsened by ubiquitous gossip, slander, sexism, and homophobia, all of which further undermined the Scottish aristocrats. Such was the case with recurring “rumours of unorthodox social intercourse between the viceregal couple and their household staff ” that

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seemed much like Canadian calumny following earlier attempts to treat servants respectfully and informally.171 Like his mother before him, Edward VII (1841–1910) proved readily discomforted by any threat to ceremony or seeming lèse-majesté, repeatedly questioning the suitability of his Irish representatives, just as, ironically enough, the teenage Ishbel had doubted him in an essay.172 Once again, as well, the appearance of the aging couple – they were deemed “an incongruous pair: she was large and matronly, he slight and dapper” – was used to ridicule and undermine confidence.173 Still more damaging to the Aberdeens’ public reputation was the 1907 theft of the “Irish Crown Jewels” from Dublin Castle. Despite resort to investigations and the courts, culpability remains far from clear, but “it was a crime with, at its outer edges, homosexual connotations involving members of the royal and viceregal families.”174 The fact that John’s heir, Lord Haddo, was sometimes implicated could only add to doubts about his parents. Suspicions mounted when the Aberdeens were, as ever, injudicious in exposing their preferences. During the general election of 1910, John telegraphed a Liberal candidate in his home county of Aberdeenshire to emphasize that Unionist fears of Catholic rule were unwarranted. Outrage from Ulster and elsewhere forced the creation of a parliamentary “Committee of Privileges.” This eventually cleared the earl of contravening “any Standing Order or regulation” but did little to repair his reputation for imprudence.175 The telegram might have been readily forgotten but the loss of its previous substantial majority in the two general elections of 1910 to a Unionist-Conservative alliance left the new coalition Liberal government unable to rein in prejudice or organize effectively either itself or against the hostile House of Lords. For the first half of the viceroyalty, good humour and optimism nevertheless seemed pervasive and hopes for peaceful transition high.176 From the moment he arrived, Aberdeen endeavoured to invoke different relations. In a highly symbolic gesture, he insisted that the commissioners of Irish Intermediate Education obey Parliament and “place Irish on a par with French and German.” Supporters hailed his “decisiveness” and “persistence.”177 The 1906 appointment of the Vice-regal Commission on Irish Railways seemed similarly promising. Following its investigation of a broad range of complaints from rate fixing to the ownership of Irish lines by British railway companies, it echoed Aberdeen’s preferences in recommending a “unified system under public control” as a spur to economic development.178 In 1907, John and Ishbel visited Rome and met with Pope Pius X (1835–1914) to signal their respect for the Catholic Church and a future of collaboration in the common good. Two years later, both the majority and minority reports of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress, which surveyed Ireland as well as the rest

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of Britain, variously embraced the Aberdeens’ more humane vision of state assistance.179 In short, portents in education, transportation, relations with the Catholic majority, and public welfare all appeared propitious. The Aberdeens’ priorities offered the prospect of “a harmonious relationship of state and people framed through the ‘familial’ perspective of welfare monarchism.” When the countess attracted 165,000 signatures in 1909 for “an Address of Welcome from the women of Ireland” to Edward VII, they appeared to be making headway180 against the antipathy that Queen Victoria’s vehement anti-nationalism had encouraged.181 Lady Aberdeen’s introduction of that king and Queen Alexandra (1844–1925) into some of Connemara’s poorest homes where they petted children and purchased handwoven tweed182 and Lord Aberdeen’s submission of a critical petition signed by 3,000 Irish Protestants to Parliament in support of the removal of anti-Catholic material from the coronation oath had the same intent of trying to align the monarchy with the people.183 Their faith that a constitutional monarch had a key modern role explained their recurring efforts, much to the annoyance of both parliamentarians and bureaucrats, to entice British monarchs to be more active in Ireland and to personally support their viceregal representatives.184 The Aberdeens counted on popular support. One observer from far-off Victoria, Canada, believed that they appealed to ordinary Irish people as they “made rather a point of not allowing the castle to be over-run by the fashionables of London; there has been no Viceregal ‘set,’ no coterie of exclusives; the household offices, as far as possible, have been filled by Irishmen, and the circles of Viceregal hospitality have been wisely and generously widened … Lord and Lady Aberdeen have brought the castle and the lodge into far closer touch with the social life of Dublin than they ever were before.”185 Such commitment to broadened guest lists was only a small part of the Aberdeens’ continuing campaign for hearts and minds. Attention focused on poverty, especially among women and children who also remained the particular beneficiaries of the social purity crusade pursued by the Vigilance Associations.186 Recognizing that Ireland had changed since 1886, the Aberdeens now prioritized urban not rural life and public health not handicrafts.187 Practical policies were an essential part of the Home Rule arsenal, depriving “nationalists of a central mobilizing symbol.”188 Ireland offered fertile ground for reform with its residents suffering some of the worst health in Europe. In particular, tuberculosis injured and slew thousands every year. Just as she had with Canada’s Victorian Order of Nurses (VON), Lady Aberdeen created and directed the Women’s National Health Association (WNHA), which persisted long after the viceroyalty. It mobilized thousands of women as the custodians of both their families and the nation

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itself. Both Catholic and Protestant members were encouraged to advance female influence beyond the home and contest local elections for Poor Law guardians. The WNHA’s active public education campaign included a health journal, Sláinte, and a touring caravan with a doctor who advised in both Gaelic and English.189 The investigation of unsanitary accommodations and support for school breakfasts, home gardens, pasteurized milk depots, and a home nursing service were all part of a wide-ranging agenda of social betterment that placed Ireland in the company of many Western nations.190 The WNHA had, however, in the United Irishwomen a major rival in the promotion of women’s public role. Nationalists readily dismissed Ishbel’s creation a “British association,” while the smaller United Irishwomen, with its equally non-sectarian claims, was celebrated “as part of the broader self-help movement … which sought to promote a culturally Irish identity.”191 Indeed, the WNHA often pursued initiatives, such as the provision of school meals to needy children, which were a “field of activism for many Irish nationalists, feminists and trade unionists.”192 In 1886, competition in progressive causes had been far more rare. The WNHA nevertheless found much to do in endeavouring to reap the benefits of new liberalism. In an effort to implement Britain’s National Insurance Act of 1911, it typically sponsored a “strictly a non-sectarian and nonpolitical” Irish Health Insurance Society intended “to be representative of all sections of the people, who were anxious to do everything in their power to promote a high standard of health amongst all classes of the people.”193 During Dublin’s 1913 general strike, called in face of employers’ refusal to concede union rights or a living wage, the WNHA’s Samaritan Committee delivered food, coal, and clothing to desperate households. Ishbel also arranged to open the Sláute restaurant in the city to serve cheap nutritious meals to hard-hit families.194 Always the enthusiast, she trusted the health assistance in general would be uncontroversial, offering common ground “wherever you go – north, south, east, or west, town and country alike – you find representatives of every creed and every church on the platform – landlords, tenants, county and district councilors, and the poor people themselves.”195 While medical experts have confirmed tuberculosis’ dire toll,196 Lady Aberdeen was regularly derided as condescending and dictatorial. As one scholar has bluntly concluded, republicans routinely dismissed her first and foremostly as “a British aristocrat” who could only be “patronizing and an unwanted interference in Irish affairs.”197 The misogyny of critics who designated her “lady microbe” was equally obvious. So, too, was the outrage of both nationalists and Unionists who feared a threat to their agendas. For the first, her campaign both slandered the idealized Irish family and detracted attention from their primary enemy, namely, the British connection. For the second, preoccupation with

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ill health only denigrated the prized imperial connection. Critics on all sides claimed to fear that the association of the Irish and their goods with infection meant loss of employment and markets. Typical of opposition was the demand by the South Dublin Board of Guardians that Aberdeen “discontinue the antituberculosis crusade in Ireland, on the ground that it was creating a scare and becoming harmful to the industrial welfare of the country.” They rejected the countess’s argument that the work was “being carried on not only in Ireland, but in every enlightened country, and the public generally are becoming so fully instructed in the matter that they will only avoid those countries where no preventive or curative measures are being taken.”198 One of the most controversial initiatives was the Peamount Sanitorium for tubercular patients. It was officially founded by the Women’s National Health Association, but its construction and management were overseen and sometimes financed by the Aberdeens.199 Right from the beginning, it was attacked as threatening neighbourhood health and slandering the Irish in general. Trade union leader Arthur Griffith (1872–1922) denounced Peamount in “his campaign against aristocratic charity and patronage as corrupt and demoralizing rituals of subservience” and decried reliance on “Scottish labour and materials.” Tuberculosis, he insisted, could not be cured by “concentration camps for consumptives”; its sources lay in “airborne dirt, slum conditions, and the deterioration of the Irish climate due to deforestation (by the British).”200 Emotions grew so high that a mob attacked and burned the hospital. Aberdeen condemned the “wanton and disgraceful act of destruction.” His wife soberly reflected that “opposition had been experienced in every country in the early stages of the sanatoria movement” but, ever hopeful, forecast that, with education, prejudice against such treatment would disappear.201 Curing tuberculosis was only one part of a larger plan for public health that centred on improved urban infrastructure. One of the largest cities in the United Kingdom, Dublin was a sanitary disgrace that immediately attracted Ishbel’s reforming zeal.202 Her passion for rural handicrafts lost ground to the cry of urban distress. As part of the work of the WNHA, Ishbel acquired a derelict Dublin site for a community garden and a boys’ camp and established “babies’ playgrounds.” Laid out by two women, “professional gardeners, the latter provided shelter for prams, sand heaps, and play space as well as balls, skipping ropes and games.”203 Other plans were still more ambitious. The Aberdeens invited internationally prominent Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) to Ireland twice in 1911. Like other visiting experts, such as the American journalist Anna Louise Strong (1885–1970),204 Geddes was introduced to Ireland’s movers and shakers through viceregal patronage. As one assessor observed: “Many

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a hard-headed employer, whom several Linen Halls full of exhibits would have left untouched, came to dine and remained to be converted to the economic doctrine of mutual aid, when the botanist showed them how the vaunted ‘survival of the fittest’ was not workable even among the lowest forms of life. Other captains of industry whose wives had social ambitions very probably were more easily won over to the new cause by an invitation from Lady Aberdeen than they would have been by hours of argumentation; Geddes had ideas, Geddes was a friend of the Viceroy; therefore, Geddes’s ideas must be the style!”205 The Scottish polymath helped organize medical and planning experts to present urban renewal options to the burghers of Dublin and Belfast even as Lady Aberdeen became president of Ireland’s Housing and Town Planning Association, which “campaigned for the extension of British town planning legislation to Ireland, and for a civic survey to be carried out in Dublin.”206 In 1912, undeterred by Irish secretary Birrell’s opposition, the Aberdeens stumped, ultimately unsuccessfully, for a viceregal inquiry into Dublin’s tenements. A year later, Ishbel arranged a Civic Exhibition, and in 1914, the Dublin Town Plan Competition. For the latter, Lord Aberdeen offered a £500 prize for a winning proposal for “14,000 new dwellings.”207 In 1914, in the same display of hope, Geddes took his cities’ exhibit to India at the request of the governor of Madras, Lord Pentland. Urban renewal was always both an imperial and a family enterprise. The onset of the First World War short-circuited all such plans. Dublin’s plight, not to mention that of urban India, continued largely unabated. In 1915, Geddes nevertheless dedicated his influential book, Cities in Evolution, to “that most effective and organizing of civic workers, Lady Aberdeen.”208 The war also occasioned a further public set of disagreements when Ishbel attempted to set up an Irish Red Cross that would include nationalist women suspicious of all British initiatives, especially those in support of the conflict. Discretion rarely being her strong suit, the countess communicated her apprehension about Protestant domination to the nationalist newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, and it was passed to Sinn Féin, which then publicly accused the Journal and the Irish Parliamentary Party more generally of colluding with British rule in their support for Ishbel’s campaign. On the other side of Irish politics, the defenders of the Protestant establishment and their vehicle, the Irish Times, were equally outraged by the implication that their volunteer efforts in the Red Cross were in any way unhelpful. Prime Minister Asquith apparently saw the indiscretion and controversy as just one more justification for viceregal dismissal.209 The earnestness with which Lady Aberdeen undertook a massive reform of Irish health care inspired and aided thousands. As her many admirers indicated: “She carries out her work with a great spirit. She has the invaluable faculty of going straight to her object, looking neither to right nor left. When she meets

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with what would be to another person a check or a disaster, her spirit carries her triumphantly through it. It takes something of a fanatic to make a reformer. Fanaticism plus humor … go to make up Lady Aberdeen’s equipment for the task she has undertaken.”210 Such traits nevertheless had an obvious downside. Critics easily spied a lack of “delicacy” or “diplomacy” and the steamrolling of contrary perspectives.211 Ishbel’s determination brought her into conflict not only with many parties in the Irish conflict but often with the bureaucrats in charge of official policy. Many, from Birrell on down, loathed her as interfering and dictatorial. Beside the prospect of a strong-minded woman – a persistent issue – patronage provided a major source of disagreement. This was a thorny issue in Ireland, as elsewhere in the British Empire, conveying authority and opportunity on its donors and recipients.212 When Ishbel and John presented their own preferred candidates for positions that ranged from the medical and cultural to the agricultural, they challenged a powerful system of entitlement and obligation.213 The vast majority of John and Ishbel’s efforts for social improvement focused on the southern counties and the situation of Catholics in particular. In their second tenure of Irish office, as in their first, the Aberdeens showed little interest in the far more Protestant and industrializing north where they were only ever brief visitors. Their support for Home Rule never extended to Ulster. That region, in turn, regarded the Scottish Presbyterian aristocrats as little more than disloyal interlopers. Very typically, Unionists had interpreted the audience with the pope as simply “evidence of the intention of the Government to consign the lives and property of Protestants to the inquisitorial mercies of the Catholics.”214 In 1912, even a highly positive assessment of Ireland’s viceregal office-holders described the dilemma: “the severest handicap to which a Liberal Lord-Lieutenant is subjected arises out of the prevalent notion that Nationalism and disloyalty are almost interchangeable terms. This enables every Unionist to charge the viceroy with pandering to the prejudices of the disloyal majority.”215 Neither John nor Ishbel appreciated the depth of Ulster’s commitment to Britishness and the Victorian faith in technology and modernity that John Bew has described so effectively in The Glory of Being Britons (2009).216 Visions of Celtic energy and virtue had no equivalent purchase on the loyalist mind or heart. Lord Aberdeen’s sympathies for labour in Ireland as elsewhere were often equally distrusted in both the north and south of Ireland. His recurring efforts at mediation, including his release from prison of two founders of the Irish Independent Labour Party, first James Larkin (1874–1947) and, later, James Connolly (1868–1916),217 and his resistance to the scabs proposed by the Dublin Employers’ Federation in labour troubles in 1909, were typically deplored by business leaders.218 While a leading British socialist, George Lansbury

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(1859–1940), condemned the lord lieutenant as “the weak tool of the capitalist class,”219 the major historian of Dublin’s 1913 general strike has been more sensitive to the limits on viceregal freedom. While Aberdeen’s interventions on behalf of workers might well have been frequently “maladroit” and apparently naïve, Pádraig Yeates has pointed out that John Campbell Gordon knew far more about his posting than most of Britain’s “supercilious mandarins” who attempted to muzzle him.220 In any case, the relations between capital and labour only supplied a further bone of contention during Aberdeen’s lord lieutenancy. The Irish Suffrage Campaign The Aberdeens proved equally unable to find a middle ground when it came to women suffrage. Since Irish feminists had been active for many decades, lines were already drawn. Both advocates and opponents were scattered across the Protestant Ascendancy class, supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sinn Féin and other nationalist groups, and the labour movement. Positions on the vote were closely attached to other loyalties, providing what has been very conservatively labelled “an extra dimension of complication.”221 As the Countess Markievicz impressed upon Dublin’s Students’ National Literary Society in 1909, “I would ask every nationalist woman to pause before she joined a Suffrage Society or Franchise League that did not include in their programme the Freedom of their Nation.”222 Both suffragists and their opponents had long-standing ties to their counterparts in England and Scotland and sometimes in North America as well. The emergence of suffragette militancy, including the efforts of the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social and Political Union to organize in Ireland, demonstrated extensive political networks. National and international agreement and conflict over the vote, like that over Home Rule and labour, provided one more minefield to be traversed. The Aberdeens’ role as representative of the Crown and effectively of Asquith’s policy of delay and prevarication on the franchise demanded mediatory politics even as it heightened the stress with which they lived. It is hard not to imagine that the frantic pace with which Ishbel, in particular, conducted her health and urban renewal campaigns did not represent some effort at overcompensation and even distraction. Opposition to suffrage remained fierce throughout the viceregal term. Liberal Home Rulers could be among the worst offenders. When there was consideration of including the vote in the 1912 Home Rule Bill, Irish Secretary Augustine Birrell wrote to John Dillon (1851–1927), a leader in the Parliamentary Party: “I think this active vocal split in the Cabinet on Women most serious.

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I don’t see how I could remain in a Cabinet which has adopted en bloc Female Suffrage, married and single – and if I couldn’t, how could Asquith?”223 Dillon was equally intransigent in his remarks to a suffrage delegation: “Women’s suffrage will, I believe, be the ruin of our western civilization. It will destroy the home, challenging the headship of man, laid down by God. It may come in your time – I hope not in mine.”224 In 1912, despite the pleas of their feminist supporters, not one member of the Irish Party defended suffrage in Parliament.225 Visiting the Irish capital that year, Prime Minister Asquith refused to receive supporters even as anti-feminists published “inflammatory letters” in “the Dublin evening papers threatening suffragettes if they attempted any demonstrations during his visit.”226 Ironically enough, another strong contingent of anti-suffragists, such as the wife of the Dean of St Patrick’s Anglican Cathedral in Dublin, who chaired that city’s Anti-Suffrage League, were closely associated “with Unionist Party politics.”227 Champions of enfranchisement were equally divided over the future of Ireland. While those associated with the Liberal Party hoped that a Home Rule victory would bring political rights, Conservative Unionist suffragists like Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1879–1959; by 1915, the Marchioness of Londonderry), who “organized a boycott of official entertainments in 1904,”228 rejected that prospect.229 Both, in turn, stood against nationalists who counted on republicanism to usher in a fairer day. Some of the latter, such as Markievicz, also partnered with the labour movement, hardly a point in their favour for conservative suffragists.230 In 1909, James Larkin, who was described as a “kind of labour suffragette,” “placed adult suffrage at the head of the immediate measures to be advocated by an Irish Labour Party.”231 By the Great War, however, few nationalists of any persuasion spared any time for the vote. Even among many of the Aberdeens’ allies, it was at best “a diversion from the fight for home rule, and at worst a threat to it. They were also suspicious of a movement that included so many staunch Unionists.”232 Ultimately, female enfranchisement remained a secondary cause for many supporters, as indeed it was for the Aberdeens. A few suffragists, however, remained determined. In pre-war London and Dublin, Irish women and male allies marched, broke windows, and went to jail. The Irish Women’s Franchise League and champions like Hanna SheehySkeffington (1877–1946) did not back down. Activists received sentences of penal servitude and hard labour, and suffragettes in Ireland went on hunger strikes.233 Although the political situation was judged too volatile for forcefeeding Irish women, visiting English WSPU members were not spared.234 Their ordeal generated a host of protests, including the demand, familiar elsewhere, to be treated as political prisoners.

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In dealing with the suffrage conflict, the Aberdeens, once again, faced the quandary of finding solutions that might not jeopardize the Home Rule coalition. Lord Aberdeen’s attempts to improve conditions for suffrage prisoners were generally considered too little, too late or only one more example of truckling to threats.235 Ishbel’s later defence was likely regarded as equally deficient: “Lord Aberdeen, upholder as he was of the women’s movement, had to permit the law to take its course, but he would never sanction forcible feeding, and had daily reports of the health of women political prisoners so that they might be released at the earliest possible moment.”236 Not surprisingly, militant suffragists told the countess that she should be ashamed of a “Government” that was “torturing women.”237 Lady Aberdeen’s condemnation “without mercy [of] senseless acts” by suffragettes only confirmed disagreement, all the more so when she predicted that “the realization of the ideology of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst would provoke a revolution of which women would be the sole victims.”238 No side changed its views. No wonder the last years of the viceroyalty occasioned increasing depression and ill health for both wife and husband. Forced to Retire from the Field By the second half of the Aberdeen appointment, Protestant Ulster had become all the more resolved to battle the all-Ireland solution proposed in the 1912 Home Rule Bill.239 In 1913, Unionist leader Edward Carson (1854–1935) proposed the exclusion of the nine northern counties, and militants trained swelling ranks of Protestant recruits to resist inclusion in an independent Ireland.240 In the spring of 1914, Aberdeen argued for the arrest of Ulster Volunteer gunrunners and firm handling of British officers in Curragh, who resigned rather than fight Irish opponents of Home Rule. King George V (1865–1936), Redmond, and Asquith rejected his stern response.241 Such resolve from a viceroy noted for his amiability only confirmed Aberdeen’s alienation from his Westminster masters and, as always, from the northern counties with their Protestant majority and imperial fervour.242 The onset of the First World War with its exacerbation of the issues of loyalty and disloyalty further disconnected Dublin Castle and London. Before Aberdeen was forced to retire, he could only warn fruitlessly about Unionist plots and urge the swift passage of Home Rule.243 In the fall of 1915, with their Irish policy in tatters, the Aberdeens fled to the United States.244 Their efforts to find common ground, what John Campbell Gordon described in 1906 as a “a disposition to remember and to realise that those who differed from them might generally be credited with the sincerity which they were conscious of themselves, and that after all perhaps they should find that they were not so widely revered as they might have

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supposed” had failed.245 The challenge of deep conflicts and prejudices left little room for aristocratic good will. Ultimately, too few in power accepted “that the Home Rulers, so far from being disruptive of the Empire, were a bulwark against other and far more destructive forces.”246 On the other side, nationalist and growing republican opinion increasingly condemned the viceregency in all its manifestations. Conciliation was nowhere in good repute. Thus, the promise of “constitutional nationalism” that has been assessed as improving “the lives of the Irish people” from the 1880s until the First World War was lost.247 As George Dangerfield so colourfully set forth in The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935), liberalism floundered in dealing with workers, feminists, and the Irish, the very groups to whom John and Ishbel were long pledged.248 At the beginning, the Aberdeens’ cooperative vision appeared possible. Just before the 1905 Liberal victory, the Home Ruler Justin McCarthy (1830–1912) confidently profiled the couple in his pantheon of British Political Portraits that included, inter alia, Balfour, Salisbury, Rosebery, and Chamberlain. The Earl of Aberdeen’s service in Ireland and Scotland was saluted as evidence of “courage and hopefulness” and productive of only “admiration and gratitude.” No less significant was Lady Aberdeen, featured by his side as “a living refutation” of “the shrieking sisterhood.” As champions of the golden mean, both merited great positions. Revealingly, however, the Cork-born McCarthy rejected the Irish viceroyalty, dismissing it as a “barbaric anachronism.” The couple’s talents lay rather with local self-government, “so remarkable and so hopeful a phenomenon of our national existence at present.”249 Ironically enough, a few months later their reward for loyalty was Dublin Castle. When the patronizing Asquith succeeded the sympathetic CampbellBannerman, Aberdeen’s days were numbered. Even the long-standing affair and deathbed engagement of Archie Gordon with Violet Asquith could not bridge a gap that appears to have been both political and temperamental.250 When Asquith thanked the Aberdeens in 1912 for hosting Irish luminaries “who are endeavouring to write in the new volume of Irish history happier pages than are to be found in the dismal story of the past,” they assumed he thought they were doing a good job.251 In fact, he was already contemplating their exit. In a bid to stiffen up his ministry, the new prime minister first dispatched the Aberdeens’ son-in-law, Scottish Secretary John Sinclair, reckoned too “excellent and decorous” for hard-nosed politics, to the governorship of Madras.252 Soon enough, he cast Lord Aberdeen as a scapegoat for Irish failures: “a weaker and more incompetent lot were never in charge of a leaky ship in stormy weather.”253 Despite appealing, quite unconstitutionally, to the king, Aberdeen had to retire from the field.254 The 1916 Easter Rebellion soon

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toppled Asquith, whose claims to superiority offered no convincing example of male leadership. The tragedy lay, like the Liberal failure with workers and women, as John Kendle has suggested with regard to a federal solution for Ireland, “in a reluctance of the political elite to share power – to divide sovereignty – within the United Kingdom.”255 Ironically, that substantial shortcoming produced the partition of Ireland.

Chapter Six

Faithful unto Death, 1915–1939

When they arrived in the United States in the fall of 1915, John and Ishbel Gordon were approaching their seventies and sixties, respectively. He lived until 1934 and she until 1939. John remained lord lieutenant of Aberdeenshire and attended the House of Lords until his death, but his career was in steep decline after the First World War. He became a symbol of earnest, well-meaning liberalism, his era’s faith that failed. The younger Ishbel had the advantage of executive office, albeit finally as honorary president, in the International Council of Women and survived as a high-profile proponent of progressive causes in Ireland and elsewhere. By her death, brief months before the onset of the Second World War, however, she had lived long enough to see tragedy sink long-standing liberal hopes. This chapter addresses this turbulent period, first by considering more personal developments for Ishbel and John as their family and household arrangements underwent significant change and they received end-of-career awards. Ireland with the eventual emergence of the republic in 1937 supplies the grist of the second section: its evolution dashed many Liberal dreams. Next this chapter turns to the Aberdeens’ commitment to the Liberal Party in a period when it lost credibility amid the increasing polarization of British politics between the Labour and Conservative behemoths. The final section focuses on the International Council of Women; here, too, the tale is one of great hopes and final disappointments. By 1939, John and Ishbel had become little more than occasionally treasured. They were quickly fading emblems of a bygone age of socially responsible aristocrats who aimed to channel a liberal faith into a somewhat better deal for ordinary people in Britain and around the world and secure social betterment without resort to revolution.

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Personal Life and Recognition By the time John retired from his post as lord lieutenant of Ireland, the Aberdeens’ surviving three children – George (Doddie), Marjorie, and Dudley – were in their thirties and forties and the last two had produced offspring. They remained a close-knit family of regular correspondents and visitors, but they frequently disagreed about money and politics. Parcels of the Aberdeen estates had been on the market since the 1880s, but the Haddo lands faced legal trusteeship during the First World War and the Aberdeens’ debts were a constant preoccupation. Finances were ultimately about more than individual proclivities. Uncertain agricultural prices, rising estate costs, and death duties hit aristocratic landlords hard, with an estimated “one-fifth of Scotland” changing “hands between 1918 and 1921.”1 The expenses incurred during the Canadian governor generalship and still more the second Irish viceroyalty, a taken-for-granted cost of imperial governance that the couple never curbed, despite some reputation for parsimony, hobbled them. During and immediately after the war, the Aberdeens appear to have owed significant sums to bankers and to prominent Liberal industrialists.2 The implications of the latter debts cannot be precisely calculated, but it is easy to speculate that they made the shift to the Labour Party taken by some disillusioned interwar Liberals still more unlikely. In any case, and as family lore asserts today, Ishbel and John, and particularly the former, were frequently considered profligate dispensers of the ancestral inheritance. Habitually forgotten was the fortune that she had brought into the marriage. Dudley’s wife, Cécile, expressed typical concern in writing her brother-in-law in the autumn of 1915: “Alas, I am indeed sorry about the American trip. Can they really afford it or is it being paid for by Dudley’s & Marjorie’s allowance …? Oh my dear Doddie forgive me if I say that financially your Mother is a menace to the Family – they can go to America & enjoy themselves & live on the fat of the land & yet dock their children of their due.”3 Several years later, her husband wrote in the same vein: “I can’t help feeling that it would be so much better if they could persuade themselves to retire absolutely and live quietly at Haddo or Cromar instead of racing about to London & Dublin … and living in a hotel in Aberdeen must absorb more money than living in their own house.”4 One of Dudley’s sons, born in 1913, himself a subsequent holder of the marquessate, voiced continuing resentment. Offering patronizing reflections on “a very odd couple,” this second Archie Gordon portrayed his father harbouring “a strong inclination to hide his aristocratic connections.”5 Petulantly observing that the family never rode horses and did not own a car for much of the 1930s,

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even as he attended Harrow, he recalled “a rather shut-in, bourgeois upbringing, due largely to my parents’ medium financial resources, which restricted our pocket-money compared with that of school contemporaries, and not in the least bit even upper class, let alone aristocratic … The lesson I learned … is that aristocracy ceased to exist as a reality at about the time I was born and certainly by the time I was five, at the end of the First World War.”6 Claiming to be a confidant of Ishbel, this grandson went on to admit that “they were not swanky, and shunned the company of fashionable people … a true partnership … neither the one nor the other can be judged the more blameless or blameworthy of improvidence, indiscriminating generosity, impulsive spending, or fuss and fidget. But in daily comings and goings, even some of an official character, there is no doubt that Ishbel was Die Feldmarschallin. Hence others’ attitudes to her were more strongly for or against than they were to him.”7 His gendered and decidedly pejorative Teutonic characterization evoked the family disagreements that arose in the interwar decades. He dismissed the elderly Ishbel’s justification for perceived sins: “I suppose we made many mistakes; but I like to think we did more good than harm.” Her grandson’s reaction was: “Amen to that. But those who are the victims as well as the beneficiaries of these inherited honours and glories and acres may well on occasion feel a bitterness. I do sometimes myself, even though I never expected anything, being the second son of a second son. My father and I were both self-made men … How should I miss what could never be mine, and am I not the richer for having known this odd couple, and for having had no fear of them, nor scorn, unlike so many of their associates, relations and descendant[s]?”8 Such conclusions reflected the difficulty of living with larger-than-life figures, whose agendas were not always shared, even as families were swept up in their wake. Whatever the incompatibility, the couple’s children also proved sources of pride. Their heir, Doddie, became an elected member of the London County Council, the chairman of the Charity Organization Society, and lord lieutenant of Aberdeenshire. Dudley, his brother and the eventual heir, received the Distinguished Service Order for gallantry in 1917 and later became president successively of the British Association for Refrigeration, the British Engineers Association, and the Federation of British Industries. Letters back and forth to their parents testified to continuing mutual affection. In contrast to the sons, the Haddo archives provide little trace in adulthood of the couple’s daughter, Marjorie Sinclair, Lady Pentland, or her family. Indeed, no significant Pentland papers appear to survive.9 Marjorie was nevertheless noteworthy in her own right: she was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire and Daughter of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem for her service in organizing nursing and ambulance services

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during the First World War, and she was regularly active in the International Council of Women. After her husband’s death in 1925, she wrote his biography. In 1952, her portrait of her parents in A Bonnie Fechter communicated pride and affection. Such sentiments reflected shared ideals.10 Unfortunately, no assessment of their grandparents by Marjorie’s son, Henry John Sinclair, second Lord Pentland, who became a leader in the human potential movement, nor by his sister, Margaret Ishbel, who graduated from Girton College, Cambridge, in 1927, has surfaced in my investigations.11 The ancestral estate of Haddo, which survives in excellent, if rather reduced, circumstances in the twenty-first century, remained a steady concern for family members in the years of John and Ishbel’s decline. During the Great War, the couple had balked at the prospect of sale to an Englishwoman. Indeed, they saw such an act as tantamount to “treachery” and contemplated moving to Ireland permanently to save money.12 Nevertheless, during 1919–20, John sold off a significant portion to a moneyed Londoner even as he publicly insisted that “the purchaser … intends to give an opportunity for all the tenants thereon to become owners of their holdings,” a condition that probably somewhat lowered the price he received.13 In 1924, he broke the entail on the estate, which allowed further sales. The hemorrhage of land produced an anxious sense of disruption with a valued past for both husband and wife. They were not alone. A local newspaper conveyed “feelings of deep regret” at the “break in the long traditions of close association” between the area and the family. More particularly, it saluted Gordon’s “high personal character, his unfailing urbanity and kindness, his zeal and devotion to the duties of the offices of State he has occupied.”14 In writing his autobiography a few years later, Lord Aberdeen remained self-conscious about sales, pointing out that he had built 588 “dwelling houses” at a cost of £141,632 as well as other expenditures associated with roads, drainage, and fencing between 1870 and 1920 and insisted that the number of estate tenants had actually increased.15 By the 1920s, their eldest son, George Gordon, styled the Earl of Haddo after his father was raised to the marquessate, managed the still considerable ancestral lands. His parents settled somewhat more modestly, but very substantially by any normal calculation, in the great country house of Cromar, which they had built in 1905 for their eventual retirement. In 1920, they effectively sold that mansion to Scottish millionaire Sir Alexander MacRobert (1854–1922), whose first wife was a friend of Ishbel’s, with the provision that they could occupy it until the end of both their lives. When the MacRoberts confronted rising maintenance costs, and with the second MacRobert wife far less sympathetic, the Aberdeens had to agree to surrender Cromar upon John’s death.

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Despite such setbacks, familiar patterns of consumption and beneficence proved hard to relinquish. As Ishbel remembered of these years, the couple still lived on a grand scale, commonly welcoming twenty guests or more at a time, including the royal family, and were aided by “only ten” servants and “a small forestry department.” They did, however, forego a regular butler as “Germain” who had served for forty-seven years was “retired on a well deserved pension and comes to us only during ‘the season’ and on special occasions.”16 Ishbel also replaced real jewels with paste and travelled with only a shadow of her previous retinue. In the midst of relative economies, the couple remained generous with their patronage, offering gifts, pensions, and loans to strangers, retainers, friends, and relatives. As ever, money, including the debts they owed to others such as the Indian industrialist Sir Dorabji Tata (1859–1932), slipped easily through their fingers. Meanwhile, the relatively isolated Cromar and straitened circumstances, like greater age, helped remove the couple from centre-stage in the nation’s reform causes. In 1925, John and Ishbel published their two-volume autobiography, We Twa, which gently ranged in often alternately authored chapters over both their lives to make the case for cooperation and conciliation. Enemies either disappeared or received generous treatment. Reviewers were similarly kind, noting that despite references to some of the “proudest names in Victorian England,” the authors concentrated on “dear domesticities.” The same observer, their old Anglo-Irish friend Katharine Tynan (1859–1931), concluded in typical fashion, as well: The Aberdeens represent the very best of Victorianism. They loved, they married, they brought up their children with love and tenderness in the fear and love of God; they did their duty as they saw it at home and abroad; they extended a helping hand wherever it was needed: they were patient, long-suffering, and they always wore the inner light which is a strong armour. There might be much more piquant volumes. As it is, they are a counterblast to the people who say the world is all wrong and help to make it so. Nothing breathes from the book but the deep peace of people growing old but young at heart.17

Other sympathizers, such as a commentator in Sunday at Home, viewed the Aberdeen union through a rosy haze as true “to the instincts of the human heart” and a repudiation of a modern generation’s “evil notion that marriage is a stupid tragedy, inevitably attended by disillusionment.”18 Equally reflective of the tenor of the interwar age were suggestions that We Twa told the tale of “the good rich” and provided “living evidence of the best that is in the aristocracy of Great Britain.”19 As the age of high imperialism succumbed to post–First

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World War disillusionment, their lives and choices held charms. Such reception suggests that the Aberdeens were moving into iconic national memory, with even the persisting stories about their supposedly untoward relations with their servants described as more “novelty” than outrage.20 The couple’s positive foreword to Dr Leonard Williams’ book, Growing Old Gracefully: Health Laws and Lessons Meanwhile (1929), with its counsel of hard work and moderation, set a similar tone.21 Equally revealingly, John elsewhere poked fun at himself, publishing Scottish jokes that he had long used to win over audiences.22 Both he and Ishbel also kept in close touch with a global network of like-minded people involved in good works. In the midst of the frequent despair of the interwar period, they seemed a reassuring beacon. In 1929, the deaf-blind American author and activist Helen Keller (1880–1968) typically wrote to John to say: “You take me out of my little dark corner of circumscribed existence and find a place for me in the world of normal men and women … It makes me happy to know that Lady Aberdeen and you have kept such a warm place for me in your thoughts all these years.”23 While it is impossible to calculate the concrete results of such inspiration, it clearly mattered a great deal to beneficiaries. The highly public celebration of the Aberdeens’ golden wedding jubilee in 1927 in London, with the reunion of many of the original attendants as well as the extended family, offered a significant opportunity for public recognition. Their remarkable partnership no longer drew cruel aspersions about John’s masculinity. This shift occurred for any of a number of reasons: because at their age the issue was presumed no longer especially relevant, because the spirit of the time was less dismissive of domestic men, or because the power of the Aberdeens was clearly on the wane. In any case, their obviously happy marriage was envied by many who wished they knew its secret. As Ishbel recommended: “There can be no royal road to wedded happiness. We are all different and we cannot dictate to one another. But so long as the union is based on mutual love and respect things are likely to work out all right.”24 The ICW’s subscribed gift of a motorcar recognized the significance of their egalitarian union for international feminism, not to mention their still hectic schedules, and was greeted with childlike enthusiasm by the couple. More official recognition followed, including the award to John of an honorary fellowship at Oxford (1932) and to Ishbel of the Freedom of Edinburgh (1928), which her husband had received forty-three years earlier. John Campbell Gordon’s death on 7 March 1934 prompted further accolades. One commentator remembered hearing him only a week previously “appealing on the wireless for a society which looks after friendless girls in London” and suggested that he “was an example and inspiration and his place

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in the affections of the Scottish people will be hard to fill.”25 Another suggested that the deceased had “won fame in three widely different ways – as a statesman, as the hero of a love story that lasted fifty-seven years, and as a teller of ‘Aberdeen’ stories.”26 Anglo-Irish writer Pamela Hinkson (1900–1982), daughter of Katharine Tynan, remembered “quite simply, a very fine gentleman” and “the simplicity of true breeding, true kingliness.” She emphasized as well that “he had a strong and unassailable religious faith, and he lived by that faith, and up to it. He suffered greatly and lived greatly and lost greatly.”27 Ultimately, much like the younger King George VI (1895–1952), also an unexpected titleholder, the aging Lord Aberdeen may have won such affection just because “he was vulnerable, unpretentious, decent and dogged.”28 Lady Aberdeen’s last memories of her “high privilege as his life companion”29 included her husband’s routine making of tea for her before she left for Edinburgh meetings. Ishbel’s sense of loss persisted, but seances and spiritualists made it more endurable. This prescription for loneliness was encouraged by Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who, when he learned of John’s death, wrote: “I have come, dear Lady Aberdeen, to believe so absolutely, in man’s survival after death … of their interest in and concern for me, and their constant touch with my life, guiding and guarding its every endeavour … Lord Aberdeen has entered upon a higher life … I believe you will find it possible to continue to share with him the journey of life in a way almost as close as you have shared it for some many years in the past.”30 As King later wrote in his diary, she tried: “Lady Aberdeen rang me up from Scotland & we had a long & most interesting talk together, during which she told me of having had evidence of Lord Aberdeen’s cont’d existence from automatic writing.” At the same time, the practical Canadian approved of his correspondent’s continuing enthusiasm for the Liberal Party and “the vigour of her voice & strength of her mentality.”31 As always, Ishbel’s spiritual beliefs were accompanied by a determination to make a difference in the real world. With John’s death, his widow lost Cromar and nearly all its furnishings, with the notable exception of a bookcase with sentimental value secured for her by the sympathetic Queen Mary (1867–1953). Ishbel’s friendship with the younger May (as the queen was familiarly known) and the rest of the royal family cannot unfortunately be traced in any detail, but their public presentation as caring matriarchs was remarkably similar. Whether by design or by accident, the queen’s talent for welfare monarchism, so well described by historian Frank Prochaska, ressembled that long practised by the Aberdeenshire aristocrat.32 Mary continued to visit when Ishbel moved to the far less grandiose but still luxurious “Gordon House” in the City of Aberdeen.33 There, the widow lived with significantly fewer servants while maintaining a private secretary. Even

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as she wrote anxiously to her children about her financial situation and, like contemporaries, listened daily to the “wireless,” Ishbel remained a great lady, welcoming both titled and untitled guests and corresponding with both the famous and the ordinary. Multiple commitments crowded her calendar. She travelled regularly to Dublin, where she maintained “a modest little flat” so that she could better support the Women’s National Health Association and continued to cross the English Channel on ICW business until at least the Congress held in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, in 1936. Closer to home, she helped lead campaigns against arthritis and for the ordination of women and international cooperation and peace.34 As she aged, Lady Aberdeen shifted her persona from mother to grandmother, both with her ICW family and in the world at large. Her third volume of largely already published reminiscences, The Musings of a Scottish Granny (1936), featured a frontispiece of her knitting, capped with a widow’s headdress, a portrait far removed from contemporary women’s fashion. Indeed, her dress in both decades always claimed an earlier age. In Musings, her life no longer began in London as it did with We Twa but in her beloved Highlands of Guisachan, in a chapter that imagines a magical time much like the similarly situated musical Brigadoon in the next decade. And like it, she invented a Scottish idyll for her audiences: its hills and valleys supply “an inspiration which no later experiences can ever obliterate.”35 Pages devoted to her beloved John, her mother, her brother Edward, Henry Drummond, and Canadian and American friends, not to mention Irish industries and anti-tuberculosis campaigns, completed a picture of irrepressible hopefulness to hold in check the chill of the 1930s. A year later, her introduction to The House of Windsor went so far as to treat the delinquent Edward VIII (1894–1972) with “affectionate anxiety” even as she insisted upon the royal family’s overall commitment to “all good causes.” The Abdication Crisis went unmentioned.36 As a self-professed and publicly recognized granny, Ishbel had become the custodian of a proud and responsible heritage; wayward princes disappeared. In 1937, Lady Aberdeen’s eightieth birthday brought congratulations from around the world. In typical fashion, she requested that gifts go to London’s Canning Town Women’s Settlement with which she had been associated since 1890.37 In 1938, ICW meetings in Edinburgh feted her with affection and established the Lady Aberdeen Fund as a financial legacy for the association. Her death less than a year later brought a further stream of accolades, including the Irish Times’ salutation of “A Great Friend of Ireland.”38 The Glasgow Herald summed up many responses with condolences from the king and queen, Canadian Prime Minister King and Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir (1875–1940), and the International Council of Women and many

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of its national affiliates.39 Memory and mourning soon succumbed, however, to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the onset of the Second World War, and a new era of conflict that the Aberdeens had hoped might be prevented. Ireland, the United States, and the First World War When the Aberdeen viceroyalty came to an end in early 1915, the couple’s departure was widely lamented in the south of Ireland. A “Farewell Address presented by a Citizens’ Committee, supported by Representatives of Public Bodies in various parts of Ireland” hailed them as “models of devotion to duty.”40 A leading nationalist parliamentarian, John G.S. MacNeil (1849–1926), suggested that the Aberdeens represented one of the “few pleasant episodes” in viceregal rule. They had demonstrated an “abounding sympathy with suffering and a burning love of humanity which has strengthened and nerved them to spend and be spent in its service, inspired by a high and holy ambition to leave the world better than they found it.”41 The more republican-minded, such as one editor-owner of a Dublin newspaper, were less sanguine. He concluded, that despite “genuine regret,” the sympathetic Aberdeens were dangerous for “Ireland’s half-slave state.” Sympathetic aristocrats could produce “a lot of toadyism and flunkeyism.”42 Still more direct in its assault was one composer of scurrilous verse who cruelly caricatured Ishbel but saved the phrase, “this feckless, cringing loon the Earl of Aberdeen” for her spouse.43 The Aberdeens’ earnest identification with Catholic Ireland encouraged them to ask that the enhanced title commonly conferred on viceregal veterans include the Gaelic word “Tara” with its invocation of traditional kings and independent rule. The request annoyed almost everyone (especially Asquith when they initially sought a dukedom44), and they had to settle for Temair, which, although it had much the same meaning, was not as directly associated with the Celtic revival and Irish autonomy. The Irish parliamentary leader John Redmond who, irritated by their fuss and failure to accept that their time had passed, had already refused their request that he lobby to extend their term,45 was forced to explain that the Parliamentary Party had not publicly opposed “Tara” only because of “our strong feeling of gratitude to you and Lady Aberdeen for all you have done for Ireland, extending over so many years.”46 Like many critics, he reminded John and Ishbel that they were finally outsiders, a lesson that naïve imperialists found hard to accept.47 For the Aberdeens, explanations for failures often tended to the conspiratorial. As John explained to Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863–1945) in 1917, they had confronted “relentless and secret plotting that was carried on against us for years.”48

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During their two years in the United States (with occasional visits to Canada, including the Okanagan, where they hoped that land sales might yet help recover family fortunes), the Aberdeens set out to convince the Irish diaspora to continue to contribute to the Women’s National Health Association and Americans more generally to trust that some form of Home Rule was still a possibility. John Campbell Gordon relied on transatlantic connections, such as his membership in the Pilgrims Society, an elite Anglo-American organization established in 1902, to gain him a hearing.49 Ishbel leaned on the feminist networks generated by her leadership of the International Council of Women.50 January 1916 typically saw them inaugurate a fundraising campaign in Washington, DC, for $50,000 “to help save Irish babies from starvation and lack of proper medical attention” with the support of an American Catholic cardinal.51 Such efforts had trouble getting off the ground, hobbled both by Americans’ continuing suspicion of British policies and official neutrality during most of the First World War. The Aberdeens were acutely sensitive to the ways that Ireland figured in American response to Britain. When the Anglo-Irish German sympathizer Sir Roger Casement (1864–1916) faced the death penalty for treason, more than John Campbell Gordon’s long-standing dislike for capital punishment came into play. He feared that execution would inflame Anglo-American relations and urged London to “act cautiously and with deliberation.”52 The April 1916 Easter Rebellion that followed hard on the heels of Casement’s hanging raised similar anxieties. Shortly after that conflict, Lord Aberdeen addressed the prestigious Cornell University Club. Asked to talk about housing, he readily strayed, pleading for a “united Ireland.” He reminded listeners that the loyal Irish Brigade had recently repulsed a major German offensive in France, even as the rebels, “poor misguided men,” had gathered in Dublin. He nevertheless invoked the justification of martial law, and urged listeners to “exert their influence to combat the spread of anti-British feeling.”53 He also wrote confidentially to David Lloyd George, soon to be British secretary of state for war, warning of the dire impact on Irish American public opinion of executing rebels. The result would mean “falling into the trap carefully prepared by Germany.”54 In October 1916, Ishbel wrote to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s leader of the Opposition since 1911, feeling “sure of your sympathy” for John Redmond and Home Rule. She, too, worried about hostility to Britain and hoped that Laurier would attend an imperial conference to ensure dominion status for Ireland. Nor could she resist adding, “Needless to say how I rejoice over your conversion to Woman Suffrage.”55 The same month also saw her publish “The Sorrows of Ireland” in the influential Yale Review. It was an extraordinary document from a former vicereine. She looked forward to Britain “at last” granting “the long

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sought-for boon – justice and self-government for Ireland”56 and foresaw that the common war effort would unite former foes. She compared Irish nationalists, with their “passionate desire for the recognition of Ireland as a nation, with the right to manage her own affairs, and to bring up her children as Irish men and women, speaking their own language, proud of their own history and literature, and developing according to their own ideals” favourably with the Anglo-Saxon who demonstrated “an unalterable belief in his country and its laws, its history, its language, its power to conquer whenever it resolves to vanquish, and the certainty that all countries and races that come under its rule and influence must of necessity be happier than under any other.” The latter’s arrogance had set “the conditions of the centuries of strife, misery, and misunderstanding between the two countries so closely related, and between races which should be, and which indeed are, complements of one another.”57 The time was overdue for Britain to establish an Irish parliament and wipe out the “infamy of the Act of Union.”58 Home Rule was the only proper and popular solution, representing as it did “trust in the people.”59 She offered a detailed description of the disastrous consequences of the lack of self-government in matters from housing to public health and condemned an educational system that “excluded any instruction in the history and literature of Ireland and sent teachers who could not speak one word of Gaelic to teach Irish-speaking children.”60 She went so far as to admit the appeal of Sinn Féin to many Americans, arguing as well that the violence and recalcitrance of Ulster Unionists had ironically proved the former’s best asset.61 Whitehall’s threats of conscription had only worsened matters. She trusted nevertheless that initiatives by David Lloyd George, who would become prime minister of a coalition government in December 1916, augured well for “an Irish Parliament by consent” and that a future “Imperial Conference, composed of representatives of that sisterhood of self-governing nations which is the true British commonwealth, would undoubtedly decree that Ireland could no longer be the one exception to the policy which had created and proved the power of an empire founded on trust in the people.” In closing, however, she let slip her fears that British politics doomed conciliation and settlement.62 These apprehensions proved well founded. In any case, once again, she also demonstrated her lack of attention to Protestants and northerners in particular. Only their intolerance rather than their fears of engulfment in a nationalist Catholic state was ever of much concern. While Home Rulers judged the Aberdeens’ American lectures and fundraising “courageous,”63 critics appeared more vocal. Sinn Féiners resurrected the claim that Lady Aberdeen’s “discovery” of tuberculosis “ruined” lacemaking64 and dismissed her as “not a woman but an instrument” of British imperialism much like the monarch himself.65 Some Irish American societies agreed, seeing

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“missionaries of England’s propaganda in this country and not advocates of Ireland’s cause,” and insisted they could maintain their own charities without the aid of anyone associated with British rule.66 From the other side, Unionists joined the disapproving chorus. When Lord Aberdeen offered a New York speech, which emphasized “injustices” committed by the British and a modest defence of Sinn Féin, he was summarily attacked by an Episcopalian (Anglican) bishop who insisted “that the main trouble with the Irish arose from intense superstition and too much liquor” or “‘Rum and superstition.”67 Such partisans rejected conciliation or evidence contrary to their prejudices. In any case, war and post-war events in Ireland left the couple ever more on the sidelines. Asquith’s May 1915 coalition government included Liberals, Unionists, and Conservatives but not the Irish Parliamentary Party, the embodiment of the Aberdeens’ hopes. Less than a year later, the British brutally repressed Sinn Féin’s Easter Rebellion. The result created nationalist martyrs and only accelerated the rapid decline of the Home Rule option.68 Official unwillingness to accommodate even John Redmond’s modest demand for “special badges and regalia for Irish troops” and “an adequate Catholic chaplaincy,” much like the failure of recognition that hindered recruiting and undermined loyalty in French Canada at the same time, had predictable results.69 There is no indication that Lord Aberdeen’s hopeful suggestion in December 1916 to Asquith’s successor as prime minister, Lloyd George, that the loyal Irish be permitted to enrol in French regiments as an alternative to British service was taken seriously.70 Meanwhile, subsequent viceroys, who largely sided with “the virulently Unionist Ulster Protestant and Irish landlord,” like the abortive attempt to extend conscription to Ireland in 1918, completed the alienation of much of nationalist Ireland.71 In the December 1916 parliamentary election, Sinn Féin won a majority of Irish seats and formed an acting republican government, which in 1919 waged a guerrilla action against the British authorities. The Irish War of Independence (1919–21) raged on for more than eighteen months until a ceasefire led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. This established the Irish Free State as a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations while simultaneously allowing the six counties of northern Ireland to remain in the Union. Despite this official response, the Irish Question remained a festering sore in the heart of the British body politic for decades to come. The new Dublin administration quickly turned out to be far from sympathetic to labour or women, although Constance Markievicz of Sinn Féin was the first woman elected to the British Parliament. She refused her seat, sitting instead in the illegal Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, as minister for labour

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in 1919.72 Progressive Home Rulers soon came to despair.73 The trajectory of the dominion and later the republic gave feminists special reason for disillusionment. Such radicals as Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, founder of the militant Irish Women’s Franchise League and critic of the liberal Aberdeens, who toured the United States to gather support for Sinn Féin in 1917, were among those who felt betrayed.74 The new nation’s close alliance with the Roman Catholic Church proved far from emancipatory. While enfranchised in the Free State’s 1922 Constitution, subsequent constitutional revision and “debate over women’s right to a public, political identity” regularly undermined equality.75 By 1952, it has been estimated “there were fewer women in elected politics than in 1922 and their impact and effectiveness were undoubtedly less.”76 For all such disappointments, the Aberdeens maintained their dedication to Ireland. When the House of Lords held Irish debates, John Gordon spoke out for humane and inclusive solutions.77 In 1918, he typically wrote to the New York Times endorsing help for Dublin’s poor.78 Two years later, when a huge meeting gathered at London’s Albert Hall to debate official policy in Ireland, he stood firmly on the side of future Labour MP and Britain’s first female Cabinet minister, Margaret Bondfield, in condemning the use of the paramilitary “Black and Tans” against nationalist militants. As Bondfield remembered, he “sprang on to a chair and led the cheers,” hardly a gesture likely to endear him to the Coalition government.79 A year later, Times readers were confronted with Lord Aberdeen’s warning that Whitehall’s’s hard-line policies would “not only [serve] to plunge Ireland into the throes of war and misery, but … jeopardize, and more than jeopardize, the security and welfare of the British Empire and of regions beyond it.” He firmly faulted the “Orange Party” and Ulster Unionists for their “blindness of vision fatal to a clear and just judgment on their part” and once more endorsed a united Ireland.80 In the same year, Edinburgh’s Scotsman reported Ishbel’s rejection of coercion and appeal for “a general amnesty” with “a full offer of Dominion status with fiscal autonomy being first made by vote of Parliament.”81 Such determined loyalty to long-held ideals rallied the usual enemies, including one who cited Canadian precedents in wondering why coercion was supposedly good for Ulster but not for the southern counties of the island, a question never publicly answered by the Aberdeens.82 While a former viceroy found it more difficult to rush regularly across the Irish Channel, Ishbel remained steadfastly involved. Her work focused on the Women’s National Health Association with its attention to tuberculosis, child welfare, and sanitaria. During the interwar years, she regularly attended meetings and fundraised for projects. Even open conflict between British troops and Sinn Féin did not stop visits, and her memoirs recalled her fear, extraordinary for a former vicereine, of “being immured in some back room at the [Dublin]

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Castle” by government forces.83 As always, however, she remained hopeful: “it is wonderful that the young Free State was able so soon to restore law and order and the sense of security, and that now, with the awakening of a sense of civic responsibility and with the realization of the part that Ireland may play amongst the nations of the earth, we may look for a new and happier Ireland.”84 Her own contribution to that better day involved continuing efforts to reduce tuberculosis and improve women’s lives. As the biographer of Ishbel’s time in Ireland, Maureen Keane has rightly suggested, however, she was more likely to be remembered in individual hearts than in official accounts.85 Their retreat to the United States for many months during the Great War laid both Gordons open to charges of personal disloyalty or even treason. They were never, however, pacifists. The military service of the Aberdeens’ second son, the engineer Dudley Gordon, and the ambulance and nursing contributions of Marjorie gave the couple personal cause to support the war effort. In 1915, the former viceroy proudly drew his son’s bomb expertise to the attention of Lloyd George and insisted upon his own commitment to the struggle.86 A year later, the anxious John Gordon felt sufficiently hard-pressed to write to English newspapers to dispel “a rumour which had been given some currency in England.” While singling out his engagement with a Boston fundraiser for the allies, Lord Aberdeen insisted: “I have never attended a pacifist or intervention meeting. I am absolutely in accord with the declarations of Mr Asquith and Mr Lloyd George concerning peace.”87 The year 1917 saw him just as selfconscious when he wrote again to the prime minister, Lloyd George, to insist that his work for the Irish WNHA meant “better service for our country here than if we had been at home.”88 The couple’s apprehension about their reception was well founded. Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947), president of Columbia University, long-time chair of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, and future winner with Jane Addams (1860–1935) of the Nobel Peace Prize (1933), had to defend them even to erstwhile friends. Butler wrote to the executive of the National Council of Women of Canada, which was being harassed by fervent patriots’ denunciations of its founder, to contradict damaging rumours: Their high position, their long service to the Empire and their practical distri­ bution of their own fortune in philanthropic work should, I think, protect them from the possibility of any such rumours even in times of public hysteria like those through which we have been living. I saw a great deal of Lord and Lady Aberdeen while they were here in New York, and any more loyal and devoted servants and friends of the British Empire it would be hard to imagine.89

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Controversy nevertheless plagued the entire wartime sojourn in North America. Even years later, Aberdeen remained self-conscious: his memoirs stressed fostering Anglo-American friendship, support for the League of Nations, and the British Military Commission’s hearty acceptance of his “services as a lay civilian assistant.” A photo depicting his inspection of US naval cadets was prominently featured. Unspecified criticism was dismissed as having a “complete absence of foundation.”90 Commitment to a constitutional settlement in Ireland and fundraising for Irish charities in the United States were not to be confused with pacifism or disloyalty to the Crown. Liberalism at Home and Abroad Even as the Liberal Party obviously failed when it came to Home Rule, the Aberdeens stuck to their allegiance in the interwar years. In contrast, their heir, the Earl of Haddo, exited the ranks of the “progressive” party on the London County Council. In the process, he railed against a Labour Party “of Socialists & Communists” eager for “Revolutionary upheaval” and a “socialistic attack on the Constitution.”91 His parents knew his feelings and agreed that taxation on good landlords was far too heavy but they still dreamed of cross-class alliances. In contrast, the second son, Dudley, was considered a loyal Liberal, while their grandson Henry John Sinclair sympathized with the Labour Party.92 In old age, the Aberdeens themselves treasured their long-standing romantic totem, “the Laird” who “was the friend of people and his children were just Tom, Mary, and Jane to the villagers.” To be sure, this relationship might “have been somewhat feudal,” but Ishbel and her husband preferred to believe that it was also “democratic.”93 That contradictory ideal, essentially one more version of welfare monarchism, kept them out of both Conservative and Labour camps. Granted somewhat more respect over the years as the bankruptcy of party leadership in Ireland and elsewhere became more self-evident, John Campbell Gordon served largely quietly as a Liberal veteran with speeches few in number and generally short in length. He also patiently and sometimes eccentrically soldiered on as the lord lieutenant of Aberdeenshire, a position that would be handed to his heir when he died.94 Ishbel was significantly more visible in the Women’s Liberal Federations and party meetings of both men and women. In many ways, the couple functioned as stalwart elders to a party that struggled to emerge out of coalition governments during and after the First World War and never again won a majority, yielding even the role of Official Opposition to Labour. In the 1935 elections, British politics were further complicated when a Scottish National Party, whose constituency included former Liberals, entered

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the fray.95 Even if she believed that the northern kingdom was not getting “a good deal” from the Union, Ishbel, however, rejected any separatist agenda.96 Scots of all classes should unite with Liberals everywhere. That dream was not to be. The 1920s and 1930s have been reckoned “decades of ideological crisis for liberalism.”97 The role of Scottish aristocrats in the politics of the day was diverse, but historian Ian Hutchison has suggested that “on a range of social questions, the aristocracy proved quite forward-looking.” Aberdeen’s brother-in-law, the Tory Lord Balfour of Burleigh, for example, joined a “government committee sent in to investigate the unrest on Clydeside in the First World War” and otherwise demonstrated broad sympathies.98 The same scholar has also, however, judged the Scottish Liberal Party as “both threadbare and elderly,” with the Aberdeens part of a “landed elite” that contributed to its appearance of irrelevance.99 Both these assessments seem largely true. Well-intentioned Scottish aristocrats of the Balfour and Aberdeen generation struggled to find a footing in a nation where new men, such as David Lloyd George and Ramsay Macdonald (1866–1937), with origins in the working class, became prime minister. In many lectures and meetings, Lady Aberdeen nevertheless exhorted Liberal partisans to keep the old faith even as they moved with the times. In 1926, in an address to the Scottish Liberal Women’s Council on the occasion of Asquith’s final departure as leader, she typically forecast a future in which “their Joshua” would “lead them into that promised land [of victory],” and reassured listeners “that he – or perhaps she – (applause) – would turn up in good time.” In the meantime, “truth and right would still go marching on.” In particular, she recommended “a little Liberal mothering” for faithless “men in Liberal ranks” by “rightly trained and rightly guided” and “up-to-date” women workers.”100 Women could do what was necessary for redemption, as could a party that was prepared to listen to them. A few years later, John Gordon summed up the couple’s guiding philosophy in all its naïveté and hope for Glasgow’s Young Liberals: Liberalism may justly claim to represent in the most complete manner, the principles of Freedom. This does not impugn the sincerity of the supporters of other political creeds, which they may consider to be the best, on the whole, for our country. But we Liberals believe that we are following the more excellent way, because our creed is unhampered by any class interest, tradition, or preference. For it stands for the practical application of the Golden Rule.101

While a proud testament, this was hardly a fighting creed likely to revive a party in the doldrums. Inasmuch as their lives remained dedicated to liberalism, the

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Aberdeens shared in its dwindling authority when it largely failed to articulate a sufficiently credible or attractive alternative to the other parties. Liberalism on the Home Front Although far from the front ranks of activists, the Aberdeens stood by longstanding interests in liberal causes, notably, those to do with women and children. In May 1919, Lord Aberdeen typically moved an amendment to the Ministry of Health Act to ensure that women in Ireland were properly represented in appointments. While he finally accepted assurance that their interests were provided for and suggested, in a somewhat confused fashion, that progress no longer required discrimination “between men and women in the sex sense,” he pointed out that many voluntary societies supported his amendment.102 A year later, in familiar sympathies, he proved more successful in promoting a bill to prohibit the “importation of plumage,” pleading “that beautiful birds, the result of myriads of years of evolution,” should not be “exterminated to make a British matron’s picture-hat.”103 In 1922, he defended the retention of female police “in light of women’s wartime performance and expert evidence.”104 At the Conference on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship in 1924, his distance from the main action was suggested by a well-meant but effectively meaningless recommendation of folk dancing as a force for social cohesion.105 In the next decade, Ishbel’s championship of female ordination in the Church of Scotland similarly pursued a familiar worthwhile cause.106 For all their excellence, such concerns were remote from the centre of British politics where class warfare, as with the general strike of 1926, bit far harder. Despite the prominence of the City of Aberdeen during that cathartic conflict, the Aberdeens seemed invisible and irrelevant. The frequent hostility of the Scottish churches to the strike was, however, widely shared among Liberals and the upper classes generally.107 Nor was the couple found in the forefront of intertwar feminist politics, such as that embodied in the National Council of Women Citizens’ Associations, which Sue Innes has suggested contributed to the “period 1918–30 as one of considerable political activity, particularly in developing women’s role and influence in relation to established political institutions and in civil society.” In 1918, the Edinburgh Women Citizens’ Association alone counted some 1,000 members.108 Whereas as a young countess, she had been a prominent supporter of women’s rights in cities such as Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and London, Ishbel now seemed more occasional icon than activist. Her public recommendations, as in a reception for female legislators in 1922, tended to emphasize long-standing themes such as “political education.”109 Like many older feminists, she often communicated

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disappointment in the next generation when it failed to exploit the vote in ways that had been anticipated. Her party’s determined betrayal of feminism had, however, reaped a predictable harvest: the flight of activists from its ranks to Labour and elsewhere on the left only grew in the interwar years. The Women’s Liberal Federations faced the “ignominy of near-irrelevance” and could not elect even their seasoned candidates to Parliament.110 During the Great Depression, Britain’s Liberal Party faced the special temptation of coalition politics, or popular fronts. Noteworthy and much debated was the so-called Next Five Years plan of 1935.111 The widowed Lady Aberdeen signed this manifesto alongside a cross-section of the nation’s liberal left, which included the female principals of Oxford’s Margaret Hall and St Hugh’s College, Professor Julian S. Huxley (1887–1975), female parliamentarians including the Conservative Miss Frances Marjorie Graves (1884–1961) and the Independent Eleanor Rathbone (1872–1946),112 and novelist H.G. Wells (1866–1946). Even the future Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan (1894–1986), was a signatory, demonstrating the broad appeal of proactive policy in dealing with depression and fascism. The “Next Five Years” promised “a far-reaching but attainable programme of action.”113 It combined “socialist and non-socialist economic ideas – to create, in fact, a mixed economy – in order to achieve a just society.” A chapter on “Social Justice” offered guidance to a future “‘National Government of the Left.’”114 While toeing a pro–League of Nations line on security, proposals for domestic reform were far more wide ranging, foreshadowing, one scholar has argued, “progressive policies that would come to characterize the post-war consensus decade, most notably the concept of a ‘mixed economy’ of public and private enterprise, a vaguely Keynesian public program to even out the trade cycle, and a host of social reforms under the organizing concept of a ‘national minimum,’ including a forty-eight-hour working week and higher unemployment benefits and pensions.”115 Here was the promise of the new liberalism long advocated by the Aberdeens. Part of various efforts at progressive coalitions in these years, the “Next Five Years” group received a mixed response, denounced as “socialistic” in some quarters and “reactionary” in others, a crossfire with which Ishbel would have been familiar.116 Few ultimately accepted its “faith in the humane use of science and reason to solve economic difficulties and preserve democratic institutions and liberties.”117 In any case, as Daniel Ritschel has concluded, it became little more than a largely Liberal talking group, unable “either to seek a large membership or to organize as an electoral force.”118 Historian G.D.H. Cole’s conclusion in 1935 ultimately seemed on the mark: “If the Labour Party had never developed into a national party seeking an independent majority, if the Liberal Party of 1906 had remained intact to the present time, the policy here

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laid down might have stood a reasonable chance of being largely put into force by a Liberal Government. But as matters actually stand it will not be put into force, because it is incapable of being translated into the policy of a Government commanding a parliamentary majority.”119 Equally dismissively, he characterized proponents as “all the people who are in the habit of signing collectively progressive protests,” “a magnificent gathering of social consciences,” who produced a manifesto of “pre-war vintage.”120 And for all its explicit advocacy of democracy, the group has been fairly described as “elitist,” with leaders unable to build public momentum, what one critic called “officers without rank and file, better known to each other than to the general public, moving in select and narrow circles, carrying almost no electoral weight,” certainly in part a fair description of Lady Aberdeen.121 Membership is nevertheless worth mention in any biography. The interwar years continued her clear distinction between the old liberalism of her mentor Gladstone, whose task had often been “clearing away obstacles in the path of reform” and the “heavier mission of construction.” With “vast forces” arrayed against her old creed, she recommended an amalgam of old and new policies. Up-to-date Liberals should employ the old “weapons” of “faith and faithfulness, love and prayer” even as they waged modern campaigns for justice. Ishbel urged supporters to “pray and act, and above all do not be afraid.”122 Her hopes for the emergence of a progressive coalition persisted right up to the months before the Second World War. February 1939 found her considering the “popular front” petition of Labour Party activist Sir Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), a temptation discouraged by the Liberal leader of the day.123 By that time, too, her thoughts lay as well increasingly more with war clouds than domestic coalitions. Liberal Internationalism In international, as in domestic, matters, the Aberdeens remained committed to greater cooperation under progressive leadership. They supported diverse efforts to alleviate global distress even as familiar faith-based work retained its hold on their hearts. After the Great War, they applauded Quaker relief efforts in famine-stricken post-revolutionary Russia: “Nothing, since the war came to an end, has done so much to revive faith in human idealism and sympathy.”124 They should be numbered among a group termed “the new internationalists” who, building on an earlier insistence on the humane mission of the British Empire, hoped that “democratic participation and social inclusion would expand above and below the level of the state.”125 This could include dreams, as Archibald Sinclair (1890–1970), Scottish leader of Britain’s Liberal Party, suggested to Ishbel in 1938, of “the ultimate ideal of a federated Europe in

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which all the nations composing it shall have consented to pool a large measure of their sovereignty.” Ultimately, however, the League of Nations was the chief repository of such hopes.126 Such devotion to the League included, as post-colonial scholars now remind us, “a turn to the British Empire as a historic building block in the creation of a new transnational framework of governance and cultural solidarity. New internationalists here built on pre-war ideas of the Empire as an instrument of international peace and solidarity.”127 The high-minded ethnocentric liberal imperialism of John and Ishbel Gordon, like that of their son-in-law Lord Pentland in Madras where he had earlier cultivated Indian nationalists,128 found a ready home in Geneva. Lord Aberdeen was faithful to this creed in arguing that liberalism entailed far more than mere economics: “the chief glory and the noblest mission of our Empire is to promote the Peace of the whole world; and for that purpose the spirit of true Internationalism is necessary.”129 True believers ought to promote “the full share of the British Empire in ensuring the success of the League of Nations, the one central agency for peace.”130 The Aberdeens were, once again, not pacifists. Like many of their Liberal contemporaries, they were apostles of what has been termed “pacific-ism (war can be prevented and eventually abolished by reforms, with defence justified as a way to protect reforms)” rather than “pacifism (war is never permissible).”131 In the 1930s, they would not join would-be appeasers of fascism. The Aberdeens’ American sojourn during the First World War encouraged early commitment to the League of Nations. In wartime, such sympathies were suspect. When the United States entered the war in 1917, the Gordons were delighted to be “unmuzzled.”132 Both soon championed Britain’s League of Nations Union, “the most powerful advocate within Britain of international co-operation and collective security.” By 1925, it numbered over 2,000 local branches and by the early 1930s, over 400,000 members.133 From the Aberdeens’ perspective, support for the League would help guarantee that the “Great War” had indeed been the war “to end war”; any other stance was “nothing short of treason to the country.”134 Just as they had prior to 1914, both John and Ishbel counted on peace education, arguing that proper training and information, particularly by mothers, would dissipate prejudice. Calls to action like the 1924 International Conference on the Prevention of the Causes of War were to “rouse the women of the world to a sense of their personal responsibility.”135 In the next decade, the need was greater still. In 1935, Lady Aberdeen led more than twenty women’s organizations in “urging upon the Government the necessity for the development of a constructive peace policy, and the settlement of international disputes

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by conference and judicial methods through the League of Nations.”136 The delegation championed the “Peace Ballot” endorsed by the League of Nations Union. It drew more than eleven million supporters, “approximately 38 per cent of the adult population.”137 In response to the Spanish Civil War, Lady Aberdeen urged “disapproval of sneering, depreciatory, or suspicious remarks about the people of other countries … Let us now remember that they are brothers, and let us do all in our power to understand and appreciate the characteristics of each country and the contribution which it can bring to the common cause. For this reason, let us encourage the study of languages and make a great point of the children learning modern languages, and taking every opportunity of visiting other countries and of receiving guests from other countries.”138 Her 1938 opening of a new BBC studio, like her husband’s performance of the same task some decade and a half earlier, typically celebrated the part “played by wireless in international affairs and in the work of peace.” Like railways and the telegraph before it, radio promised “a new unity of heart and purpose to humanity.”139 As late as 1939, Ishbel joined women from thirty-one nations in Glasgow at the Peace Pavilion where they pledged “themselves to do everything in their power in the cause of peace.”140 Before he died, John showed clear signs of anxiety about the future. In correspondence in 1933 with Austin Chamberlain (1863–1937), a leading Conservative politician and early critic of appeasement towards Germany, Aberdeen feared that there was an “incessant and skillfully planned plot, endowed with ample means and relentless determination, to prevent the success of the Disarmament Conference” and insisted that aerial bombing was not acceptable.141 After her husband’s death, Ishbel increasingly worried about European fascism. This explains her support for progressive educator Kurt Hahn (1886–1974), whose Jewish origin made him a Nazi target. When he fled to Britain and established Gordonstoun School in northeast Scotland in 1934, Lady Aberdeen quickly became his ally.142 By 1936, even as she championed peace, she joined Maude Royden (1876–1956), a prominent Christian feminist preacher and anti-war activist, in calling for League of Nations sanctions against Italy in its attack on Abyssinia.143 A year later, while hopeful about Scotland’s young people welcoming “your brothers of other races,” she denounced the loss of liberties and the rise of hatreds and new wars around the world.144 When Japan invaded Manchuria, she blamed its leaders “not the will of the Japanese people.” They, she assured her audience, preferred a “Peace Government.”145 By then, however, many Liberals had given up on the League as a bulwark against war, and Ishbel was moving into that despairing camp as well.146 The wars in China, Spain, and Abyssinia, the remilitarization of the Rhineland, and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia confirmed the dangers of

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fascism. In her sympathies for Spanish republicans and the free Czechs, Ishbel Gordon stood publicly alongside other anti-appeasers such as Conservative MP Katharine Stewart-Murray, the so-called Red Duchess of Atholl (1874–1960), and Liberals such as Archibald Sinclair and Violet Asquith Bonham Carter, her youngest son’s former fiancée.147 In typical gestures, she opposed running a Liberal candidate against Atholl in 1938 and joined Bonham Carter, as well as a Hogg cousin, on a committee in support of the Scottish Ambulance Unit in Spain.148 Her last months of life saw the octogenarian speaking before the Aberdeen Committee for Spanish Relief149 and elsewhere protesting the occupation of Czechoslovakia, “helping with refugees, buying Czech goods for Christmas presents, [and] urging everyone else to do the same.”150 Even as Lady Aberdeen struggled to maintain her faith that war could be averted, her fears were clear. By 1938, as president of the North and North East Scotland branch of the League of Nations Union, she insisted: there was no necessity for any one country to stand alone, and that, if righteousness and justice were to prevail, there must be some kind of collective action and security … There is much kinship between the Czechs and the people of Scotland, and as to-day we accept humbly and thankfully the great gift of peace, let us remember at what price it has been purchased for us by those heroic people, and the noble spirit in which that sacrifice which has been forced upon them has been accepted for the good of the world … we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that there were other forces at work besides those of the claims of justice, and that decisions have been made at the Tribunal of Force – the arbitration of might, rather than of mercy and truth.151

Later, only weeks from death in 1939, Ishbel went further still, stating: “The subjugation of Bohemia is nothing but the triumph of cruel, callous, and ruthless force … the breakdown of international law and justice, and the issues before the British people are such that if we fail to face them we shall be forever dishonoured.” The convalescent marchioness urged that “steps” be “immediately taken to bring law and order into European affairs” and that Britain lead in ensuring that the “remaining free peoples of Europe … make common cause not against either Germany or Italy, but against this new and terrible … international affairs. Too long Russia has been allowed to be in isolation, and her co-operation and help should be sought, for no nation has been more loyal to the League than the Union of Soviet Republics.”152 Two years earlier, in the Children’s Newspaper, an admirer had hailed the peace advocate as “this Happy Warrior upon whom Time leaves no mark except to make her more valiant, more resolute, and more unflinching.” That portrait remained true. Not so,

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however, “her faith that All is Well.”153 At her death, on 18 April 1939, the League of Nations Union president clearly anticipated the tragedy of the Second World War. Devotion to conciliation and cooperation offered no remedy; nor, she understood, did appeasement. Women’s Rights and the ICW The pervasive disarray of interwar British liberalism and the signs of mounting global conflict made the International Council of Women all the more attractive a custodian of Lady Aberdeen’s hopes for a better future. When at the close of her life, she attempted to describe its personal significance, she stressed the inspiration of “a great wave of Divine power” that upheld her in face of “difficulties of which I had never dreamt” and in working “with women far better educated & trained than myself with ideas very much of their own, on subjects which I have never studied.”154 In her hands, as in many others, feminist leadership remained far more than a secular calling. The couple’s publication of The Women of the Bible in 1927 (and regularly reprinted), with its affirmation that both sexes “form the perfect humanity” and that early Christian women were “forerunners” of modern activists, reflected their continuing confidence in religion as a source of authority.155 Where other resources, such as education, might be lacking, faith made the difference. Ishbel’s memoir revealingly left unmentioned the advantages of rank. Spiritual capital was in contrast at least potentially democratic and, perhaps, even merit-based as suited a good liberal. Ishbel Gordon did not stand for re-election at the first post-war ICW Congress in 1920 since, as a citizen of a former belligerent, she believed she should defer to a candidate from a neutral country. Soon enough, however, she returned as president, remaining so from 1922 to 1936. Although the ICW became more professionally organized in these years, it continued to rely heavily on volunteers. The Scottish aristocrat became an increasingly symbolic figure in international feminist circles. This reflected not only her popularity and talent but the absence of well-resourced alternatives, the attraction of ICW rivals and League of Nations posts for those who might otherwise have been tempted, and the tremendous difficulties facing executive officers of women’s international organizations in these years. ICW Competition and Opposition A 1938 fascist salute for Lady Aberdeen by the president of the National Council of Women of Italy signalled the contested nature of claims to a common womanhood within the ICW.156 As historian Christine Bolt has emphasized,

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unity became all the more difficult “in a world that, far from embracing visions of progress, was instead afflicted by political reaction, economic insecurity, polarizing nationalism and resurgent anti-feminism.”157 Socialism, communism, and nationalist movements proved strong competitors for loyalty and time while women of non-European origin increasingly contested the right of supposedly well-intentioned “sisters” to lead. Even long-standing alliances between American and British activists came under strain, again as Christine Bolt demonstrates so well, with the former increasingly confident about their international mission and the second wrestling with the implications of the decline of British imperial influence and prestige. Whereas the ICW had been an early expression of women’s global organization, it now faced substantial rivals. In the interwar years alone, some “forty new women’s international organizations were created.”158 Some like the Inter-Allied Suffrage Conference, the International Federation of University Women, the International Federation of Women in Legal Careers, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom might sometimes be partners, but others such as the International Union of Catholic Women’s Leagues, the International Socialist Women’s Committee, the International Federation of Working Women, the National Council of African Women, and the Communist Women’s International were far more sceptical.159 As Leila Rupp has argued, members of the ICW like those in other global sisterhoods often became fiercely devoted to their own associations, reluctant to admit their failings or the merits of others.160 The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the appearance of fascism hardened divisions, while long-standing nationalist and ethnic differences made loyalties all the more complicated and divisive. ICW Cooperation and Community Divisions are, however, only one side of a complicated interwar story. As scholars like Bolt, Rupp, Joan Sangster, and others argue, international associations offered a powerful vision of shared concerns, identity, and transnational friendships.161 Obvious evidence of continuing discrimination and oppression of women in matters from citizenship to employment and sexuality encouraged cooperation at many levels. In offering an unprecedented site for the global discovery, articulation, and organization of women’s rights, the League of Nations itself fostered many efforts at a common front. The idea of a distinctive female nature and culture, one more attuned to peacemaking and cooperation than men’s, might have seemed old-fashioned, but it remained influential. Faith in women’s special character offered, as in the past, a pragmatic foothold in the public world.

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Many mainstream international groups such as the ICW, much like the League itself and its successor the United Nations, as Mark Mazower has so effectively argued, although with a conspicuous neglect of gender,162 remained united by confidence in the superiority of the West and its right to guide and instruct supposedly less emancipated civilizations. For elite Western women, this pervasive chauvinism offered “a strategy with high risks and class overtones, but with some educational, welfare and organization benefits for their overseas sisters, as well as gratification for themselves.”163 Lady Aberdeen remained representative of this contradictory heritage of inspiration. For all the influential conventions that legitimized a public role for their sex, women’s entry into male-dominated policy realms, especially those in foreign affairs, was strongly resisted by masculinist traditions and male power-brokers at the League and in individual nations. By the late 1920s, the rise of fascism, most notably in Germany, Italy, and Spain, but elsewhere as well, accentuated underlying misogyny that for the most part preferred women silent and at home. Such opposition curbed feminist prospects, putting a premium on caution and at least the appearance of conciliation, one explanation for what might otherwise seem merely conservatism on the part of the ICW. By the 1930s, serious threats to its German and Jewish members provided especially ominous reminders of the dangers to free women. That worsening scenario offered as well, however, another spur to unity, sometimes prompting the equivalent of “common fronts” among women. Even the proliferation of associations could itself suggest a shared vision. In 1920, the creation of the International Council of Women of the Darker Races spoke to the reality of exclusion but also to a meaningful model for bringing diverse groups of women into association.164 In 1938, the National Council of African Women similarly deliberately invoked the example of the ICW and acknowledged its indebtedness to South African Council member and antiracist activist Edith Rheinallt-Jones (1884–1953).165 The ICW used the opportunity presented by new groups to contribute to effective alliances, such as the Liaison Committee of Women’s International Organizations in 1931, in matters ranging from citizenship and employment to trafficking and prostitution.166 As one history of women and the United Nations has suggested, issues became globalized in an unprecedented fashion during the interwar years as “women in official government delegations, representatives of women’s organizations and women in significant positions in the League of Nations kept in touch with each other and acted in consort to further their common objectives.”167 It is nevertheless true that this influence remained highly constrained. As Carol Miller has pointed out, League officials valued the ICW and sister bodies, but their influence was largely restricted “to influencing public opinion in favour of

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the League and its policies and acting as assessors on the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and on the Child Welfare Committee.”168 All else was to remain largely men’s monopoly. As one of the more conventional of international feminist bodies, the ICW responded to interwar cross-currents by reasserting faith in women’s shared nature and trying to maintain an appearance of reason and leadership that might win it liberal audiences. This strategy, familiar from the early suffrage debates, once again both invited and alienated, offering both a shelter and a zone of exclusion. For some Russian and German feminists, the ICW and Aberdeen in particular provided essential reassurance in their battles with authoritarian regimes. Other activists, like those in Croatia and in South America, complained about domination and African and Asian-origin women, like working-class and poorer women everywhere, had even more reason to feel their interests went largely unrepresented. In this cauldron of hope and frustration, the aging Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon provided both a reassuring and a frustrating beacon. Aberdeen’s Presidency In the ICW, Lady Aberdeen sponsored “an appealing as well as a powerful women’s culture, based on a veneration for the maternal qualities said to be universally displayed by women in child rearing, home making and social reform.”169 As Christine Bolt emphasizes, that powerful message still crossed national borders. Paulina Luisi (1875–1940), founder of Uruguay’s National Council of Women in 1917, was typical of many members who, whatever their differences with headquarters, linked motherhood and feminist activism in building global linkages.170 As always, Aberdeen summarized this shared community as involving women’s adherence to the “Golden Rule,” a code of principles that invoked Christianity but went well beyond it as well.171 Her 1916 tour of the US State of Utah, as a cherished guest of Mormon Council members, demonstrated the breadth of the ICW tent she strove to nurture.172 The First World War proved a terrible stumbling block to such dreams. Peacemaking loomed as controversial and divisive and the ICW shied away from the fight. Even as forthright pacifist feminists formed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Lady Aberdeen attempted to guarantee Council survival by rejecting “premature” peace efforts and recommending only the study of international relations in preparation for the armistice.173 Such views made her admired by many Americans, neutral until 1917. At the 1916 San Francisco meetings of the National Council of Women of the United States, she was hailed as “a living example of the truly international

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woman.”174 When Ishbel addressed them on “International Co-operation,” enthusiastic organizers reported “women of every race and creed, women of every walk in life, suffragists, and anti-neutrals and belligerents, unfurled the banner of mutual tolerance and through the entire sessions of this International Congress of Women the delicate equilibrium of neutrality has been kept. The Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair may return to Canada and thence to Scotland secure in the knowledge that her pledge to the International Council of Women has remained intact.”175 American members were likewise determined not to compromise their own appearance of impartiality in the global conflict: “We will do nothing: not even honor Lady Aberdeen by a salute to her flag, if in so doing, we will impinge on our neutrality; each one of us must keep our hearts from bitterness, if we would keep unbroken, the solidarity of womanhood. We have our great part to play after the war is over, and we must hold ourselves ready to be the gathering point of women from all of the stricken countries.”176 Like the long-time president, they conceded that women’s global cooperation had to take a back seat to war. Despite such caution, Lord Aberdeen had to contradict rumours that the couple was attending a peace conference, rather than the non-partisan meeting of the NCWUS in California.177 Once the United States entered the war, troubles only multiplied. Pervasive hostility from super-patriots such as the Daughters of the American Revolution hastened their return to Scotland.178 After the armistice, ICW leaders set about to repair damage within their own ranks and to assert leadership over rivals in international affairs. An immediate focus was the League of Nations. Although the ICW was still credited in some quarters as “hardly … well known to the general public,” old prestige opened doors.179 In 1919, Lady Aberdeen personally applied to US President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) for input in determining the nature of the League. In return, Wilson singled out, without granting them real power, ICW members as representative of “‘the mothers of the world.’” At the Peace Conference, Ishbel headed a “Joint Delegation” drawn from the Council and the Inter-Allied Conference of Women Suffragists. They won important agreement that League members would outlaw traffic in women and children, endorse suffrage, and consult both sexes with regard to changes in nationality.180 Thus favourably began the critical interwar relationship between the ICW and the League. In 1920, the first post-war Congress assembled in Norway some 300 delegates from twenty-six national councils, a site chosen for its wartime neutrality. Membership now included Russia, Ukrainia (the contemporary name for Ukraine), Iceland, and Mexico, but the previously powerful German Council declined participation so long as its country was excluded from the League of Nations. To emphasize its own sympathy, the ICW nominated the absent

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Dr Alice Salomon (1872–1948), a long-time German social work activist and Ishbel’s friend, as vice-president. The same desire for at least the appearance of non-partisanship led Lady Aberdeen to support Pauline ChaponnièreChaix (1850–1934), president of the National Council of Women of neutral Switzerland, as her successor. A scant two years later, however, the latter had to step down, unable to manage the financial and other demands of leadership. Only Aberdeen was positioned to preside. Familiar financial curbs on who could meaningfully assume executive positions encouraged the ICW to attempt to widen the applicant pool by beginning to subsidize officers’ expenses in the 1920s. Fees from national affiliates proved at best, however, unreliable, and the shortfall only worsened during the Great Depression, when Canada among many others proved delinquent. In the 1930s, even Aberdeen relied on external subsidies, in her case from the still older Sophia Sanford, widow of a Canadian millionaire and senator and long-term ICW treasurer.181 At a time when the ICW endeavoured to make its lobbying more effective through offices first in London and then in Geneva, financial stringency handicapped all efforts. At Oslo (then Christiania) and subsequently, highly charged interactions between former enemies required careful handling. When the Austrian delegate, a representative of one of the powers defeated in the First World War, faltered nervously in greeting the assembly in 1920, Ishbel Gordon demonstrated the cause of some part of her influence when she sprang to the side of her nation’s former enemy, producing “a wave of fellow-feeling.”182 Her address sounded the same note. Highlighting the value of conciliation, it emphasized common identity since “women had no power” to prevent the war. They were only too likely to be its victims. Aberdeen also invoked a better future since the war’s legacy of enfranchisement now promised “justice” to those “whose instinctive desire is to create and protect life.”183 Equally symbolic of claims to women’s essential unity was her reception of other delegates in Norway. Lady Aberdeen, who had previously smoothed the path of Black American activist Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) in Britain, welcomed the first “negro” delegates to attend ICW meetings.184 At a postconference dinner at Haddo House, where she entertained all the Americans, she placed a “Negro” delegate on her right and “the representative of the Jewish women” on her left, leaving, it was reported, “southern white women furious.”185 Nor were Aberdeen’s sympathies fleeting, as her earlier friendships with elite British Jews like Hannah, Lady Rosebery (1851–1890), and Henrietta Franklin (1866–1964) attested.186 In 1923, the US National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People singled out Aberdeen’s continuing friendship for Mary Burnett Talbert (1866–1923), the anti-lynching crusader whom

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she had honoured at Haddo House in 1920.187 In the context of racism, such public performances of female solidarity supplied a powerful liberal statement that Ishbel proudly enacted, just as she had performed much the same service for Irish nationalists. Such inclusive moments and inclinations nevertheless also typified the ICW’s preoccupation with Europe and North America, where Black and Jewish women formed important organizations. The Oslo meetings directed attention to Geneva as the new centre of women’s international ambition. Just as with its own constitutional provision for national autonomy, the Council asked the League of Nations to respect “national peculiarities … in ethics, manners, and customs from being interfered with.”188 Only tolerance could produce a workable global assembly, whether of women or of nations. Two years later, Aberdeen invoked the same spirit in reiterating the comparison between the two forums for discussion and cooperation. When “women of all races, creeds and classes, meet together and discuss questions which might well produce strife and dissension,” their “attitude of sympathetic understanding, coupled with a sincere endeavour to realise and enter into another’s condition and circumstances,” supplied a glimpse of “the high road to that period of permanent peace between the nations for which we all sigh.”189 Just as with the League, however, good will could not always dispel old hostilities. Positions often reflected national agendas, as with Avril de Sainte-Croix (1855–1939), president of the French National Council of Women. In her efforts to succeed Aberdeen and to contain German candidates and sympathizers, she communicated regularly with her government.190 The early 1920s nevertheless looked promising for joint ventures in aid of women’s rights. ICW members appeared busy and useful in addressing the League Assembly and attending conferences of the International Labour Office. In 1922, the first issue of the ICW Bulletin emerged in English, German, and French, while the decade produced new member councils in Chile, Estonia, Romania, Latvia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Poland, Ireland, and the Palestine Mandate, and promising news from India. In the same spirit of cooperation, the ICW began routinely to send representatives to a range of international conferences. At a reception for the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and female MPs and candidates in London in 1922, Aberdeen emphasized the value of enhanced collaboration as she both thanked new politicians and insisted “that national and international affairs could not be properly managed without a goodly proportion of women working together with men.”191 Especially important for Ishbel was the ICW’s post-war reaffirmation of a special mandate for child welfare. As she insisted, the “world-builders” of the new day had special responsibility for ensuring “a firm foundation of health of body, vigour of mind, and purity of ideal.”192 Significantly, however, Lady

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Aberdeen never used such endorsements to raise the divisive question of birth control, which she argued was a matter for religion and thus not within the ICW mandate.193 The 1920s might have been the decade of the flapper, but the ICW’s frequent discomfort with modern dress and behaviour, like its inattention to contraception, drew on a conservative vision of propriety.194 Aberdeen’s retention of garb that invoked the 1890s rather than the interwar years made the same point. Whatever her personal appearance of being out of date, Ishbel Gordon, even in her sixties and seventies, sometimes seemed irreplaceable. In 1924, she became the first convener of the Standing Committee on Child Welfare and oversaw the ICW’s contribution to the Children’s Charter, with its list of minimum rights, presented to the League by the International Save the Children Fund. She also enthusiastically sponsored peace initiatives, which once again became suitable for collective endorsement. The ICW typically joined with the World Temperance Union and the World Alliance for Promoting Peace through the Churches to organize a 1924 London conference on the causes of war in association with the British Empire Exhibition.195 At this event, as elsewhere in the same cause, the countess lent more than her name. Although sometimes observed to nod off on a platform, she remained prepared to speak, to write, to lobby, and to organize. And there is little doubt that, for all her occasional protests, she enjoyed her pre-eminence. By the time of the Washington Congress, in May 1925, the ICW appeared at first glance to be flourishing. While members fiercely debated peace, among other topics, its lively forum attracted representatives from twenty-nine international bodies, including the International Labour Organization and the League itself, even as Aberdeen claimed the ICW’s right to represent the “voice of organized womanhood” on “subjects of world interest.”196 Estonian nationalist writer Aino Kallas (1878–1956) summed up the meaning of the moment for some: “The world’s map is, so to speak, now peopled for me.”197 Others, however, were less sanguine. The experienced Canadian feminist politician Irene Marryat Parlby (1868–1965)198 saw only the past: “Lady Aberdeen, though evidently warmly regarded by many of the delegates and undoubtedly a woman of kindly, generous heart and sincere interest in her work, does not shine as a chairwoman, and one could not but wish that the conference had had the good sense to select from its own ranks someone with the qualities that are so necessary for the handling of any large meeting.” From her perspective, the future stood rather with “labor organizations” and “the great agricultural organizations,” but she was “convinced that the ideals of both these great groups were alien and not understood or even known by a large number of the delegates: how then could they represent the womanhood of the different

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nations in any adequate way?”199 That crushing question was never adequately answered in these years. In the same decade, the ICW nevertheless worked somewhat successfully with seven international women’s groups, including the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the International Federation of University Women to initiate the Joint Standing Committee of Women’s International Organizations to lobby for improved representation of women in all League activities. The Council also attempted to become more inclusive with executive recruitment drives to South America and recognition of Spanish as a semiofficial language for its proceedings. In the same spirit of a wider dialogue, Aberdeen returned to early interests in 1929 to foster the creation of the Liaison Committee of Rural Women’s Organizations. Vitality was equally suggested by the emergence in the same year of plans for constitutional revision and reorganization led by Aberdeen’s protégé Dr Salomon. The commitment of such energetic younger women, like approving references by Vera Brittain (1893–1970), feminist writer, pacifist, and nursing veteran of the First World War, to Aberdeen and the ICW’s recommendation of courses in “fathercraft” as a means of reducing maternal mortality in 1928,200 appeared to augur well for take-up by another generation. At the 1929 meetings, the juxtaposition of a white child “with a star of hope on her forehead” and “the tall figure of a beautiful young [again white] woman,” the first to represent ICW’s 1888 beginnings and the latter the modern day, suggested a bright future, albeit captained, once again, by the West.201 The site of the 1930 quinquennial meetings in Vienna, Austria, seemed to confirm that old enmities had fallen before dedication to a common cause. Aberdeen used the occasion to defend the Council’s preference for moderation and multiple causes: strength lay, she again insisted, in a broad rather than a narrow mandate and claims that it was “old-fashioned and out of date as compared with some of the younger international societies” were short-sighted and wrong-headed.202 The adoption of a “Charter of Mothers” at the Vienna Congress further reminded observers of the fundamentals of what united many women around the world. Great hopes were confirmed by the decision to meet every three rather than five years and the affiliation of Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, and Lithuania. There were nonetheless signs of unrest. While the details are not yet clear, a somewhat younger group may have attempted a coup. Certainly, Aberdeen believed that her countrywoman Dr Maria Ogilvie-Gordon, longtime ICW activist and first president of Britain’s National Council of Women’s Citizens’ Associations, was working with Scandinavian members to capture the presidency.203

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The immediate post-war decade offered far more worrying signs. Some international groups such as the Union of Catholic Women’s Leagues had rejected a common front in dealing with the League of Nations.204 The 1925 Washington Congress saw the disappearance of the hard-won Russian National Council of Women established under the presidency of Dr Anna Shabanova (1848–1932), who had sought and received Aberdeen’s advice and emotional support for many years.205 Only a symbolic vice-presidency remained to mark earlier dreams. African-American women experienced and protested segregation when they joined the Washington gathering.206 National representation similarly raised questions of justice and fair play that were largely left for time to sort out. Ukrainian women, often led by those in the North American diaspora, campaigned energetically to maintain their Council’s affiliation even as their homeland was engulfed by Soviet Russia. From their perspective, continued membership in the ICW constituted critical international recognition. In response to such advocates’ insistence that the requisite “responsible government” survived in the Western Ukraine, the ICW instituted a commission of inquiry. It failed to support their case. Aberdeen had to defend exclusion while hearing Ukrainians plead “the cause of the dispossessed.”207 Other nationalists similarly repudiated the status quo. In 1927, Ishbel visited Romania and Hungary as a guest of their national councils and saw rising conflict. She could only hope that women would soon be enfranchised and support the League of Nations and, ultimately, a “United States of Europe.”208 Fascism produced other conflicts. In 1928, the German National Council of Women refused to accept Aberdeen’s recommendation of the Jewish-born Christian convert Alice Salomon as ICW president, while its delegate suggested that Aberdeen herself only survived because “really no one more serviceable is running.”209 By 1933, even as some pro-Nazi women justified Hitler as saving the nation from Bolshevism, the ICW executive under Aberdeen felt forced into silence lest it endanger the lives of Dr Salomon and other German members by public remonstration.210 A few years later, at ICW meetings in Dubrovnik, Croatian women refused to accept the legitimacy of the National Council of Women of Yugoslavia, while Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians “got up rather noisily & left the room” when the Italian representative pointed to African slavery to justify the conquest of Abyssinia.211 By the 1930s, Europe proved as hard to manage by the “parliament of women” as by the League of Nations. Complaints also came from Latin Americans. While Lady Aberdeen was thanked for encouraging a Peruvian candidate to run for one of the vicepresidencies in the mid-1930s, the eventually defeated nominee was ultimately far from satisfied. She objected that the entire “Latin race” in both Europe and the Americas failed to hold any ICW office. Adding insult to the injury of

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elections, the executive failed to exercise its constitutional right to make additional appointments. Instead, the final result saw the British Empire grossly overrepresented. Such outcomes under Aberdeen’s leadership reflected notions of who properly directed the world’s women: the non-British world provided the losers.212 Whatever her personal sympathies, the ICW ultimately often proved a fragile bolster for equality and liberation. As Leila Rupp has pointed out, the Anglocentric ICW nevertheless housed a “counter-discourse” that accepted the need of a broader politics of recognition. In the 1930s, the executive was allowed “to co-opt additional members ‘drawn from any Continent or geographical group of countries outside Europe.’”213 South-West Africa was admitted under this provision in 1938. Similar sympathy produced the first meeting in Asia, in Calcutta in 1936, despite recurring doubts about the competence of non-Western hosts.214 Aberdeen had hoped to attend, but infirmity forced her to substitute her daughter Marjorie, Lady Pentland, who became a ready proxy for her mother on many platforms in this decade. Hopes for the subcontinent nevertheless still drew on Ishbel’s capacity for friendship, notably, earlier with prominent Indian reformer Lady Meherbai Tata (1879–1931), a supporter of the nationalist champion Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948).215 At a memorial to Tata after her death, Aberdeen hailed her as a leader, critical to the “future development of our movement” and mourned the loss of a sister who “held a place apart in my heart, and I thank God for her friendship.”216 Despite her absence, Aberdeen wrote for the Calcutta newspaper, The Statesman, describing the 1936 Indian gathering as “probably the most representative assembly of women that has ever been gathered together in any part of the world.” The event recognized, she argued, “the fine work that has been done in the face of enormous difficulties and persistent discouragement” and “proof of the steadily increasing interest throughout the world in India and her problems.” She acknowledged “formidable” obstacles but, ever the optimist, insisted this was “as true of India as of every other country.” India, too, could not “expect to reach the position to which it aspires in the world until its women play their due part as educated citizens.”217 By the close of the decade, elite women in Burma, Japan, and the Philippines, were contemplating affiliation as a possible source of strength for their own endeavours. Other work continued on many fronts. There was substantial collaborative activity in the Women’s Consultative Committee on Nationality and support for the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Nationality of Women. Far more divisive were debates about protective labour legislation: was it injury or benefit? Like the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, Council members could be found in both camps, but “social” feminists

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such as Aberdeen appeared in the majority. They feared the loss of hard-won legislation that acknowledged women’s vulnerability in the workplace. As women’s right to paid work came under threat everywhere during the Great Depression, the Council endorsed its members’ support for women’s claims.218 The League’s appointment of a Committee of Experts on the Status of Women in 1938 only confirmed the continued need for a feminist presence in Geneva. Early in the 1930s, peace and disarmament moved to the front of the ICW agenda, as it did in British liberalism. A member of an international coalition, the Peace and Disarmament Committee, it helped organize mass petitions for delivery to the League, supported the 1932 Disarmament Conference, and regularly presented the case for peace education. As global security deteriorated, ICW members protested first the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and then the Spanish Civil War. By 1933, the German Council, long a stalwart of international feminism, elected to disband rather than agree to the fascist government’s demands to approve its officers and exclude Jewish members. In 1934, the marchioness urged councils not to lose heart, to maintain their “sisterhood, which has accepted the Golden Rule as the basis of all human relations, whether personal, national or international.” The Council and the League of Nations would still be victorious.219 Privately, she wrote a sympathetic Canadian of her “heartbreak” at the prospect of “a world trembling in fear before dictators,” even as she kept her faith in a “rainbow over Geneva” as the harbinger of a better world.220 Times grew more brutal with the decade bringing the collapse of councils in Iceland, Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay. While 1937 saw Lady Aberdeen nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a Swedish female parliamentarian, war clouds were relentless and many women in the ICW took sides. The Ukrainian activist Hanna Chykalenko-Keller (1884–1964) explained to Aberdeen and Emily Greene Balch (1867–1961) of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom “that Ukrainian women did not espouse war per se, nor were they planning one, but, coming from a dependent and politically divided nationality, they could not reject war completely.”221 In 1936, at the ICW meeting in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, the seventy-nineyear-old Aberdeen handed the presidency over to Marthe Boel (1877–1956), president of Belgium’s NCW and a liberal baroness, who could draw on traditional elite networks. Reception by the queens of Yugoslavia and Romania provided a reminder of the 1899 welcome by Queen Victoria, but the days of monarchs, duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, viscountesses, and baronesses were clearly ending. Aberdeen might rejoice at their presence, but the approval of such figures meant little. The marchioness herself was far from the vital presence who had hosted Victoria in 1899. As the sympathetic Alice Salomon put it, “the younger generation, not having known her in her great period, was

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critical, impatient, even aggressive, and her friends felt that she should not go on any longer.” A seeming relic of another age, Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon had previously often “travelled with an aide-de-camp, a manservant, a maid, and her secretary. Now she often travelled alone to save expenses, and she did not really know how to do it.” She had held on, however, until she felt confident of a “suitable successor” in another elite activist.222 Nor could Lady Aberdeen’s 1936 farewell fail to admit a threatening picture: “In these dark days let us all return to our countries, determined to show our belief that the forces of evil which seem just now to be so active, will not triumph.” She took comfort in a familiar trope, counselling: “It is ever the mission of wives and mothers to console and encourage, and put new hope into the hearts of husbands and sons.”223 How that advice could extinguish the fires of war was, as always, however, far from clear. A year later, Ishbel’s eightieth birthday produced multiple celebrations. In London, a formal dinner assembled Baroness Boel, a former governor general of the Irish Free State, and a host of other dignitaries. The leader of the British Liberal Party, her frequent correspondent Sir Archibald Sinclair, offered a toast that invoked the fate that would, in fact, soon engulf many Council activists: “he did not believe that any circumstances would have made Lady Aberdeen different from what she was. Under a dictatorship instead of being a guest of honour that night she might have been languishing in a concentration camp, but she would have been the same woman, maintaining her sturdy individual independence.” In response, Aberdeen, accepting the honorific of “grannie,” said that she still “dreamed of what her younger friends might accomplish in the future, in a world that had learned to establish abiding good will among the nations.”224 By the time of the ICW’s Scottish meetings in 1938, optimism had grown fainter. The Austria Council and many of its leaders had disappeared. The tone of the day was confirmed by Aberdeen’s advocacy of Glasgow’s new Peace Pavilion and the ICW’s passage of “a resolution against persecution of persons on account of race, religion or political views” and appeal to members to support war relief and refugees.225 While Aberdeen’s heart was clearly with such efforts, she represented a bygone era. One participant typically described her as “looking like Queen Victoria.”226 The feisty eighty-one-year-old had not, however, yet departed the field of battle. As President Boel told delegates, her predecessor still provided critical assistance by working on the recruitment of “Overseas Councils.”227 Thoughts of expansion did not last. In the summer of 1938, Alice Masaryk (1879–1966), sociologist, politician, and the daughter of the Czech president, had apologized to Ishbel for missing the Edinburgh gathering. Red Cross work

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had urgently required her complete attention.228 Czechs would soon be in far worse straits. By November 1938, their Council was appealing for aid as it struggled to help refugees and resist German aggression.229 In the spring of 1939, ICW members heard from the founder of Czechoslovakia’s National Council for the last time; soon enough the Council disappeared, and in 1942 its president was executed.230 Aberdeen spent many of her last days trying to rally support for the Czechoslovaks. As Alice Salomon concluded “her last years were not easy.”231 For all her determined adherence to conciliation and tolerance in the International Council of Women, Ishbel Gordon ultimately could do no more than oppose fascism. At the end of her long life, she had to contemplate the bitter loss of treasured dreams, Home Rule for Ireland, Liberal ascendancy, and global feminism. As always, too, she proved irrepressible, sending encouragement and planning events up to the moment she died. To the end of long lives, Ishbel, like John Campbell Gordon, kept to the duty of elite leadership.

Conclusion

How do we measure lives lived? This question supplies a central preoccupation of Liberal Hearts and Coronets. John Campbell Gordon and Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks Gordon generated a multiplicity of judgments in their own time and they continue to divide opinion. Contemporaries’ discomfort at their performance of masculinity and femininity always complicated assessment. Their association with causes that faltered or failed – elite leadership, liberalism, imperialism, Irish Home Rule, and feminism – sometimes draped them in the garb of losers or eccentrics, categories that public memory rarely dignifies. Fortunately, Ishbel’s prominence in feminist organizations and John’s viceroyalties prevented them from entirely disappearing from history. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, a rich scholarship informs consideration of such imperially minded aristocratic feminist and liberal reformers. Their biographies must now acknowledge both coronets – in other words, self-interest, power, and advantage – alongside hearts – or responsibility, collaboration, and humanity. Ishbel and John, the Aberdeens, possessed all in abundance. Liberal Hearts and Coronets has traced the evolution of a pair of Victorian evangelical aristocrats who embraced a vision of elite, religious, and maternal duty as they sought roles in a world of clashing interests. This ideal extended from the provision of individual charity on their estates to expressions of welfare monarchism, responsible imperialism, new liberalism, and global feminism. Their credentials began with complicated family histories. Both the Gordon and the Marjoribanks clans offered inspiration for simultaneously self-serving and progressive leadership, a debt Ishbel and John believed was owed by the more to the less fortunate. That potential was worked out in the context of an egalitarian marital partnership. John found in Ishbel confirmation of the merits of the more domestic and egalitarian masculinity he had begun to fashion

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before marriage. Her choice of public activism by and on behalf of women drew strength from a supportive husband, but it ultimately depended on the contemporary feminist movement’s unprecedented opening up of space. The Women’s Liberal Federations, the International and National Councils of Women, and viceregal positions in Ireland and Canada gave her influential platforms that matched and more what John found in the House of Lords and roles as the Crown’s representative. The Aberdeens’ interpretation of their mission evolved in a transatlantic liberal world that anticipated the reconciliation of religion and science and trusted in social cooperation under the guidance of responsible governors. Unlike most of their rank, they took up the new liberalism with its promise of a middle ground between the forces of reaction and revolution, between private charity and state welfare. They relished the trappings of high status, but they were frequently prepared to share power and material resources. The couple regularly strove to practise the humane politics that they preached to their tenants, to workers, to the Irish, to women everywhere, and to their peers. That sincerity explains the deep affection they generated in their own lifetimes in every setting where they laboured. For their supporters, these aristocrats embodied the potential of traditional landed authority to recognize the bonds of mutual obligation with those of lower station. In other words, they helped make “aristocracy possible as an institution for so long a time.”1 Prevalent images of John as a kilted Highland chief and Ishbel as a caring mother and grandmother drew on just this vision of an organic, essentially kin-based union of high and low. In face of the terrors and uncertainties of an imperial world in clear transition, such a vision had powerful appeal. Nor was it without indications of success. Aberdeenshire farm labourers and tenants, the urban poor, disadvantaged women, exploited Irish, hard-pressed feminists in a host of countries, including Canada, and anti-fascist crusaders in the interwar years all benefited. British liberalism, especially in its “new” manifestation of state support for vulnerable populations and taxation of the privileged, depended on just such capacity among the elite to recognize that social stability benefited from social betterment. When the Aberdeens were in town, revolution from some perspectives seemed unnecessary. A responsible chieftain and a nurturing matriarch, much as the supposedly family-centred House of Windsor mythologized by Ishbel at the time of the abdication of Edward VIII and the accession of George VI, could preside over slowly expanding democracy. Like the modern British monarchy, the Aberdeens invoked an ancient vision of shared community. If many suffrage activists wanted less talk and more action, as did Irish republicans and self-conscious workers, many contemporaries prized the broad constituency cultivated by the Aberdeens. A “great

Conclusion 237

lady” and a “great gentleman” promised the entry into hearts and minds that progressive campaigners frequently desired. Ishbel Gordon’s prominence during and after Victoria’s reign affirmed the critical role played by elite women in the politics of possible reconciliation. Like much of the theology and the science of the day, she credited her sex with particular qualities that could nourish compromise and firmly rejected “sex wars.” Women and men were, above all, helpmates. Her measured leadership nevertheless always drew recurring condemnation from those then, and later, who preferred quiescent women and ruling men. That persisting hostility, highlighted first in her father’s refusal of her hopes for university education, nurtured her liberal feminism and helped make her an advocate for other women and the less powerful in general. John Campbell Gordon’s embrace of a more inclusive community was equally significant. His sympathy for sailors, railroaders, tenants, and the poor, his championship of the “white life for two” and political rights for women, of religious toleration, and “home rule all round” repositioned manliness beyond the reactionary conventions of his gender, class, and culture and raised the prospect of masculine transformation. This possibility equally enraged defenders of the status quo. John and Ishbel might have been Gladstone’s “edifying” couple, but their choice of a “middle way” to better the world frequently placed them on the margins of their own class. The couple’s decades-long construction of an inclusive agenda that emphasized education for both women and men and respectful but broad-ranging debate rarely appeared heroic or introduced an immediate break with the past. Women, workers, and the Irish continued to face oppression. Scottish Presbyterians continued to be divided, unions to go unrecognized, women to be abused, and the Irish to be victimized. Power was rarely readily shared by men, by Christians, by the British, by the West in general, or by the classes with the masses. Those in authority proved for the most part ardent defenders of privilege. The persistence and the strength of resistance to democracy should never be underestimated. The British Liberal Party struck disaster on just such shoals. It proved unable to rally even its own standard-bearers unanimously to a more egalitarian politics. The rise of fascism all around the world in the 1920s and 1930s represented only the extreme version of long-standing threats to individual freedom and social justice. The liberal Aberdeens’ espousal of voluntarism and the potential of human perfectibility and partnerships was rarely sufficient remedy. The International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, Irish republicans, the Labour Party, and a host of other vanguard groups remained essential in ensuring that liberal predilections for debate and caution

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did not sideline the great project of equality. Sympathetic aristocrats opened doors and hearts, but social transformation required far more. Just as the judgment and the ideals of others have sometimes been compromised by poverty, the Aberdeens, too, could be contaminated by privilege. They could take for granted their right to live extravagantly, to lead from the front, and to celebrate the benefits of British imperium for peoples judged less advanced. They, perhaps especially Ishbel, could be insensitive when matters did not go their way. The histories of the Women’s Liberal Federations, the International Council of Women, the National Council of Women of Canada, and the Irish women’s health movement offer plentiful evidence of arrogance. At the same time, the couple’s frequent restraint when demanding rights for women, workers, and the Irish could leave them complicit with authority. As Frank Prochaska has concluded of the British monarchy, good works, many resembling those of the Aberdeens, took “the republican edge off socialism” and ensured the survival of a politics of deference into the modern age.2 Aristocratic self-interest was obviously served. And yet, final judgment on these British aristocrats needs to recognize how far they extended their reach beyond the narrow conventions of their class and championed a fairer world than that which existed. In critical moments, they were allies of the disadvantaged. Ultimately, they stood among a small coterie of the powerful who recognized mutual humanity and helped counter the otherwise simply instrumental, impersonal, or bureaucratic exercise of authority. Canadian scholar Joan Sangster’s assessment of the feminist internationalism of Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon and others takes the appropriately balanced approach to such liberal leaders. On the one hand, “colonialist agendas” were clearly perpetuated. On the other, experiments in global sisterhood provided women “with a new and valuable political space that held out the possibility of furthering their political causes and enriching their own political education and collective practices … the idea of an international endorsement of their demands – as a moral principle that transcended the nation – offered them some clout in their home nation, just as appealing to United Nations policies does today on issues such as human rights and women’s equality.”3 Ultimately, at home and abroad, the Aberdeens served both tradition and democracy. In their enactment of both coronets and hearts, they demonstrated that lords and ladies could, on occasion, contribute to the making of a more just world. There are far worse epithets for aristocrats.

Notes

Abbreviations AUSLA BL CUCCA CUL

Aberdeen University, Special Libraries and Archives British Library Cambridge University, Churchill College Archives Cambridge University, Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives ECOL Early Canadiana Online HH Haddo House Archives ICW International Council of Women ICWP International Council of Women Papers LAC Library and Archives Canada NCWCP National Council of Women of Canada NCWCP National Council of Women of Canada Papers NLI National Library of Ireland NLS National Library of Scotland ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography OUBL Oxford University, Bodleian Library, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts PAL Parliamentary Archives, London UBSCLP University of Bristol, Special Collections, Liberal Party Papers UWSC University of Waterloo, Special Collections

240  Notes to Pages 3–6 Introduction 1 This volume refers to them variously by their first names, family name (Marjoribanks and Gordon), and titles (Aberdeen and then Aberdeen and Temair; countess, earl, marchioness, and marquess), in this way hoping to remind readers of their diverse and contingent identities. 2 Katharine Tynan, The Years of the Shadow (London: Constable, 1919), 104. 3 Marjorie Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter: The Life of Ishbel Marjoribanks, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, G.B.E., LL.D., J.P., 1857 to 1939 (London: B.T. Batsford, 1952). 4 For a useful discussion of Halévy’s argument in A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century (London: Ernest Benn, 1931–2) and elsewhere, see Albion M. Urdank, “Evangelism in Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 30, no. 3 ( July 1991): 333–44. See Frank Prochaska, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) and Andrea Geddes Poole, Philanthropy and the Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship: Lady Frederick Cavendish and Miss Emma Cons (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). For other more pragmatic causes for the survival of the aristocracy, see Grant Jarvie, Lorna Jackson, and Peter Higgins, “Scottish Affairs, Sporting Estates and the Aristocracy,” Scottish Affairs 19 (Spring 1997): 121–40. 5 On these terms, see David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2001); James Loughlin, The British Monarchy and Ireland: 1800 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Cecily Devereux, “‘New Woman, New World’: Maternal Feminism and the New Imperialism in the White Settler Colonies,” Women’s Studies International Forum 22, no. 2 (1999): 175–84. 6 Catherine Hall and Sonia O. Rose, “Introduction: Being at Home with the Empire,” in C. Hall and S.O. Rose, eds., At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 24. 7 J.L. Payne, “Recollections of a Private Secretary,” Lethbridge Herald, 9 Feb. 1924, 15. 8 See Robert M. Stamp, Royal Rebels: Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne (Toronto: Dundurn, 1988); and Mary Frances Coady, Georges and Pauline Vanier: Portrait of a Couple (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011). 9 G.F. Barbour and Matthew Urie Baird, “Gordon, John Campbell, first marquess of Aberdeen and Temair (1847–1934),’ revised by H.C.G. Matthew, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); hereafter ODNB. Online edition, May 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/33464, accessed 25 May 2012]. 10 Doris French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire: A Biography of Lady Aberdeen (Toronto: Dundurn, 1988). 11 Maureen Keane, Ishbel, Lady Aberdeen in Ireland (Newtownards, NI: Colourpoint, 1999). 12 Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, “Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement,” Signs 24, no. 2 (1999): 363–86.

Notes to Pages 6–8 241 13 Val McLeish, “Sunshine and Sorrow: Canada, Ireland, and Lady Aberdeen,” in Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. David Lambert and Allan Lester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 257–84, and Amanda Andrews, “The Great Ornamentals: New ViceRegal Women and their Imperial Work, 1884–1914,” doctoral dissertation, University of Western Sydney, 2004. 14 See Veronica Strong-Boag and Carole Gerson, Paddling Her Own Canoe: The Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 15 Marilyn J. Boxer, “Rethinking the Socialist Construction and International Career of the Concept ‘Bourgeois Feminism,’” American Historical Review 112, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 157. 16 Some of this rich literature is later cited on British and international feminism in this chapter, but a good example of that reasoning in a group with which Ishbel Gordon was involved is June Hannam, “Women’s Industrial Council (act. 1894–c. 1917),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/96080, accessed 23 Mar. 2012]. 17 See, e.g., Lucy Delap, “Feminist and Anti-feminist Encounters in Edwardian Britain,” Historical Research 78, no. 201 (2005): 377–99; Ben Griffin, The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture, and the Struggle for Women’s Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Gail Cuthbert Brandt, Naomi Black, Paula Bourne, and Magda Fahrni, Canadian Women: A History (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2011). For reflections on feminism’s diversity, see also “Editorial Note. Feminism and Woman Suffrage: Debate, Difference, and the Importance of Context,” Journal of Women’s History 24, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 7–12. 18 Poole, Philanthropy and the Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship, 225. 19 Megan Smitley, Gender in History: Feminine Public Sphere: Middle-Class Women and Civic Life in Scotland, c. 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). 20 Griffin, Politics of Gender, 14. See also Mary Lyndon Shanley, Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 21 Amanda Vickery, Women, Privilege, and Power: British Politics, 1750 to the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 7. 22 On the influential Cavendish, see Poole, Philanthropy, esp. chapters 1 and 5. 23 Andrews, “The Great Ornamentals.” 24 The now classic study of this is Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 25 See, inter alia, Angela V. John and Claire Eustance, “Shared Histories – Differing Identities: Introducing Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage,” in The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920, eds. A.V. John and C. Eustance (London: Routledge, 1997), 1–37; John Tosh, A

242  Notes to Pages 8–11 Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 26 Griffin, Politics of Gender, 24. 27 See Stamp, Royal Rebels. 28 For an introduction, see Owen Dudley Edwards, “Wilde, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills (1854–1900),” in ODNB; online edition, Sept. 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/29400, accessed 13 Jan. 2013]. 29 For a good introduction to the complications of the field, see Jennifer C. Nash, “Re-thinking Intersectionality,” Feminist Review 89 (2008): 1–15. 30 Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 6. 31 Maureen M. Martin, The Mighty Scot: Nation, Gender, and the Nineteenth-Century Mystique of Scottish Masculinity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009). 32 See his A Political History of Scotland, 1832–1924: Parties, Elections, and Issues (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2003), 161. 33 See, inter alia, her Migration and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 1, Willing Exiles (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988) and Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 2, Beyond the Broad Atlantic (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988). See also her introduction to Countess of Aberdeen, Through Canada with a Kodak (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). 34 “Aristocracy, Agriculture and Liberalism: The Politics, Finances and Estates of the Third Lord Carrington,” Historical Journal 31 (Dec. 1988): 871–97, and Andrew Adonis, “Carington, Charles Robert Wynn-, marquess of Lincolnshire (1843–1928),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/37054, accessed 11 May 2011]. 35 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 7. 36 Heloise Brown, “The Truest Form of Patriotism”: Pacifist Feminism in Britain, 1870– 1902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); Laura E.N. Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Martin Pugh, The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Claire Hirshfield, “Liberal Women’s Organizations and the War against the Boers, 1899–1902,” Albion 14 (1982): 27–49, and “Fractured Faith: Liberal Party Women and the Suffrage Issue in Britain, 1892–1914,” Gender and History 2, no. 2 ( June 1990): 173–97; and Philippa Levine, Victorian Feminism, 1850–1900 (London: Hutchinson, 1987). 37 D.A.J. MacPherson, Women and the Irish Nation: Gender, Culture and Irish Identity, 1890–1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Notes to Pages 11–12 243 38 See, e.g., M. Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London: Pluto, 1999); L. Ryan and M.Ward, eds., Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007); L. Earner-Byrne, “‘Aphrodite Rising from the Waves’? Women’s Voluntary Activism and the Women’s Movement in Twentieth-Century Ireland,” in Women and Ctizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century: What Difference Did the Vote Make?, eds. E. Breitenbach and P. Thane (London: Continuum, 2010), 95–112; Ann Matthews, Irish Republic Women, 1900–1922 (Cork: Mercier, 2010); K. Steele, Women, Press, and Politics during the Irish Revival (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007); and K.A. Conrad, Locked in the Family Cell: Gender, Sexuality, and Political Agency in Irish National Discourse (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). 39 See, e.g., the failure to connect the causes in Patricia Jalland, “A Liberal Chief Secretary and the Irish Question: Augustine Birrell, 1907–1914,” Historical Journal 19, no. 2 ( June 1976): 421–51. 40 “The New Liberalism in Britain 1880–1914,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 36, no. 3 (1990): 388–405. 41 See Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity, and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) for its very useful discussion of this promise. 42 Poole, Philanthrophy, 197. 43 See, e.g., Martin Pugh, “The Limits of Liberalism: Liberals and Women’s Suffrage 1867–1914,” 45–65, and Pat Thane, “Women, Liberalism and Citizenship, 1918–1930,” 66–92, in Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals, and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931, ed. Eugenio F. Biagini (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002). 44 Griffin, Politics of Gender. 45 See, e.g., Catherine Hall, “The Nation Within and Without,” in Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867, eds. Keith McClelland, Catherine Hall, and Jane Rendall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 179–233. 46 See, e.g., his Ireland and the Federal Solution: The Debate over the United Kingdom Constitution, 1870–1921 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989). See also Michael Wheatley, “John Redmond and Federalism in 1910,” Irish Historical Studies 32, no. 127 (May 2001): 343–64. 47 Phillip Buckner, “Presidential Address: Whatever Happened to the British Empire?” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 4, no. 1 (1993): 3–32. 48 On Belich and the recent evolution of thinking about British imperialism, see the helpful overview by Stephen Howe, “British Worlds, Settler Worlds, World Systems, and Killing Fields,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 4 (Dec. 2012): 691–725 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2012.730716, accessed 29 June 2014].

244  Notes to Pages 12–13 49 David A. Wilson, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 2 vols. (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2008); T.M. Devine, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora, 1750–2010 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2011); Duncan S.A. Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); and Christian Paul Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964–1968 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). 50 My thanks to Jack Little who made available an early draft of his biography, Patrician Liberal: The Private and Public Life of Sir Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, 1829–1908 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). 51 See, e.g., Chantal Nadeau, Fur Nation: From the Beaver to Brigitte Bardot (New York: Routledge, 2001), and Janice Helland, “Embroidered Spectacle: Celtic Revival as Aristocratic Display,” in The Irish Revival Reappraised, eds. Betsey Taylor FitzSimon and James H. Murphy (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), 94–105. 52 Adrienne Clarkson, “Speech on the Occasion of the Canadian Forum on Volunteerism, Vancouver, 18 Aug. 2001,” Adrienne Clarkson, http://archive .gg.ca Archives du www.gg.ca. 53 Slavery and anti-slavery surface intermittently in this manuscript. As the new database from University College London, “Legacies of British Slave-Ownerhsip,” http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/, reminds us there were many imperial beneficiaries. The names of Baillies, Hoggs, and Marjoribanks provide links to the kin of Ishbel and John. Unfortunately, the details in the database are scant, and I have discovered little as well. It should be remembered, however, that judgments about slavery and its economic benefits continued to shape such imperial families. 54 Andrews, “The Great Ornamentals.” See also Clare Midgley, ed. Gender and Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); and Julia Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (London: Leicester University Press, 2000). 55 Andrews, “The Great Ornamentals,” 222. 56 See, e.g., the chapters in Ian Christopher Fletcher, Laura E. Nym Mayhall, and Philippa Levine, eds., Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race (London: Routledge, 2000); and Allison L. Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 57 Patricia Ward D’Itri, Cross Currents in the International Women’s Movement, 1848–1948 (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999); and Rupp, Worlds of Women. 58 On “new” internationalists, see Frank Trentmann, “After the Nation-State: Citizenship, Empire and Global Coordination in the New Internationalism, 1914–1930,” in Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1880–1950, eds. Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine, and Frank Trentmann (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 34–53; and Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of

Notes to Pages 13–19 245 Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 59 Margaret McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), and Joan Sangster, “Crossing Boundaries: Women’s Organizing in Europe and the Americas, 1880s–1940s,” in Crossing Boundaries: Women’s Organizing in Europe and the Americas, 1880s–1940s, eds. P. Jonsson, S. Neusinger, and J. Sangster (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2007): 73–94. See also the regular references to international ties in the chapters in Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz and Ruth Rubio-Marín, eds., The Struggle for Female Suffrage in Europe (Leyden: Brill, 2012). 60 Ann Taylor Allen, Anne Cova, and June Purvis, “International Feminisms,” Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 ( June 2010): 499. 1.  The Making of a Responsible Man 1 The “Hamilton,” an invocation of a family connection for the Prime Minister Aberdeen, would eventually be dropped. This volume omits that name for its central subject in subsequent pages. 2 Matthew McCormack, “Introduction,” in Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain, ed. M. McCormack (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 5. 3 On the complications presented by the “imperial Scot,” see Martin, Mighty Scot. 4 See Richard Davenport-Hines, “Gordon, Charles George (1833–1885),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/11029, accessed 15 May 2012]; Cynthia F. Behrman, “The After-Life of General Gordon,” Albion 3, no. 2 (Summer 1971): 47–61; C. Brad Faught, Gordon: Victorian Hero (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008); and John Pollock, Gordon: The Man Behind the Legend (London: Constable, 1993). 5 On the formation of those standards in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 6 “Tragedy of Two Weak Men,” The Times, 8 May 1916, 10. 7 See, e.g., John T. Saywell, “Introduction,” in The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 1893–1898 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1960). 8 Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagermann, and John Tosh, “Preface,” in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, eds. S. Dudink, K. Hagermann, and J. Tosh (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), xiii. 9 R.A.J. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 10 Ibid., 76–81. 11 Demetrakis Z. Demetriou, “Connell’s Concept of Hegemonic Masculinity: A Critique,” Theory and Society 30, no. 3 ( June 2001): 347. On its complications in the British House of Commons, see Griffin, Politics of Gender.

246  Notes to Pages 19–20 12 David Spring, “Aristocracy, Social Structure, and Religion in the Early Victorian Period,” Victorian Studies 6, no. 3 (1963): 263–80. 13 See Stephanie Olsen, “The Authority of Motherhood in Question: Fatherhood and the Moral Education of Children in England, c. 1870–1900,” Women’s History Review 18, no. 5 (2009): 765–80. On domesticity’s purchase for the lower middle class and Scots, see also A. James Hammerton, “Pooterism or Partnership? Marriage and Masculine Identity in the Lower Middle Class, 1870–1920,” Journal of British Studies 38, no. 3 ( July 1999): 291–321, and Lynn Abrams, “‘There Was Nobody like My Daddy’: Fathers, the Family, and the Marginalisation of Men in Modern Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review 78, no. 206 (Oct. 1999): 219–42. 14 Tosh, A Man’s Place, 7. 15 Martin Francis, “The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity,” Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (2002): 637–52. See also Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire, and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994). 16 On this, see Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (New York: Random House, 1983). 17 Nancy W. Ellenberger, “Constructing George Wyndham: Narratives of Aristocratic Masculinity in Fin-de-Siècle England,” Journal of British Studies 39, no. 4 (Oct. 2000): 490. See also Jane Ridley, “Souls (act. 1886–1911),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/theme/42005, accessed 6 Feb. 2012]. 18 On this, see Spring, “Aristocracy, Social Structure, and Religion,” especially his discussion of encounter of Regency rakes with evangelical thinking about propriety. On terms such as “Clara,” “Niminy-piminy,” “Tiger lily,” and “lisping Hawthorn Bird” used to describe Balfour, see R.F. Mackay, Balfour: Intellectual Statesman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 8. 19 This association has a long history, see inter alia, Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002); Morris B. Kaplan, “Did ‘My Lord Gomorrah’ Smile?: Homosexuality, Class, and Prostitution in the Cleveland Street Affair,” 78–99; and Ann Sumner Holmes, “‘Don’t Frighten the Horses’: The Russell Divorce Case,” 140–63, in Disorder in the Court: Trials and Sexual Conflict at the Turn of the Century, eds. George Robb and Nancy Erber (New York: New York University Press, 1999). 20 Martin, Mighty Scot. 21 Connell, Masculinities, 234–8, and his “Politics of Changing Men,” Socialist Review 25, no. 1 (1995): 135–59. See also the useful exchange, “A Comment from A.J. Hammerton to R.W. Connell’s ‘Politics of Changing Men,’” Australian Humanities Review, no. 48 (1997), which argues that Connell pays insufficient

Notes to Pages 20–3 247 attention to the private sphere as a site of resistance to equality. [http://www .australianhumanitiesreview.org/emuse/Masculinity/hammerton.html]. 22 Demetriou, “Connell’s Concept of Hegemonic Masculinity,” esp. 348–51. 23 See June Balshaw, “Sharing the Burden: The Pethick Lawrences and Women’s Suffrage,” in The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920, eds. A.V. John and C. Eustance (London: Routledge, 1997), 134–57. 24 Martin, Mighty Scot, 5. 25 See Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 12 and passim. 26 John Campbell Gordon and Ishbel Gordon, Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, We Twa I (London: W. Collins and Son, 1925), 7. 27 See Muriel E. Chamberlain, “Gordon, George Hamilton-, fourth earl of Aberdeen (1784–1860),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2010 [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/11044, accessed 6 Feb. 2012]; and Lucille Iremonger, Lord Aberdeen: A Biography of the Fourth Earl of Aberdeen, K.G., K.T., Prime Minister, 1852–55 (London: Collins, 1978). 28 Baron Stanmore, The Earl of Aberdeen (BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009 [1893]), 4. This conflict seems to be a good example of evangelical rejection of the supposed sexual licence of the Regency. 29 See J.P.W. Ehrman and Anthony Smith, “Pitt, William (1759–1806),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc .ca/view/article/22338, accessed 31 May 2012]; and Michael Fry, “Dundas, Henry, first Viscount Melville (1742–1811),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/8250, accessed 31 May 2012]. 30 Chamberlain, “Gordon, George Hamilton-, fourth earl of Aberdeen.” 31 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 11, emphasis in original. 32 Ibid., 18. 33 Quoted in Georgina Battiscombe, Mrs Gladstone: The Portrait of a Marriage (Boston: Riverside, 1957), 106. 34 HH, Box 1/4, Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Memories of a Sacred and Inspiring Friends: An Address delivered on Founder’s Day, July 28th, 1935 at St Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden,” pamphlet. 35 Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1995), 39. 36 See J.B. Conacher, The Aberdeen Coalition, 1852–1855 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 20. 37 J.K. Chapman, ed., “A Political Correspondence of the Gladstone Era: The Letters of Lady Sophia Palmer and Sir Arthur Gordon, 1884–1889,” American Philosophical Society, NS, 61, part 2 (1971): 71.

248  Notes to Pages 23–6 38 Stanmore, Earl of Aberdeen, 318. 39 W.T. Stead, “Character Sketch: Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” Review of Reviews (Feb. 1894): 136. 40 On this prominent family, see Gordon F. Millar, “Baillie, Charles, Lord Jerviswoode (1804–1879),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .library.ubc.ca/view/article/1059, accessed 28 Oct. 2011]; Valerie Bonham, “Baillie, Lady Grisell (1822–1891)),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/45567, accessed 28 Oct. 2011]. 41 George (1841–1870), Mary (1844–1914), James Henry (1845–1868), John Campbell (1847–1934), Harriet (1849–1942), and Katherine Eliza (1852–1931). 42 Quoted in Alexander Duff, The True Nobility: Sketches of the Life and Character of Lord Haddo, Fifth Earl of Aberdeen; and of his son, the Hon. J.H.H. Gordon (London: Religious Tract Society, 1868), 11. See also Rev. E.B. Elliott, ed., Memoir of Lord Haddo in His Latter Years Fifth Earl of Aberdeen (London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1869), which had at least six editions. 43 Elliott, Memoir of Lord Haddo, 233. 44 Duff, True Nobility, 91. 45 Ibid., 90. See also J.B. Brown, “Politics of the Poppy: The Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, 1874–1916,” Journal of Contemporary History 8, no. 3 ( July 1973): 97–111, for its assessment of the complications of imperialism and liberalism on this question. 46 Virginia Berridge and Griffith Edwards, Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Allen Lane; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1981), 315n20. 47 Dr Rev. Duff, “Sketch of the Life and Character of Lord Haddo,” Sunday at Home, 9 May 1868. 48 Ibid. 49 Quoted from the personal journal of Lord Haddo, ibid. On the Polwarths, see Cracroft’s Peerage: The Complete Guide to the British Peerage and Baronetage, http://www .cracroftspeerage.co.uk/online/content/polwarth1690.htm, accessed13 Sept. 2014. 50 See Katie Barclay, Love, Intimacy and Power: Marriage and Patriarchy in Scotland, 1650–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). 51 Mary Baillie Gordon, as quoted in Duff, “Sketch of the Life and Character of Lord Haddo.” 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. On the criticism of fairs in north Britain, see Gary Moses, “‘Rustic and Rude’: Hiring Fairs and Their Critics in East Yorkshire, c. 1850–75,” Rural History 7 (1996): 151–75. 54 Duff, “Sketch of the Life and Character of Lord Haddo.” 55 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 5. 56 Ibid., 38.

Notes to Pages 27–30 249 57 Jessica Gerard, “‘Lady Bountiful’: Women of the Landed Classes and Rural Philanthropy,” Victorian Studies 30, no. 2 (1987): 186–7. 58 Ibid., 187. 59 HH, Box 1/25, Johnny to “my very dear parents,” Clandown Parsonage, 3 July [or 8]; no year. 60 Probably George Renaud (1814–?), graduate in Classics at Oxford and curate at Clandown, Somerset, 1858–61. He also tutored Lord Rosebery (1847–1929), Liberal prime minister 1894–5, who later became godparent to the Aberdeen’s youngest son. F. Bennett, The Story of W.J.E. Bennett (New York: Longmans, 1909), http://anglicanhistory.org/england/bennett/bio/14.html. 61 HH, Box 8/15, Johnny to dearest Mama, marked “Friday” and in envelope, Bath, dated 23 Mar. 1860, addressed to Lady Haddo. 62 HH, Box 1/25, “Your ever loving Johnnie” to “My very dear mama,” 8 Feb., no year, Clandown parsonage. 63 Donald P. Leinster-Mackay, The Rise of the English Prep School (Barcombe, UK: Falmer, 1984), 42. 64 HH, Box 8/15, “Your ever affectionate son John” to “my dear papa,” dated Friday only with no location but probably Cheam. 65 HH, Box 8/15, Johnny to “my very dear mama,” Cheam, Monday, 6 Feb., no year. 66 HH, Box 1/25, “Your own boy Johnnie” to “My precious mama,” Saturday, no other date. 67 HH, Box 1/25, “Your ever loving Johnnie” to “my own darling mama,” Clandown, 1 May, no year. 68 HH, Box 1/25, “Your ever loving Johnnie” to “dear papa,” no date. 69 HH, Box 8/15, Johnny to “dearest mama,” Cheam, Friday/Saturday, no other date. 70 HH, Box 1/25, Johnny to “My sweet papa & mama,” the Clandown Parsonage, 24 Nov. 1860. 71 HH, Box 1/25, Johnnie to “My very dear papa,” no date. 72 HH, Box 1/25, Jem Gordon to “Dearest Mama,” Cheam, no date. 73 HH, Box 1/4, Johnny to “my loving mama,” Sunday night, [later added 1865], St Andrews. 74 On this, see Helen Kanitkar, “‘Real True Boys’: Moulding the Cadets of Imperialism,” in Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, eds. Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne (London: Routledge, 1994), 185. 75 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 25–6, 31–2. 76 HH, Box 1/4, Johnny to “my loving mama,” Sunday night, [added later 1865], St Andrews. 77 HH, Box 1/25, Envelope “Printed Memos re biography of George, 5th Earl of Aberdeen and Hon. James Gordon,” “The Late Earl of Aberdeen,” printed pamphlet (from Banffshire Journal of 6th Sept. 1870).

250  Notes to Pages 30–4 78 Archie Gordon, Marquess of Aberdeen, A Wild Flight of Gordons (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), 129–30. 79 HH, Box 1/25, Envelope “Printed Memos re biography of George, 5th Earl of Aberdeen and Hon. James Gordon,” “The Late Earl of Aberdeen,” printed pamphlet (from Banffshire Journal of 6th Sept. 1870). 80 “In the House of Lords Case on Behalf of the Right Honourable John Campbell Earl of Aberdeen in the Peerage of Scotland Claiming a Writ of Summons to Parliament as Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen” (Edinburgh and Westminster, 1872), 108. 81 HH, Box 1/16, II, “Excerpt from letter from the Late Right Honourable George Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen, to his Brother, the Honourable James Gordon,” dated Houston, Texas, 15 Mar. 1867. Typescript/pamphlet, 24. 82 See Walter Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 246 and passim, for a discussion of the fears of “aristocratic idleness” by Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold among others. 83 Sir Bernard Burke, The Rise of Great Families, Other Essays, and Stories (London: Longmans, Green, 1873), 155. 84 Ibid., 170. 85 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 53. 86 HH, Box 1/25, “The Late Mr Gordon. From the Cambridge Independent Press, February 15th, 1868,” Printed flyer. 87 Duff, True Nobility, 133 and 186–7; emphasis in original. 88 HH, Box 1/4, RM to “Gordon,” Kensington, 20 Feb. 1868. 89 HH, Box 1/20, To “My Dearest Johnny” from Mary, Monday, no date. 90 HH, Box 1/20, Lawyer Jamieson to “My Dear Sir,” Edinburgh, 30 Aug. 1870. 91 On the significance of sibling loss in the nineteenth century, see the thoughtful assessment by Leonore Davidoff, Thicker Than Water: Siblings and Their Relations, 1780–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012), esp. 318–23. 92 M.C. Curthoys, “The Careers of Oxford Men,” in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 6, Nineteenth-Century Oxford, part I, eds. M.G. Brock and M.C. Curthoys (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 482. 93 HH, Box 1/4, J.M. Collyer to ‘my dear Gordon,” St Andrews, 3 Dec. [186?]. 94 Ibid., Hackford, 14 Oct. [186?]. 95 My understanding of Aberdeen’s years at Oxford 1867–71 has been much helped by the historian of University College, Robin Darwall-Smith, to whom I am very grateful for detailed e-mail correspondence. 96 Dudley, eventually third marquess of Aberdeen and Temair (1883–1972), became president of the British Association for Refrigeration, the British Engineers Association, the Federation of British Industries, and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He also apprenticed in Aberdeen shipyards. 97 HH, Box 1/4, Canon Girdleston, 10 Apr. 1911.

Notes to Pages 34–6 251 98 See Josef L. Altholz, “The Mind of Victorian Orthodox: Responses to ‘Essays and Reviews,’ 1860–1864,” Church History 51, no. 2 (1982): 186–97, and Peter Hinchliff and John Prest, “Jowett, Benjamin (1817–1893),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/15143, accessed 6 Feb. 2012]. 99 Griffin, Politics of Gender, esp. chapter 4, “Religious Change and the Transformation of Domestic Ideology.” 100 On this case, see Brian Niblett, Dare to Stand Alone: The Story of Charles Bradlaugh, Atheist and Republican (Oxford: Kramedart, 2011). 101 Richard Symonds, “Oxford and the Empire,” in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 7, part 2, 691. See also Robert Hewison, “Ruskin, John (1819–1900),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/24291, accessed 31 May 2012]. 102 See the profession of affection and the memory of happy Oxford days in HH, Box 1/23, G.? Girdleston to “Dear Gordon,” 23 Dec. 1867. 103 HH, Box 1/4, “Francis G. Pelham to ‘my dear Gordon,’” Trinity College, Cambridge, dated 1868 in another hand. 104 HH, Box 1/20, W. MacDonald Sinclair to “My dear Gordon,” Morton Hall, Retford? 2 Sept. 1870. 105 See, inter alia, Gerald Parsons, Religion in Victorian Britain: Controversies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), esp. chapter 2; Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards and Carolyn De Swarte Gifford, eds., Gender and the Social Gospel (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Richard Allen, The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada, 1914–1928 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971); and Brian J. Fraser, The Social Uplifters: Presbyterian Progressives and the Social Gospel in Canada, 1875–1915 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press and the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 1988). 106 Fraser, Social Uplifters, 13. 107 “The Earl of Aberdeen,” Family Churchman, Sept. 1883, 369. http://books.google. ca/books?id=1KQOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA369&lpg=PA369&dq=%22lord+ aberdeen%22+sankey+moody&source=bl&ots=cMBhmVezuD&sig=E-lzFEaAcs31r -5RMF2CsZHAprg&hl=en&ei=MGSgTuv_OISviQKQ7_Vh&sa=X&oi=book _result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22lord% 20aberdeen%22%20sankey%20moody&f=false. 108 The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family: The Social Gospel in America (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). 109 See HH, Box 1/4, Letter from his uncle R. Baillie to “dear John,” 22 Dec. 1870. 110 Allan I. Macinnes, “Landownership, Land Use and Elite Enterprise in Scottish Gaeldom: From Clanship to Clearance in Argyllshire, 1688–1858,” in Scottish Elites, ed. T.M. Devine (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1994), 3.

252  Notes to Pages 36–9 111 Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 1, 158. 112 “Our Own Reporter,” “The Social Science Congress,” The Times, 20 Sept. 1877, 4. 113 David McCrone and Angela Morris, “Lords and Heritages: The Transformation of the Great Lairds of Scotland,” in Scottish Elites, ed. T.M. Devine (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1994), 176. 114 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 36. 115 HH, Box 1/4, To Lord Aberdeen from H.A. Ivatt, Doncaster, identified on envelope as “railway friend,” 28 Dec. 1900. 116 “Omnibus Men,” The Times, 16 June 1877; “May Meetings,” ibid., 3 May 1879. See also John F.C. Harrison, “Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of,” in The Oxford Companion to British History, ed. John Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 856. 117 Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 2, 188. See also Gillian Wagner, “Barnardo, Thomas John (1845–1905)),” in ODNB; online edition, Sept. 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/30600, accessed 31 May 2012]. 118 Mrs H.G. Guinness, “What I Saw at Ilford,” The Christian, 17 June 1875, 18. See also “Barkingside the Early Years,” http://www.goldonian.org/barkingside/ subpage/the_%20early_years.htm. 119 James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the AngloWorld, 1783–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 120 On the chequered history of the Barnardo operations, see Joy Parr, Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869–1924 (London: Croom Helm, 1980). 121 Squires in the Slums: Settlements and Missions in Late-Victorian Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), and Erick M. Sigsworth, In Search of Victorian Values: Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Thought and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 38. 122 John Tosh, “Masculinities in an Industrial Society: Britain, 1800–1914,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (2005): 335. See also Fred Kaplan, “Carlyle, Thomas (1795–1881),” ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/4697, accessed 31 May 2012], and H.C.G. Matthew, “Smiles, Samuel (1812–1904)),” ODNB; online edition, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/36125, accessed 31 May 2012]. 123 “Our Own Reporter,” “The Social Science Congress,” The Times, 20 Sept. 1877, 4. 124 Ibid. 125 See Neil Weir, “Toynbee, Joseph (1815–1866)),” ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/27647, accessed 6 Feb. 2012].

Notes to Pages 39–44 253 126 127 128 129 130

“Our Own Reporter,” “The Social Science Congress.” Once a Week, 28 Apr. 1877. HH, Box 1/4, Frederick Verney, Bangor, N. Wales, 22 Sept. 1877. “General Grant,” The Times, 1 Sept. 1877. For a useful overview, see Stephen J. Lee, Gladstone and Disraeli (Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2005). 131 Hansard, House of Lords Debates, 2 July 1874, 862–3. See also Lydia E. Hodges, “The Married Women’s Property Acts: Wives’ Property Rights as an Issue in British Politics and Society, 1865–1893,” doctoral dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1984. 132 See “Motion for a Select Committee,” House of Lords Debates, 30 June 1876. 133 Hansard, House of Lord Debates, 20 June 1876. 134 Ibid., 27 Apr. 1877. 135 See Peter Weiler, The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889– 1914 (New York: Garland, 1982). 136 Andrew Adonis, Making Aristocracy Work: The Peerage and the Political System in Britain, 1884–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 111. 137 Hansard, House of Lords Debates, 8 Feb. 1876. 138 HH, Box 1/4, J [perhaps I?] W. Forth of Holy Trinity Vicarage to Lady Aberdeen, 10 Feb. 1876. 139 Quoted in Aberdeens, We Twa I, 86. 140 Ishbel, Aberdeen and Temair, Marchioness, Musings of a Scottish Granny (London: Heath Cranton, 1936), 109. 141 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 85. 142 Mark Francis, “Gordon, Arthur Charles Hamilton, first Baron Stanmore (1829–1912),” ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/33459, accessed 6 Feb. 2012]. See also J.K. Chapman, The Career of Arthur Hamilton Gordon, First Lord Stanmore, 1829–1912 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964). 143 Quoted in Michael Fry, The Scottish Empire (East Lothian, UK: Tuckwell, 2001), 232. 144 Ibid., 236–7. 145 McCrone and Morris, “Lords and Heritages, 171. 146 HH, Box 1/40, Envelope “Nellie Boyle d. 1871?,” Scraps of paper dated 3 Jan. 1869; emphasis in original. 2.  The Dutiful Daughter 1 G.F.R. Barker and Katherine Prior, “Hogg, Sir James Weir, first baronet (1790–1876),” ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/13473, accessed 24 Oct. 2011].

254  Notes to Pages 45–7 2 Margery Weiner, The French Exiles, 1789–1815 (New York: Wm Morrow, 1961), 119. 3 Journal of the House of Lords 62, 1830, testimony of Samuel Swinton in “Affairs of the East India Company: Minutes of Evidence,” 925–31. British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=16398&strquery= swinton, accessed 13 Sept. 2014. 4 Duke of Argyll, “Preface,” in Ethel Mary Hogg, Quintin Hogg: A Biography (London: Constable, 1904), 19. For more on the Swintons, see Weiner, The French Exiles, passim. 5 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 18. 6 Ibid., 22. 7 HH, Box 10/3, Ishbel Aberdeen, “My Greatest Friend,” Sunday Post, 31 Mar. 1935. 8 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 19. 9 Barker and Prior, “Hogg, Sir James Weir.” 10 See, e.g., R.H. Vetch, “Nicholson, John (1821–1857),” revised by Ainslie T. Embree, in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/20141, accessed 11 Nov. 2011]. 11 G.S. Woods, “Hogg, Quintin (1845–1903),” revised by Roger T. Stearn, in ODNB; online edition, May 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/33926, accessed 7 Nov. 2011]. 12 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 86. On his efforts for football and boys, see also Colm Kerrigan, Teachers and Football: Schoolboy Association Football in England, 1885–1915 (London: Routledge, 2005). 13 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 51. 14 Woods, “Hogg, Quintin.” 15 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 76. 16 Quintin Hogg, Select Committee on Sugar Industries, Evidence, House of Commons Papers 13, 15 July 1879, 194. 17 Ibid., 8 July 1879, 175. 18 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 329. See also Chandra Jayawardena, “Religious Belief and Social Change: Aspects of the Development of Hinduism in British Guiana,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 8, no. 2 (1966): 211–40. 19 He has been identified as “probably the largest plantation owner in the British West Indies,” in Carl B. Greenidge, Empowering a Peasantry in a Caribbean Context: The Case of Land Settlement Schemes in Guyana, 1865–1985 (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2001), 178. See also Clem Seecharan, Bechu: “Bound Coolie” Radical in British Guiana, 1894–1901 (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1999), 90 and 210–11. 20 Freed slaves were expected “to work long hours, eating poor diets, living in the slaves’ quarters, and enduring harsh treatment, virtually, as if slavery never ended.” Barbara P. Josiah, “After Emancipation: Aspects of Village Life in

Notes to Pages 48–51 255 Guyana, 1869–1911,” Journal of Negro History 82, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 106. See also Dave Hollett, From India to El Dorado: Guyana and the Great Migration (Cranbury, NJ: Associated Universities Presses, 1999), 139–40, which notes that Hogg was upset by some of the draconian hours worked by indentured labourers; also Walter Rodney and George Lamming, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881–1905 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). 21 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 187. 22 Paula M. Krebs, “How Can a White Woman Love a Black Woman?: The Anglo-Boer War and Possibilities of Desire,” in White Women in Racialized Spaces: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action in Literature, eds. Samina Najmi and Rajini Srikanth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 202. 23 Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 81. 24 Ibid., 172. 25 Ibid., 286 26 Ibid., 301. 27 Ibid., 148. 28 Ibid. 29 Ishbel Aberdeen, Edward Marjoribanks. Lord Tweedmouth. K.T. 1849–1909. Notes and Recollections (London: Constable, 1909), 154. 30 See Miles Taylor, “Bright, John (1811–1889),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/3421, accessed 31 May 2012]. 31 W. Kaye Lamb, “Fraser, Simon,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (vol. IX, 1861–1870), http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=38559. 32 K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 71. 33 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 7. 34 Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, 102. 35 Ibid., Patricia Jalland, Women, Marriage, and Politics, 1860–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986); Joan Perkin, Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1989); Jessica Gerard, Country House Life: Family and Servants, 1815­–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). 36 French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 25. 37 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 103 and 8. In marked contrast, her great nephew Lord Hailsham described Isabel as “an old dragon,” as quoted in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 15. 38 Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, 6. 39 Ibid., 6–7. 40 On Stewart, see “Tracing New Zealand’s Masonic Roots,” Freemasonary Today: The Official Journal of the United Grand Lodge of England, 1 Feb. 2013, http://www .freemasonrytoday.com/features/itemlist/tag/Stewart%20Marjoribanks.

256  Notes to Pages 51–4 41 See, e.g., Aberdeens, We Twa I, 94–8. For a less romantic assessment that nevertheless stresses “intelligence, courage, and initiative,” see Barbara C. Murison, “Baillie, Lady Grisell (1665–1746),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/1061, accessed 28 Oct. 2011]. 42 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 4. 43 One daughter brought into her marriage with a relatively minor Scottish noble £100,000, an immense sum for the day. M.J. Daunton, Progess and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1700–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 68. See also Edna Healey, “Coutts, Thomas (1735–1822),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxfordnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/6469, accessed 6 Nov. 2011], E.H. Coleridge, The Life of Thomas Coutts, Banker (London: John Lane, 1920); E. Healey, Coutts & Co, 1892–1992: The Portrait of a Private Bank (Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992). 44 J.C.B., “Commission of Lunacy on Sir Henry Meux, Bart.,” Journal of Mental Science 4 (1858): 596–609. On continuing legal issues, see Great Britain, Supreme Court of Judictature, Parliament, House of Lords, 30 (1882), 186. http://books .google.ca/books?id=CQNHAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22henry+meux%22+marjorib anks&source=gbs_navlinks_s. 45 Ambaile, Highland history and culture, Ceanacroe Lodge, (Ceannacroc Lodge), Glenmoriston, http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_photograph.jsp?item _id=59328, 18 Nov. 2011. 46 On the problems of Edward, see French Shackleteon, Ishbel and the Empire, 13. See also Edna Healey, “Coutts, Angela Georgina Burdett-, suo jure Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906),” in ODNB; online edition, Sept. 2011 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32175, accessed 10 Nov. 2011]. 47 Dudley to “Annie,” 7 Apr. 1842, in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 14. 48 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 4–5. 49 Ian Gow, “‘The Most Learned Drawing Room in Europe?’: Newhailes and the Classical Scottish Library,” in Visions of Scotland’s Past: Looking to the Future, eds. D.C. Mays, M.S. Moss, and M.K. Oglethorpe (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000), 95. 50 Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Memoirs of Gladstone,” Contemporary Review 148 ( July/Dec. 1935): 405 and 407. 51 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 9–10. 52 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 128–9. 53 Belich, Replenishing the Earth. 54 Quoted in Alexander Mackenzie, The History of the Highland Clearances (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1883), 292. 55 Quoted in ibid. 56 Quoted in ibid., 293.

Notes to Pages 54–7 257 57 For relatively rare observations on the Marjoribanks and their estate, see “The Late Lord Tweedmouth,” The Scotsman, 6 Mar. 1894. See the reference to the “modern clearances” in Guisachan, Strathglass by Sir Dudley Marjoribanks, which were described before a House of Commons Committee in 1873. Mackenzie, History of the Highland Clearances, 291. See also the defence by Ishbel in Musings of a Scottish Granny, 10–12. 58 Ambaile, Highland History and Culture, http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item _photograph.jsp?item_id=110429. 59 “Lord Tweedmouth in the Highlands. Reminiscences by Duncan McLennan,” in Aberdeen, Edward Marjoribanks, 77–110. 60 Davidoff, Thicker than Water. 61 Ishbel Aberdeen, “My Brother and Lady Fanny,” Sunday Post, 14 Apr. 1935. 62 J.R. Thursfield, “Marjoribanks, Edward, second Baron Tweedmouth (1849–1909),” revised by H.C.G. Matthew, in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/34878, accessed 7 Nov. 2011]. 63 Roland Quinault, “Churchill, John Winston Spencer, seventh duke of Marlborough (1822–1883),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .library.ubc.ca/view/article/5403, accessed 8 Nov. 2011]. 64 See A. James Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in NineteenthCentury Marriage (New York: Routledge, 1992) for the recognition as well that “companionate marriage, complete with domesticated husbands, close family intimacy and shared recreation, could provide another sphere for the more subtle domination of husband and father” (142). 65 Aberdeen, Edward Marjoribanks, 5. 66 See Patrick Jackson, ed., Loulou: Selected Extracts from the Journals of Lewis Harcourt (1880–1985) (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006), 254. 67 See Eva McLaren, “Liberal News,” Woman’s Herald (12 Sept. 1891). 68 R.B.H. [very probably Richard Burdon Haldane], “Fanny Lady Tweedmouth, An Appreciation, By a Politician and a Friend,” Westminster Gazette, 10 Sept. 1904; reprinted in Aberdeen, Edward Marjoribanks, 146–7. 69 Thursfield, “Marjoribanks, Edward, second Baron Tweedmouth.” 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Aberdeen, “Foreword” to Edward Marjoribanks, vi. 73 Miss Agnes S. Falconer, “An Appreciation,” in Aberdeen, Edward Marjoribanks, 113. 74 “Interesting Love Affair,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), 27 July 1895. 75 “Bleeding the Peerage: A Gaiety Girl’s Solace,’ The Star (Canterbury, NZ), 1 Apr. 1896. See also “A Promise Not Fulfilled: Miss Sutherland Gets Money from Dudley Churchill Marjoribanks,” New York Times, 11 Feb.1896, and “Birdie Sutherland’s Suit,” Mail and Empire (Toronto), 11 Feb. 1896.

258  Notes to Pages 57–60 76 Esther Simon Shkolnik, Leading Ladies: A Study of Eight Late Victorian and Edwardian Political Wives (New York: Garland, 1987), 451–2. See also Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, 349; and Jackson, Loulou. Harcourt, a frequent opponent of the Aberdeens, took delight in suggesting that Dudley wanted to blackmail his father about his own affairs (254). 77 “Tweedmouth’s Son Weds,” New York Times, 1 Dec. 1901. 78 Reginald Lucas, “Ridley, Matthew White, first Viscount Ridley (1842–1904),” revised by Jane Ridley, in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/35754, accessed 7 Nov. 2011]. 79 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 116. 80 Perkin, Women and Marriage, 5–6. 81 See the reference to Coutts in Mark Zuehlke, Scroundrels, Dreamers and Second Sons (Toronto: Dundurn, 2001), 27–8. 82 See Lu Hickey, contributor, American History: Tails of the Trails of the Smoky Hill River, chapter 5, “The Scottish Connection,” http://www.electricscotland.com/ history/america/smoky.htm. 83 “Coutts and Archie – The Honourable Cowboys,” The Marjoribanks Journal 5 (December, 1998), http://www.marjoribanks.net/marjoribanks-journal/the -marjoribanks-journal-issue-5-december-1998/, accessed 13 Sept. 2014. 84 John Ramsden, “Hogg, Douglas McGarel, first Viscount Hailsham (1872– 1950),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .library.ubc.ca/view/article/33925, accessed 7 Nov. 2011]. 85 See, inter alia, Mike Paterson, “Why Don’t You Come On Over Valerie? The Remarkable Lady Meux” (17 Oct. 2011) London Historians’ Blog, http:// londonhistorians.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/why-dont-you-come-on-overvalerie-the-remarkable-lady-meux/. At the moment, the best overview of this fascinating woman is “Valerie Susan Meux,” http://wiki.karadimovol.info/ index.php/Valerie_Meux (5 Nov. 2011). 86 Elisabeth Jay, “Oliphant, Margaret Oliphant Wilson (1828–1897),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/20712, accessed 8 Nov. 2011]. 87 Perkin, Women and Marriage, 271. 88 Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan, A History of Scottish Women’s Writing (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 282. 89 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, no page. See also B. Dickson, “Swan, Annie Shepherd (1859–1943),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/40374, accessed 10 Nov. 2011]. 90 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 103. 91 Ibid., 105–6. 92 Ibid., 94–5.

Notes to Pages 61–6 259 93 Aberdeen, Musings of a Scottish Granny, 24. 94 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 10. 95 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 116. 96 One of his Pupils (Frances Arnold-Forster), “Recollections of a Veteran Teacher,” Parents’ Review, 10 (1899), 698, http://www.amblesideonline.org/PR/ PR10p698RecollectionsVeteranTeacher.shtml. 97 Quoted in Anna Philips to Ishbel, 5 Mar. 5, 1926, in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 11. 98 Aberdeen, Musings of a Scottish Granny, 20; see also R.J. McKim, “Nathaniel Everett Greeen: Artist and Astronomer,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 114, no. 1 (2004): 13–23. Green was the author of Hints on Sketching from Nature, 2nd ed. (London: George Rowney, 1872). 99 HH, Box 10/1, Ishbel Marjoribanks, Journal 5, 28 and 29 Sept. 1874. 100 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 12 101 See review of Norman Graves, J.M.D. Meiklejohn: Prolific Textbook Author (Surrey, UK: Textbook Coloquium, 2008), by Brian J. Hudson, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 18, no. 1 (2009), quotes here on 75–6. 102 HH, Box 10/1, Ishbel Marjoribanks, “On Industry,” 17 June 1876. 103 HH, Box 10/1, Ishbel Aberdeen, untitled, beginning “You declare that your object …,” 29 May 1876. 104 See Susan Elizabeth Brown, “Gladstone and the House of Lords, 1880–1894,” doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1980. She carefully demonstrates Gladstone’s conservative faith that “although the aristocratic House could never itself predominate, it could prevent either King or Commons from becoming overpowerful and act as a reconciling agent between them” (2). 105 HH, Box 10/1, Ishbel Marjoribanks, “On Nobility,” 8 July 1876. 106 Ibid. 107 HH, Box 1/10, Ishbel Marjoribanks, no title, first line begins “The Prince of Wales’s intended visit to India”; emphasis in original. 108 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 12. 109 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 144. 110 HH, Red Archival Box, unlabelled with unbound articles, Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Progress of the Women’s Movement,” The Scotsman (Suppl.), xxii, no date but internal evidence suggests 1934 or 1935. 111 See Sara Delamont, “Davies, (Sarah) Emily (1830–1921),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/32741, accessed 31 May 2012]; Pam Hirsch, “Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith (1827–1891),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/2755, accessed 31 May 2012]; Frances Lannon, “Wordsworth, Dame Elizabeth (1840–1932),” in ODNB [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/37024, accessed 31 May 2012].

260  Notes to Pages 67–70 112 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 110. 113 Quoted in Queen’s University Journal 21, no. 12 (12 May 1894): 187. 114 See Clare Midgley, “Women Religion and Reform,” 138–58, and Sue Morgan, “‘The Word Made Flesh’: Women, Religion and Sexual Cultures,” 159–87, in Women, Gender and Religious Cultures in Britain, 1800–1940, eds. Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVries (Milton Park: Routledge, 2010): and Frank Prochaska, Christianity and Social Service in Modern Britain: The Disinherited Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 115 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 144. 116 Quoted in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 23. 117 “Moody and Sankey,” The Nation (9 Mar. 1876), 157. 118 Frank Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 9. 119 Keane, Ishbel, Lady Aberdeen in Ireland, 14. 120 Elizabeth Coutts, “Holland, Francis James (1828–1907,” in ODNB [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/48702, accessed 9 Nov. 2011]. 121 Lady Frederick Cavendish, “The Secret of Miss Yonge’s Influence,” in Ethel Romanes, Charlotte Mary Yonge: An Appreciation (London: Mowbray, 1908), http:// anglicanhistory.org/cmyonge/romanes/influence.html. On the social concerns of the Oxford Movement, also known as the Tractarians, see S.A. Skinner, Tractarians and the Condition of England: The Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004). 122 Poole, Philanthropy and the Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship, 6. 123 HH, Box 1/10, Ishbel Marjoribanks, Journal 5, 7 Apr. 1874. 124 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 14. 125 Frank Prochaska, Christianity and Social Service n Modern Britain: The Disinherited Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 39. 126 HH, Box1/10, Ishbel Marjoribanks, Journal 5, 26 Apr. 1874 127 Aberdeens We Twa I, 148. 128 HH, Box 10/3, Ishbel Marjoribanks, Questions and Answers on the Shorter Catechism. Printed for Private Circulation (London: James Niset, n.d.). 129 Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, 91. 130 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 39. 131 For more on such efforts, see Prochaska, Christianity and Social Service, chapter 3, “Visiting,” and chapter 5, “Nursing.” 132 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 14. 133 HH, Box 10/1, Ishbel Marjoribanks, Journal 5, 26 June 1874. 134 On the reflections of a slightly older contemporary of Ishbel on the possibilities of activist spinsterhood, see Seth Koven, “Henrietta Barnett 1851–1936: The

Notes to Pages 70–3 261 (Auto)biography of a Late Victorian Marriage,” in After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain, ed. Susan Pedersen (London: Taylor and Francis, 1994), 31–53. 135 HH, Box 1/10, Ishbel Marjoribanks, “An Old Maid – perfectly contented,” 18 Mar. 1876. 136 Proschaska, Christianity and Social Service, 3. 137 See HH, Box 1/8, Lady Carlisle to Lady Aberdeen, 9 Jan. 1893. David M. Fahey, “Howard, Rosalind Frances, countess of Carlisle (1845–1921),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/34022, accessed 24 Oct. 2011]. See also Virginia Surtees, The Artist and the Autocrat: George and Rosalind Howard, Earl and Countess of Carlisle (Salisbury, UK: Michael Russell, 1988). 138 Ian Tyrrell, “Somerset, Lady Isabel Caroline [Lady Henry Somerset] (1851–1921),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/36188, accessed 24 Oct. 2011]. 139 Olive Banks quoted in Joan B. Huffman, “Balfour, Lady Frances (1858–1931),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .library.ubc.ca/view/article/30554, accessed 24 Oct. 2011]. See also her 2-vol. autobiography, Ne Obliviscaris: Dinna Forget (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930). 140 On this in general, see Vickers, Women and Power. 141 Ibid., 14. 142 “Franklin, Hon. Mrs Ernest (Netta) (nee Henrietta Montagu), in Cheryl Law, Women: A Modern Political Dictionary (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000). 143 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 221­–2. 144 Quoted in ibid., 9. 145 Father to Ishbel, 29 Sept. 1868, quoted in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 21. 146 Ishbel, Journal, 3 Oct. 1870, in ibid. 147 Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, 14. 148 Aberdeen, Musings of a Scottish Granny, 18. 149 F.M.L. Thompson, “Grosvenor, Hugh Lupus, first duke of Westminster (1825–1899),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/11667, accessed 11 Nov. 2011]. This earl, William Dudley (1817–1885), was the father of the second earl (1867–1932), later governor-general of Australia, whose wife, Rachel Gurney (1867–1920), who did much to support visiting nurses in Australia and seems likely to have committed suicide, became Ishbel’s protégée. Christopher Cunneen, “Ward, William Humble, second earl of Dudley (1867–1932),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/36738, accessed 11 Nov. 2011].

262  Notes to Pages 73–8 150 Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Days of Romance in Rotten Row,” Evening News, 7 May 1927. 151 Ishbel, Journal, 17 Jan. 1875; emphasis in original, quoted in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 38. 152 2 May 1875, ibid., 40. 153 Ibid., 42. 154 Ibid. 43. 155 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 22. 156 Quoted in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 44. 157 HH 11/2, Envelope labelled “7,” Isabel Marjoribanks to Lord Aberdeen, 14 July 1877, marked “Private.” 158 Quoted in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 45. 159 Peter T. Marsh, “Tait, Archibald Campbell (1811–1882),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/26917, accessed 11 Nov. 2011]. 160 “Obituary – Bishop Glyn. Work At Kensington And Peterborough,” The Times, 15 Nov. 1928. 161 They included Lady Gwladys Herbert (1859–1917), later married to the Marquess of Ripon; Jane Emma Baring (1853–1936), daughter of the powerful banker, Thomas Baring, first earl of Northbrook; Lady Margaret Ashburnham, the daughter of an earl and a remote relative of John’s; Miss Mary Alice Hogg, Ishbel’s cousin and elder daughter of Charles Swinton Hogg, administratorgeneral of Bengal; Misses C. Gordon, Grizel Baillie, and the Hon. Georgina Scott, John’s cousins; and Miss Susan Suttie, daughter of the fifth baronet of Balgone and Prestongrange and later countess of Stair. See “Fashionable Marriages,” Illustrated London News, 10 Nov. 1877. 162 Ralph Pumphrey, “The Introduction of Industrialists in to the British Peerage: A Study in the Adaption of a Social Institution,” American Historical Review 65, no. 1 (Oct. 1959): 2. 3.  Forging a Partnership 1 Barclay, Love, Intimacy and Power. 2 Quoted in letter from Mother to Ishbel, cited in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 81. 3 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 411. 4 Quoted in Griffin, Politics of Gender, 42. 5 Ishbel, “Memories of Gladstone,” 405. 6 Koven, “Henrietta Barnett,” 41. 7 There were also inspirational same-sex partnerships among female activists. See Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

Notes to Pages 78–9 263 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), Part 3. See also Rebecca Jennings, A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex between Women since 1500 (Oxford: Green World, 2007). 8 See Pugh, March of the Women, 31, and John and Eustance, “Shared Histories – Differing Identities,” 24–5. See also male support for suffrage, Vickery, Women and Power, 229–32. 9 See, e.g., the recognition in the obituary, “Lady Campbell-Bannerman,” Summary of [Liberal] Federation News 4, no. 15 (10 Sept. 1906): “Her advice sometimes tempered and always strengthened his judgment, and it is stated that he took no important political step without first consulting her, nor did he decide upon making any great speech before he had discussed with her its political points … Sir Henry, on the other hand, has been a most devoted husband. He was rarely separated from his wife throughout the forty-six years of their married life” (1). 10 On her rejection of the “new woman,” see The Metropolitan, 3 Apr. 1897. http:// news.google.com/newspapers?nid=673&dat=18970403&id=gasHAAAAIBAJ&s jid=gzoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1617,1923031. On the importance of male command in domestic partnerships, see John Tosh, “The Making of Masculinities: The Middle Class in late Nineteenth-Century Britain,” in The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920, eds. A.V. John and C. Eustance (London: Routledge, 1997), 43. 11 Joseph O. Baylen, “Stead, William Thomas (1849–1912),” in ODNB; online edition, Sept. 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/36258, accessed 29 May 2012]. 12 The Flesherton Advance (Ontario, Canada), 12 July 1888. See also Sue Morgan, “Faith, Sex and Purity: The Religio-Feminist Theory of Ellice Hopkins,” Women’s History Review 9, no. 1 (2000): 13–34. 13 Griffin, Politics of Gender, 100. 14 HH, Box 11/1, Tuesday night [1877; added in pencil “received about 9 a.m. Nov. 7th.” 15 Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 23 and 140. See also P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–1914 (London: Longman, 1993); also Peter Mansfield, The British in Egypt (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971). 16 HH, Box 11/1, Aberdeen to “Sir Dudley,” 28 Jan. 1878. 17 Susan Thorne, “Religion and Empire at Home,” in Being at Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World, eds. Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 158. 18 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 173. 19 Quoted in Heather J. Sharkey, “An Egyptian in China: Ahmed Fahmy and the Making of ‘World Christianities,’” Church History 78, no. 2 ( June 2009): 309.

264  Notes to Pages 79–82 20 HH, Box 10/7. See Rev. J. Spencer Trimingham to Lady Pentland, 11 Feb. 1944, with accompanying letter from Sitt Sadiqa Hanna Abdel Masih, and others from “Gordon” to Lord Aberdeen, 18 Dec. 1886 and later. 21 “Lecture by Lord Aberdeen on Egypt,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 26 Jan. 1880. 22 HH, Box 11/1, Ishbel to “My Dearest Papa,” 25 Mar. 1878. 23 Davenport-Hines, “Gordon, Charles George (1833–1885).” 24 See Paul Greenhalgh, Fair World: A History of World’s Fairs and Expositions from London to Shanghai, 1851–2010 (Winterbourne, UK: Papadakis, 2011). 25 HH, Box 8/15, “Ish” to “Dearest mama,” 3 May 1878, emphasis in the original. 26 “Tenantry Demonstration at Tarland,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 21 Aug. 1878. 27 HH, Box 11/11, Ishbel to “my dearest papa,” 7 June 1878. 28 See the observation in John Bright, The Diaries of John Bright, ed. R.A.J. Walling (New York: Wm Morrow, 1931), 14 Oct. 1879. 29 See Owsei Temkin, The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); and Ann Jacoby, Dee Snape, and Gus A. Baker, “Epilepsy and Social Identity: The Stigma of a Chronic Neurological Disorder,” Lancet Neurology 4, no. 3 (Mar. 2005): 171–8. 30 See Jennifer Phegley, Courtship and Marriage in Victorian England (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), and James G. Snell, “‘The White Life for Two’: The Defence of Marriage and Sexual Morality in Canada, 1890–1914,” Histoire sociale/Social History 16, no. 31 (May 1983): 111–29. 31 Barbara Caine, “Mason, Charlotte Maria Shaw (1842–1923),” revised, in ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/37743, accessed 8 Dec. 2011]. 32 H.C. Barnard, A History of English Education (London: University of London Press, 1961), 247. 33 “Cheerfulness – the Daughter of Employment” and “Comfort for Weary Mothers,” in Upstairs to Downstairs: Advice to Servant Girls and Weary Mothers, ed. James Drummond (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1983), 47 and 59. 34 See The Scotsman, 31 May 1884. 35 Rachel Ann Neiwert, “Savages or Citizens? Children, Education, and the British Empire, 1899–1950,” doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2009. 36 Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady), ed., The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley (London: John Murray, 1915), 349, which identifies her as a “leading advocate of the campaign for constitutional, non-militant action to achieve the franchise,” http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415350204/; married to Conservative politician Rainald Knightley. See also the very useful and quite sympathetic introduction to the reprint, Peter Gordon, “Introduction,” in Politics and Society: The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley, 1885–1913 (New York: Routledge, 2005).

Notes to Pages 82–4 265 37 Cartwright, Journals of Lady Knightley, 331. See also Linda Walker, “Party Political Women: A Comparative Study of Liberal Women and the Primrose League, 1890–1914,” in Equal or Different: Women’s Politics, 1800–1914, ed. Jane Rendall (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 171–2. 38 Letters of the Rt. Hon. Henry Austin Bruce G.C.B. Lord Aberdare of Duffryn, with Biographical Introductions and Notes, vol. II (Oxford: printed for private circulation, 1902), 170. http://www.archive.org/stream/lettersrthonhen00abergoog/ lettersrthonhen00abergoog_djvu.txt. 39 Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, 5. 40 D.W. Bebbington, “Drummond, Henry (1851–1897),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/8068, accessed 26 Nov. 2011]. 41 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 204. 42 Ira V. Brown, “Lyman Abbott: Christian Evolutionist,” New England Quarterly 23, no. 2 ( June 1950): 221 and 228. On Canadian believers, see William Klempa, The Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow: The Presbyterian Contribution to Canadian Life and Culture (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994). On fears, see Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 43 Paul L. Farber, The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 53. 44 James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 224. 45 Ibid., 237. 46 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 79. 47 Quoted in ibid., 47. 48 See Cuthbert Lennox, Henry Drummond: A Biographical Sketch (with Bibliography) (Toronto: Wm Briggs, 1901), 93; also Thomas E. Corts, ed., Henry Drummond: A Perpetual Benediction (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999). 49 Brown, “Lyman Abbott: Christian Evolutionist,” 228. 50 See, e.g., A Brother of the Natural Man, review of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, Scottish Review 6, no. 11 ( July 1885): 11. 51 The Scotsman, 3 Nov. 1886. 52 HH, Box 1/7, Henry Drummond to Ishbel Aberdeen, 22 Feb. 1886. 53 See The Scotsman, 31 May 1884. 54 See Farber, Temptations, 52–3. See also James R. Moore, “Evangelicals and Evolution: Henry Drummond, Herbert Spencer, and the Naturalization of the Spiritual World,” Scottish Journal of Theology 38, no. 3 (1958): 383–418; Robert C. Bannister, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 158.

266  Notes to Pages 84–7 55 Klempa, Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow, 144. 56 Ibid. 57 HH, Box 1/6, George Nathaniel Curzon to Ishbel Aberdeen, 21 Oct. 1885. See also David Gilmour, “Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32680, accessed 11 July 2012]. 58 Klempa, Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow, 146. See also Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 15. 59 Thomas Dixon, The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 299. 60 See the growing recognition of religious inspiration in Jacqueline DeVries, “More than Paradoxes to Offer,” in Women, Gender and Religious Cultures in Britain, 1800–1940, eds. Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVries (Milton Park: Routledge, 2010), 190–1. 61 Midgley, “Women, Religion and Reform,” 154. On the relation of religion and suffrage, see DeVries, “More than Paradoxes to Offer,” 188–210. 62 John Cafferky and Kevin Hannafin, Scandal and Betrayal: Shackleton and the Irish Crown Jewels (Cork: Collins, 2003), 61–3. 63 Quoted in Bebbington, “Drummond, Henry.” 64 HH, Box 1/8, Henry Drummond to Ishbel Aberdeen, 16 Oct. 1884. 65 Ibid., 5 Dec. 1884. 66 BL, Pamphlet no. 8277.A57, “Mistresses and Maid-Servants: Two addresses by the Rt. Hon. The Countess of Aberdeen, “Homes for Working Girls in London” (1884), 11–13. 67 “Lady Aberdeen on the Culture of Young Women,” The Scotsman, 18 Sept. 1886. 68 “Cheerfulness – the Daughter of Employment” and “Comfort for Weary Mothers,” in Drummond, Upstairs to Downstairs, 47 and 59. 69 Gerard, “‘Lady Bountiful,’” 188. 70 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 199–200. 71 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 349n26. 72 Bill Forsythe, “Russell, Adeline Mary, duchess of Bedford (1852–1920),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/48836, accessed 26 Nov. 2011]. 73 E.F. Benson, As We Were: A Victorian Peep Show (London: Longmans, Green, 1930), 86. 74 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 50. 75 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 200–1. 76 Ibid., 198. 77 See the refrain in Lesley A. Orr Macdonald, A Unique and Glorious Mission: Women and Presbyterianism in Scotland, 1830–1930 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2000).

Notes to Pages 88–91 267 78 Aberdeen, “The Affirmation Bill,” Fortnightly Review 33, no. 196 (Apr. 1883): 483. 79 On the controversy regarding birth control, see Angus McLaren, Birth Control in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1978), especially chapter 5, “Birth Control and the Morality of Married Life.” 80 HH, Box 1/40, Loose, printed without date or origin, Aberdeen, “Union of Presbyterian Churches,” with handwritten on top “A’s article 1885,” and letters received by him on the subject. 81 Aberdeen, “Union of Presbyterian Churches,” Fortnightly Review 37, no. 221 (May 1885): 721 and 724. 82 “Lord Aberdeen,” Otago Witness (NZ), 2 July 1886. 83 The Scotsman, 23 May 1884. 84 See Hutchison, Political History of Scotland, 160–1. 85 Edward Tyas Cook, The Life of John Ruskin, vol. 2 (New York: Haskell House, 1968), 541–2. 86 “The Countess of Aberdeen,” Family Churchman, 24 Oct. 1883, 481. 87 On the reform tradition, see Sue Innes and Jane Rendall, “Women, Gender and Politics,” in Gender in Scottish History since 1700, ed. Lynn Abrams (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 43–83; and John D. Wood, “Transatlantic Land Reform: America and the Crofters’ Revolt 1878–1888,” Scottish Historical Review 63, no. 175, part 1 (Apr. 1984): 79–104. 88 McCrone and Morris, “Lords and Heritages,” 172 and 176. 89 H.B. Frere, “The Scotch Land Question: Aberdeenshire Agitation,” Nineteenth Century 10, no. 58 (Dec. 1881): 806 and 796. See also John Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, first baronet (1815–1884),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/10171, accessed 28 Nov. 2011]. 90 “Presentation of Address to Lord Aberdeen,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 12 July 1880. 91 “The Land Agitation in Scotland,” The Times, 2 Dec. 1881. 92 James W. Barclay, “The Grievances of the Farmers,” Nineteenth Century (Feb. 1882): 284. 93 “Lord Aberdeen and His Tenantry,” Dundee Courier and Argus and Northern Warder, 1 Nov. 1881. 94 “Scotland in 1881,” The Times, 3 Jan. 1882. See also Dundee Courier and Argus and Northern Warder, 31 Oct. 1881. 95 E.M. Satow, “Mackay, Donald James, eleventh Lord Reay and Baron Reay (1839–1921),” revised by P.W.H. Brown, in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/34740, accessed 28 Nov. 2011]. 96 HH, Box 1/6, Lord Reay to Aberdeen, 12 Sept. 1881; emphasis in original.

268  Notes to Pages 91–4 97 Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 1, 158. 98 Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 2, 53. See also Belich, Replenishing the Earth on the larger imperial pattern. 99 Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 2., 188. See also the Earl of Aberdeen, “Dr Barnardo,” Quiver, no. 220 ( Jan. 1906): 18. 100 Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 2., 250. 101 “Scotch Agricultural Laborers,” Grey River Argus (NZ), 25 Feb. 1886. 102 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 133. 103 BL, “The Countess of Aberdeen,” Girl’s Own Paper (London), date unknown, 24. 104 On the latter, see Frederick Shirley Dumaresq de Carteret-Bisson, Our Schools and Colleges, vol. 1 (London: Simpkin Marshall, 1884), 642. 105 See Drummond, Upstairs to Downstairs, with its excerpts from Onwards and Upwards and admiring introduction by June Gordon, granddaughter-in-law to Ishbel and John. 106 HH, Bound Volume labelled “Speeches, Addresses & Articles By and On Lord & Lady Aberdeen,” vol. 1, undated clipping, Isabella Fyvie May, “The Countess of Aberdeen, A Character Sketch,” Young Woman, 18. 107 HH, Box 10/3, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “They Say – What Say They? Let Them Say,” identified as in The Nineteenth Century and After but the article could not be located in this magazine. 108 HH, Box 10/3, clipping, “Lady Aberdeen’s Association for Female Servants,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 3 Feb. 1882. 109 HH, Box 10/5, Printed letter: Ishbel Aberdeen to HHYWIA, Dec. 1882. 110 HH, Box 10/5, Printed pamphlet, Ishbel Aberdeen “To the Associates of the Haddo House Young Women’s Improvement Association,” Dec. 1885, 5. 111 BL, Pamphlet no. 8277.A57, “Mistresses and Maid-Servants: Two Addresses by the Right Honourable The Countess of Aberdeen” (1884); in same binding, “Homes for Working Girls in London,” 11 and 20. 112 “Improvement of Domestic Servants,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 4 Feb. 1882. 113 Jane McDermid, “School Board Women and Active Citizenship in Scotland, 1873–1919,” History of Education 38, no. 3 (May 2009), 344. 114 Lady Aberdeen, ‘What are the objects of our Association?’ (1891), in Drummond, Upstairs to Downstairs, 13. 115 Countess of Aberdeen, A few Words about our Farm Servant Girls and A Scheme for Their Benefit (Aberdeen: D. Wyllie and Son, 1882), 4. 116 On the Glasgow institution, see Linda Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1990), esp. chapter 5, “The Domestication of Fallen Women.” 117 HH, Box 1/6, Envelope marked in Ishbel’s handwriting, “Some of the letters written by members of Lady Aberdeen’s Sunday Class, giving their recollection of what they heard on the previous Sunday, Jan. 17 1886.”

Notes to Pages 94–7 269 118 LAC, NCWCP, Reel A827, Letter from Alexander Grant to Lord Aberdeen, 30 Oct. 1895. 119 HH, Box 1/6, Elizabeth Law to “dear madam” dated only 22 Jan. [1920s?]. 120 HH, Box 1/6, A.W. Davidson to Lord Aberdeen, 20 Apr. 1920. 121 See Andrew Blaikie, “Motivation and Motherhood: Past and Present Attributions in the Reconstruction of Illegitimacy,” Sociological Review 43, no. 4 (Nov. 1995): 643–57. 122 E.F.M., “Interview,” Woman’s Herald, 14 May 1892. 123 “Fyvie, St Katharine’s School,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 30 Jan. 1884. 124 Robert Farquharson, School Hygiene and Diseases Incidental to School Life (London: Smith, Alder, 1885), 73. 125 “Hot Dinners for School Children,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 22 Jan. 1885. 126 Quoted in “Opening of the Methlick Institute,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 2 Apr. 1881. See also the admiring “Anglo-Colonial Notes,” Star (Canterbury, NZ), 13 Sept. 1883. 127 Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, 93. 128 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 76. 129 Janice Helland, “Authenticity and Identity as Visual Display: Scottish and Irish Home Arts and Industries,” in A Shared Legacy: Essays on Irish and Scottish Art and Visual Culture, eds. Fintan Cullen and John Morrison (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 161. See also Denis Stuart, “Gower, Millicent Fanny Sutherland-Leveson-, duchess of Sutherland (1867–1955),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/40794, accessed 11 July 2012]. 130 Aberdeen, Musings of a Scottish Granny, 52. 131 “Kind Hearts Are More than Coronets,” Quiver 2 (1886): 127. 132 See n78, which notes that Aberdeen’s sale of land from the 1880s put him in the forefront of the breakup of the great estates. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 108–9. 133 “Freedom of the City of Aberdeen,” The Scotsman, 5 Nov. 1883. 134 See I.G.C. Hutchison, “Elite Society,” in Aberdeen, 1800–2000: A New History, eds. W. Hamish Fraser and Clive H. Lee (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000), 374–97. 135 Quoted in Nancy W. Ellenberger, “The Transformation of London ‘Society’ at the End of Victoria’s Reign: Evidence from the Court Presentation Records,” Albion 22, no. 4 (Winter 1990), 637. 136 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 38. 137 On this Scottish Congregational minister, see Anthony S. Wohl, “Mearns, Andrew (1837–1925),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/56012, accessed 29 Nov. 2011]. The Society for Promoting Industrial Villages offered, in direct response to The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, reform of the “dreary, half-populated rural districts of the Kingdom.” W. Ashworth, The Genesis of Modern Town Planning (London: Routledge and Kegan

270  Notes to Pages 97–101 Paul, 1972) http://www.keele.ac.uk/history/currentundergraduates/tltp/ URBAN/CORE2/TEXT/ASHWOR67.HTM. 138 W. Ashworth, “British Industrial Villages in the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, NS 3, no. 3 (1951): 383. 139 HH, Box 1/7, Henry Drummond to Ishbel Aberdeen, 27 Mar. 1886. 140 NLS, Rosebery Papers 10085, Aberdeen to Rosebery, 26 June 1886. 141 “Charge of Burglary,” The Times, 17 June 1879. 142 See “Cruelty to Children,” Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser for Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire, 15 July 1885. 143 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 198. See also http://www.hortonkirbyandsouthdarenth .co.uk/homes_boys.htm. 144 See Emma M. Sterling, Our Children in Old Scotland and Nova Scotia (London: John Haddon, c. 1892), http://www.electricscotland.com/history/children/chapter3.htm. 145 “Conference on Emigration,” The Times, 24 Apr. 1884. 146 “Seduction and Suicide,” Illustrated Police News, 14 May 1881. 147 “The Lord High Commissioner,” The Scotsman, 2 June 1885. 148 Sue Morgan, “Hopkins, ( Jane) Ellice (1836–1904),” in ODNB [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/33978, accessed 30 Nov. 2011] ( Jane) Ellice Hopkins (1836–1904): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33978. 149 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 39. See also Jenkins, Gladstone, chapter 7. 150 “The ‘White Cross’ Movement,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 29 Nov. 1883. 151 “The White Cross Movement,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 1 Feb. 1884. 152 See Kali Israel, Names and Stories: Emilia Dilke and Victorian Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 153 “Figaro on the Earl of Aberdeen,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 28 Apr. 1884. 154 Tosh, A Man’s Place, 4. 155 The Scotsman, 31 May 1884, 6 156 Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 2, 246–50. 157 The Scotsman, 12 Sept. 1884. 158 Ibid., 26 May 26, 1885. 159 “University Education of Women,” The Scotsman, 23 Apr. 1885. 160 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 75. 161 Ibid., 51. 162 C.D. Myers, “The Glasgow Association for the Higher Education of Women, 1878–1883,” Historian 63 (Winter 2001): 357–71; S. Hamilton, “The First Generation of University Women, 1869–1930,” in Four Centuries: Edinburgh University Life, ed. G. Donaldson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), 99–115; L. Moore, “The Scottish Universities and Women Students, 1862–1892,” in Scottish Universities: Distinctiveness and Diversity, eds. J. Carter and D. Withrington (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992), 138–40; L. Moore, Bajanellas

Notes to Pages 101–5 271 and Semilinas: Aberdeen University and the Education of Women, 1860–1920 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1991). 163 K.D. Reynolds, “Lindsay, Anna (1845–1903),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/56265, accessed 24 Nov. 2011] 164 Edward H. Milligan, “McLaren, Priscilla Bright (1815–1906),” in ODNB [http:// www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/47643, accessed 1 Dec. 2011]; Priscilla Bright McLaren (1815–1906): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/47643. See also Leah Leneman, A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland (Edinburgh: Mercat, 1995). 165 Linda Walker, “McLaren, Eva Maria (1852/3–1921),” in ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/56261, accessed 1 Dec. 2011]. Walter Stowe Bright McLaren (1853–1912): doi:10.1093/ ref:odnb/61721. 166 McDermid, “School Board Women,” 334. 167 Ibid., 336. 168 Elspeth King, “The Scottish Women’s Suffrage Movement,” in Out of Bounds: Women in Scottish Society, eds. Esther Breitenbach and Eleanor Gordon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 130. 169 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 75. 170 Christopher T. Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics, 1707–Present (London: Routledge, 1998), 18. 171 Ibid., 68. 172 David Powell, “The New Liberalism and the Rise of Labour, 1886–1906,” Historical Journal 29, no. 2 (1986): 371. 173 HH, Box 1/4, Unaddressed incomplete letter in Lord Aberdeen’s handwriting, no date but seemingly 1870s. On this see further M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774–1913: A Study in International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1966). 174 Parry, Politics of Patriotism, 323. 175 Ibid., 389. 176 “Aberdeen Junior Liberal Association,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 12 Jan. 1883. 177 E.M. Craik, “Donaldson, Sir James (1831–1915),” in ODNB [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32856, accessed 9 Dec. 2011]. Another correspondent was John Stuart Blackie, a Liberal Classical and Gaelic scholar also at St Andrews. See Kerr Borthwick, “Blackie, John Stuart (1809–1895),” in ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/2524, accessed 9 Dec. 2011]. 178 HH, Box 1/6, James Donaldson, to Ishbel Aberdeen, 29 Aug. 1884. 179 “Lord Aberdeen’s work in Scotland,” Daily News (London), 4 Aug. 1886. 180 UK Hansard, “Representation of the People Bill – Resolution,” House of Lords, Debates, 17 July 1884.

272  Notes to Pages 105–7 181 182 183 184 185 186

Ibid., 28 Feb. 1882. Ibid., “Criminal Law Amendment Bill,” 25 June 1883. Ibid., 25 June 1878. Ibid., “Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Bill,” 9 Aug. 1883. Ibid., “Minister for Scotland – Scotch National Schools,” 23 Mar. 1885. “The Earl of Aberdeen,” Family Churchman (Sept. 1883), 369. http://books. google.ca/books?id=1KQOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA369&lpg=PA369&dq=% 22lord+aberdeen%22+sankey+moody&source=bl&ots=cMBhmVezuD&sig= E-lzFEaAcs31r-5RMF2CsZHAprg&hl=en&ei=MGSgTuv_OISviQKQ7 _Vh&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v= onepage&q=%22lord%20aberdeen%22%20sankey%20moody&f=false. 187 After the 1885 election, seventy Liberals MPs pledged to abolish the House of Lords, and in 1888 the National Liberal Federation added abolition or reform to its platform. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 43. 188 Ian Packer, “The Land Issue and the Future of Scottish Liberalism in 1914,” Scottish Historical Review 75, no. 199, part 1 (Apr. 1996): 63. 189 Quoted in Peter T. Marsh, “Chamberlain, Joseph (1836–1914),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/32350, accessed 4 May 2012]. 190 Hutchison, Political History of Scotland, 161. 191 Adonis, “Aristocracy, Agriculture and Liberalism,” 879. 192 Thomas Hay Sweet Escott, Society in London (New York: Harper and Bros, 1885), 95. 193 Paul Bew, “Parnell, Charles Stewart (1846–1891),” in ODNB [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/21384, accessed 2 Dec. 2011]. 194 His relative stature, or lack of such, can be seen by the failure to include him in Andrew Reid, Why I Am a Liberal, Being Definitions and Personal Confessions of Faith by the Best Minds of the Liberal Party (London: Cassell, 1885). This contrasts with his inclusion in Justin McCarthy, British Political Portraits (New York: Outlook, 1903). 195 Ian James Cawood, “The Lost Party: Liberal Unionism, 1886–1895,” doctoral dissertation, University of Leicester, 2009, 6. 196 HH, Box 11/1, Ishbel to My dearest papa, 16 Apr. 1878. 197 See Hall, “The Nation Within and Without.” 198 This powerful Catholic cardinal was renowned for his attention to the poor. See Jacqueline Clais-Girard, “The English Catholics and Irish Nationalism 1865–1890: A Tragedy in Five Acts,” Victorian Literature and Culture 32, no. 1 (2004): 177–89; and David Newsome, “Manning, Henry Edward (1808–1892),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/17970, accessed 4 May 2012].

Notes to Pages 107–10 273 199 Ishbel Aberdeen to Henry Drumond, about this time, quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 56. 200 NLS, Rosebery Papers 10085, Aberdeen to Rosebery, 26 June 1886. 201 HH, Box 1/7, Henry Drummond to Aberdeen, 13 Mar. 1886; emphasis in original. 202 “The New Lord Lieutenant as a Scotch Landlord,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 22 Feb. 1886. 203 “Lord Aberdeen,” The Spectator, 27 Feb. 1886. 204 “Our own correspondent,” “Mr Gladstone’s Cabinet,” New York Times, 7 Feb. 1886. 205 “Ireland,” The Times, 8 Feb. 1886. 206 Peter Gordon, “Spencer, John Poyntz, fifth Earl Spencer (1835–1910),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/36209, accessed 3 Dec. 2011]. 207 David Hamer, “Morley, John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/35110, accessed 2 Dec. 2011]. 208 Sir Robert Hamilton to Lord Spencer, cited in Stephen Ball, ed., Dublin Castle and the First Home Rule Crisis: The Political Journal of Sir George Fottrell, 1884–1887 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 305. Marked “confidential.” See also Allen Warren, “Dublin Castle, Whitehall, and the Formation of Irish Policy, 1879–92,” Irish Historical Studies 34, no. 136 (Nov. 2005): 403–30, for a useful discussion of the overall development of Liberal and Conservative Irish policies, which in completely ignoring the Aberdeens effectively supports their role as minimal. What it also ignores, however, is the meaning of ceremony and the public and domestic face of empire, all represented by Ishbel and John. 209 Ball, “Introduction,” ibid., 75. 210 Paul Knaplund, “Gladstone-Gordon Correspondence, 1851–1896: Selections from the Private Correspondence of a British Prime Minister and a Colonial Governor,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, NS, 51, no. 4 (1961), 94. 211 Arthur Gordon to Lady Sophia Palmer, 27 Aug. 1886, in Chapman, Career of Arthur Hamilton Gordon, 356. 212 HH, Box 1/25, George W. Smalley, London Letters and Some Others, vol. II (London: Macmillan, 1890), 145. 213 Ibid., 149. 214 The Leeds Mercury, 16 Mar. 1886. 215 D. George Boyce, “Davitt, Michael (1846–1906),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32747, accessed 2 Dec. 2011]. See HH, Box 1/25, Smalley, London Letters and Some Others, in 2 vols., is associated with a handwritten note from Ishbel affirming that John deliberately greeted Davitt.

274  Notes to Pages 110–12 216 HH, Box 1/25, Smalley, London Letters and Some Others, vol. I, 158. 217 Ibid., 156. 218 Loughlin, British Monarchy and Ireland, 210. See also his “The British Monarchy and the Irish Viceroyalty: Politics, Architecture and Place, 1870–1914,” in The Irish Lord Lieutenancy, c. 1541–1922 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2012), 179–98, published after this manuscript was completed, and Prochaska, Royal Bounty. For a good survey of the Aberdeens’ efforts, see Keane, Ishbel: Lady Aberdeen in Ireland. 219 “Ireland,” The Scotsman, 2 Apr. 1886. 220 See John R. Strachan and Claire Nally, Advertising, Literature and Prince Culture in Ireland, 1891–1922 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 193–4; and Sean Beattie, “Female Cultural Philanthropy: Alice Hart and the Donegal Industrial Fund,” in Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, 1838–1948, eds. Virginia Crossman and Peter Gray (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011), 163–74. 221 Helland, “Authenticity and Identity,” 163. 222 See Janice Helland, “Ishbel Aberdeen’s ‘Irish’ Dresses: Embroidery, Display and Meaning, 1886–1909,” Journal of Design History, published 29 Oct. 2012 online. 223 “The Aberdeen Demonstration,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 5 Aug. 1886. 224 “The Departure of the Aberdeens,” The Nation, 19 Aug. 1886, 155. 225 “The Earl of Aberdeen Viceroy of Ireland,” Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, 17 Apr. 1886. 226 T.D. Sullivan, Recollections of Troubled Times in Irish Politics (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker, M.H. Giull & Son, 1905), 211. 227 Ibid., 212. 228 Mr Sexton (Belfast, W., and Sligo, S.), HC DEB 27 Aug. 1886 308, cc 671–770. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1886/aug/27/tenant-farmersireland-evic-tions-from, 683. For the same views, see “The Departure of the Aberdeens,” The Nation, 19 Aug. 1886, 155–6. 229 W.B. Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 1, eds. John Kelly and Eric Dornville (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 64. See also R.F. Foster, “Yeats, William Butler (1865–1939),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/37061, accessed 11 July 2012]. 230 “Our Special Correspondent,” “The Late Liberal Viceroy on Ireland and Home Rule,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 23 Oct. 1886. 231 “Lord Aberdeen on Home Rule,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 30 Nov. 1886. This appeal was especially powerful because Scotland had its own Home Rule movement and indeed this formed part of the inspiration for a Scottish secretary, which Aberdeen supported. See also the anonymously

Notes to Pages 113–14 275 authored “Home Rule for Scotland,” Scottish Review 8, no. 15 ( July 1886): 1–20, which foresaw a “real United Empire, the United States of Greater Britain” (20); emphasis in original. 232 The Scotsman, 30 Nov. 1886. 233 “The Annual Conference of the National Union of Conservative Association for Scotland,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 2 Dec. 1886. 234 Alvin Jackson, The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707–2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). On the limitations of Protestant landlords, see also his Colonel Edwards Saunderson: Land and Loyalty in Victorian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). For a somewhat more attractive view of this class, see Mark Bence-Jones, The Twilight of the Ascendancy (London: Constable, 1993). 235 Alvin Jackson, “Stewart, Charles Stewart Vane-Tempest-, sixth marquess of Londonderry (1852–1915),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2008 [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/36626, accessed 3 Dec. 2011]. 236 Ruddock Mackay and H.C.G. Matthew, “Balfour, Arthur James, first earl of  Balfour (1848–1930),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/30553, accessed 10 Nov. 2011]. 237 Christine Kinealy, “At Home with the Empire: The Example of Ireland,” in Being at Home with the Empire, eds. Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 100. 238 Douglas Lorimer, “From Victorian Values to White Virtues: Assimilation and Exclusion in British Racial Discourse, c. 1870–1914,” in Rediscovering the British World, eds. Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), 115. 239 Ibid., 117. 240 Karuna Mantena, “The Crisis of Liberal Imperialism,” Histoire@Politique 2, no. 11 (2010). www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-politique-2010-2-page-2.htm. DOI: 10.3917/hp.011.0002. 241 Elizabeth F. Martin, “Painting the Irish West: Nationalism and the Representation of Women,” New Hibernia Review 7, no. 1 (Earrach/Spring 2003): 34. 242 Myrtle Hill, “Divisions and Debates: The Irish Suffrage Experience,” in The Struggle for Female Suffrage in Europe, eds. Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz and Ruth RubioMarín (Leyden: Brill, 2012), 261. 243 E.F. Biagini, “Introduction: Citizenship, Liberty and Community,” in Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals, and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931, ed. Eugenio F. Biagini (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 17. 244 McCarthy, British Political Portraits, 153.

276  Notes to Pages 114–19 245 HH, Box 1/5, Rosebery to Aberdeen, marked “private,” 1 Apr. 1885, and a letter from Rosebery, marked copy, 13 Mar. 1886, to unspecified recipient, presumably one or both of the Aberdeens. 246 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 43–4. 247 Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850–2004 (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2004), 130. On Aberdeen’s commitment to Canada and the UK as multinational states, see Val McLeish, “Sunshine and Sorrows: Canada, Ireland, and Lady Aberdeen,” in Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. David Lambert and Allan Lester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 257–84. 248 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 2. 4.  Extending the Field of Labour 1 Ishbel as quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 65. 2 W. David McIntyre, The Commonwealth of Nations: Origins and Impact, 1869–1971 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), 4. 3 “Calcutta: Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” Free Church of Scotland Monthly (Edinburgh), 2 May 1887. 4 Aberdeens, More Cracks with We Twa (London: Methuen, 1929), 18. 5 HH, Box 10/2, Ishbel Aberdeen Diaries, 8 Feb. 1887 [erroneously marked 7 Feb.]. 6 Ishbel as quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 65 7 Anonymous writer to Ishbel Aberdeen, 25 Mar. 1889, quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 79. 8 Barbara Morris, “Liberty and Company: A History of Liberty Furniture.” [http://www.achome.co.uk/antiques/furniture_research.htm, accessed 3 July 2014]. 9 Duncan S.A. Bell, “Historiographical Reviews: Empire and International Relations in Victorian Political Thought,” Historical Journal 49, no. 1 (2006): 296. 10 Belich, Replenishing the Earth. 11 Henry Drummond to Ishbel, 3 Mar. 1887, quoted in French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 82. 12 “Topics of the Week,” Australian (Melbourne), 9 Apr. 1887. 13 “Visit of Lord Aberdeen to St Andrew’s College,” Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (New South Wales), 30 April 1887. 14 “The Earl and Countess of Aberdeen in Tasmania,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 2 June 1887. 15 “The Earl of Aberdeen at Auckland,” Star (Canterbury, NZ), 5 May 1887. 16 “The Earl of Aberdeen on Home Rule,” Te Aroha News (Waikato, NZ), 30 Apr. 1887.

Notes to Pages 119–23 277 17 The Hon. Dr Grace, M.L.C., in “Welcome to the Earl of Aberdeen,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), 17 May 1887. The Post’s editor was a former journalist at the Dublin Evening Mail. 18 New York Herald correspondent, “The Earl of Aberdeen at San Francisco,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 1 July 1887. 19 French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 84. 20 “The Arrival of Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 27 July 1887). See also a similar speech in Perthshire, “Lord Aberdeen on the Irish Problem,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 28 Sept. 1887. 21 See John F. Glaser, “Parnell’s Fall and the Nonconformist Conscience,” Irish Historical Studies 12, no. 46 (Oct. 1960): 119–38, which describes some of the outrage that the Aberdeens would have shared. In particular, they were advocates as well “of a democratic society which demands that its leaders adhere to the ideals it values and the standards it sets” (138). 22 Ishbel Aberdeen, undated journal entry about this time, Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 72. 23 HH, Box 1/7, Henry Drummond to “My dear Eisdrubail,” 17 Dec. 1887. 24 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 79. 25 See the concern of John’s uncle about their expenditures in HH, Box 1/4, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon to “Dear John,” 11 Feb. 1889. 26 Richard Haldane and Edward Grey, in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 82–3. 27 Countess of Aberdeen, “Preface,” in W.C. Gannett Blessed be Drudgery (Glasgow: David Bryce, 1890). This was written when she was in Bordighera, Italy. 28 Quoted in Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 87. 29 See the observation in ibid., 88. 30 Countess of Aberdeen, Through Canada with a Kodak (Edinburgh: W.H. White, 1893), 7. Since the original is now available on Early Canadiana Online (http:// www.canadiana.org/ECO) and I wish to encourage the use of ECOL, all citations come from that. There is, however, a reprint with a very useful introduction by Marjory Harper published by University of Toronto Press in 1994. 31 Ibid., 19. 32 Ibid., 39. 33 Ibid., 48. 34 Ibid., 58. 35 HH, Box 1/4, J.B. Hamilton, Toronto, to Lord Aberdeen, 16 June 1887. 36 Countess of Aberdeen, Through Canada with a Kodak, 84. 37 Ibid., 103. 38 See Wayne Norton, Help Us to a Better Land: Crofter Colonies in the Prairie West (Regina: University of Regina, Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1994), and

278  Notes to Pages 123–5

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47

48

49

50 51

52 53

54 55 56 57

J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). Countess of Aberdeen, Through Canada with a Kodak, 130. Ibid., 138. Ibid., 264. Ibid., 200–1. Ibid., 202–3. Ibid., 204. Ibid., 43. See also Hugh A. Dempsey, “Crowfoot or Isapo-Muxika, occasionally known in French as Pied de Corbeau,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (vol. XI, 1881–1890), http://www.biographi.ca/index-e.html. See Veronica Strong-Boag, “‘A People Akin to Mine’: Indians and Highlanders within the British Empire,” Native Studies Review 14, no. 1 (2001): 27–53. See, e.g., the Duke of Sutherland and his Canadian Lands Company. George Granville Sutherland-Leveson-Gower Sutherland, Looking Back: The Autobiography of the Duke of Sutherland (London: Odhams, 1957), 58. For the story of this family, Gabrielle Monique Legault, “Changing in Place: A Generational Study of a Mixed Indigenous Family in the Okanagan,” MA thesis, University of British Columbia (Okanagan), 2012, which also provides a good discussion of the displacement of the Sylix people. See also “Third John McDougall House,” The Register, Canada’s Historic Places, http://www .historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=7196. Alice Barrett Parke, Hobnobbing with a Countess and Other Okanagan Adventures: The Diaries of Alice Barrett Parke, 1891–1900, ed. Jo Fraser Jones (Vanouver: UBC Press, 2001), 29 Sept. 1896, 242. Ibid., 30 and xviii. On the imperial project in BC, see Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). See also Belich, Replenishing the Earth. For the best account, see Harper, Emigration from North-east Scotland, vol. 1, 113 and passim. Such hopes were pervasive. See, e.g., the portraits sketched by Mohawk-English writer E. Pauline Johnson in many of her stories for children’s magazines. StrongBoag and Gerson, Paddling Her Own Canoe, passim. See formation of the women’s branch of the Imperial Federation League by Ishbel Aberdeen and others, Pall Mall Gazette, 4 Mar. 1891. See D.M. Mak, “Grant, George Monro …1835–1902,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (vol. XII, 1901–1910), http://www.biographi.ca/index-e.html. “Canada and the United States,” Glasgow Herald, 11 Feb. 1891. “Lord Aberdeen on Canada,” The Times, 12 Feb. 1891.

Notes to Pages 125–8 279 58 “The Model Earl and Countess,” Nelson Evening Mail (NZ), 30 Oct. 1893. 59 “An Interesting Personality: The Countess of Aberdeen,” Star (Auckland), 15 May 1897. 60 “The Countess of Aberdeen,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 4 May 1892. 61 “The Last 24 Hours,” Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 8 Nov. 1890. 62 Maurice Headlam, “Sinclair, John, first Baron Pentland (1860–1925),” revised by Marc Brodie, in ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/36109, accessed 19 Dec. 2011]. 63 HH, bound volume, “Speeches, Addresses & Articles By & On Lord & Lady Aberdeen,” vol. I, ’88 Workers’ Club. President’s Address Given by the Countess of Aberdeen, Sept. 1892, 4–5; emphasis in original. 64 “Visit of Messrs Moody and Sankey to Haddo House,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 8 Jan. 1892. 65 Ishbel Aberdeen, “Household Clubs: An Experiment,” Nineteenth Century 31, no.181 (Mar. 1892), 397. She was inspired by Stanton Coit’s Neighbourhood Guilds: An Instrument of Social Reform (London: Swan, 1891). See Ian MacKillop, “Coit, Stanton George (1857–1944),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .library.ubc.ca/view/article/47853, accessed 17 Dec. 2011]. 66 Ishbel Aberdeen, “Household Clubs,” 398, emphasis in original. 67 Harper, Emigration from North-East Scotland, vol. 2, 247. 68 William C. Lubenow, Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815–1914 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2010), 2. 69 HH, Unnumbered fake books containing unorganized letters received on golden wedding anniversary in 1927, Margaret Thorburn to Lady Aberdeen, 4 Nov. 1927. 70 HH, Box 10/5, Ishbel to the Associates and Married Associates of the Haddo House Associations, Dec. 1886. 71 HH, Box 10/4, “Haddo House Association 1890,” 2. 72 See HH, Scrapbook Sept. 1886–Apr. 1889, Letters to editor in People’s Journal (Dundee), Jan.–Feb. 1889. The charges were both contested and supported by contributors. 73 “Lord Aberdeen on Agriculture,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 17 Aug. 1888. 74 The Scotsman, 3 Feb. 1893. 75 Elaine Cheasley Patterson, “Crafting a National Identity: The Dun Emer Guild, 1902–1908,” in The Irish Revival Reappraised, eds. Betsey Taylor FitzSimon and James H. Murphy (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), 12. 76 “Irish Industries in Belgravia. An Interview with Lady Aberdeen,” Irish Times, 4 Aug. 1891, 6. 77 “Lord and Lady Aberdeen in New Ross,’ Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 22 Feb. 1893.

280  Notes to Pages 128–31 78 See the useful appraisal by Janice Helland, “Rural Women and Urban Extravagance in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Rural History 13 (2002): 179–97. 79 “The Countess of Aberdeen and Dr Kane,” Belfast News-Letter, 14 Aug. 1893, Dr Kane to Ishbel Aberdeen, 16 May 1893. 80 Ibid., Ishbel Aberdeen to Dr Kane, 5 Aug. 1893. 81 “Ulstermen Decline to Be Patronised,” Huddersfield Daily Chronicle (West Yorkshire), 4 Aug. 1893. 82 ”Work and Wages,” Liverpool Mercury, 25 Oct. 1887. 83 “A Countess on Woman’s Sphere and Opportunities,” Leeds Mercury, 22 Sept. 1888. 84 “The University Education of Women,” Glasgow Herald, 19 April 1889. 85 Rosemary Feurer, “The Meaning of ‘Sisterhood’: The British Women’s Movement and Protective Labor Legislation, 1870–1900,” Victorian Studies 31, no. 2 (Winter 1988): 233–60. 86 “A Women’s Trade Conference at Lady Aberdeen’s,” Pall Mall Gazette, 28 Nov. 1889. 87 “Trades Unions for East-End Women,” ibid., 9 Oct. 1889. 88 Tom Mann, Tom Mann’s Memoirs (1923); reprint with introduction by Ken Coates (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1967), 86. 89 HH, Box 1/6, Mrs Hamilton King, a poet and distant relative, to “My dear Aberdeen,” 8 Sept. 1889. 90 The Scotsman, 8 Sept. 1892. 91 F.W. Newland, “The City of Manchester,” Sunday at Home, 1 Jan. 1900. 92 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 275–6. 93 Feurer, “The Meaning of ‘Sisterhood,’” 239. 94 “Lady Aberdeen on the Railway Strike,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 31 Jan. 1891. 95 “A Women’s Trades League for Edinburgh,” The Scotsman, 2 Oct. 1891. 96 See The Jewish Standard (New Jersey, USA), 27 Feb. 1891. 97 ”General Booth on his Social Scheme,” Birmingham Daily Post, 26 June 1891. 98 “Salvation Army Citadel,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 18 Aug. 1893. 99 “The Right Honourable The Earl of Aberdeen,” Boys’ Brigade Gazette 1 (1 Mar. 1889). 100 “Scottish Shopkeepers’ and Assistants’ Union,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 9 Dec. 1890. 101 “Opening by Lord Aberdeen,” Reynolds’s Newspaper (London), 14 June 1891. 102 Sheila C. Blackburn, “‘Princesses and Sweated-Wage Slaves Go Well Together’: Images of British Sweated Workers, 1843–1914,” International Labor and WorkingClass History, no. 61 (Spring 2002): 33–5. 103 “Mr McCarthy and Lord Liverpool at Liverpool,” Northern Echo, 3 Feb. 1891.

Notes to Pages 131–3 281 104 “The Railway Strike,” Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Jan. 1891. See also Aberdeens, We Twa I, 280. 105 See the appeals in HH, Box 10/6. 106 “The Right Honourable The Earl of Aberdeen,” Boys’ Brigade Gazette 1 (1 Mar. 1889), and “The Earl of Aberdeen Has Accepted the Presidency of the King Edward Ragged Schools and Mission, Spitalfields, in Succession to the Late Earl of Shaftesbury,” Illustrated London News, 3 Sept. 1887, 272. 107 Boy’s Brigade Gazette (1 Oct. 1892). 108 Poole, Philanthrophy and the Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship, 48–51. 109 “Record of Events,” Englishwoman’s Review (London), 15 Dec. 1888. See also “Ladies as County Councilors,” Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Nov. 1888; “Lady Aberdeen on Women as County Councilors,” North Wales Chronicle (Bangor), 24 Nov. 1888; and “Ladies as County Councilors. Lady Aberdeen,” Huddersfield Chronicle and West Yorkshire Advertiser, 24 Nov. 1888. 110 “The Countess of Aberdeen,” Country Gentleman (London), 24 Nov. 1888. 111 Joseph Cook and Hazlitt Alva Cuppy, Our Day 13 (1891): 492. 112 French Shackleton, Ishbel and the Empire, 85. 113 HH, Box 1/7, Henry Drummond to “My dear Eis,” 20 June 1889. On Colenso see Shula Marks, “Harriette Colenso and the Zulus, 1874–1913,” Journal of African History 4, no. 3 (1963): 403–11, and Jeff Guy, The View across the River: Harriet Colenso and the Zulu Struggle against Imperialism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002). 114 HH, Scrapbook labelled Sept. 1877–1883 but holding later clippings as well, undated and otherwise unidentified newpaper clipping titled “Two Young Zulus at Alva House.” 115 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 272. 116 Pugh, “The Limits of Liberalism,” 52. 117 See John Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–1868 (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1976). 118 Powell, “The New Liberalism and the Rise of Labour,” 371. 119 Ibid., 369–93. 120 On the Whigs as champions of liberty but not equality in the period, see Ellenberger, “The Transformation of London ‘Society.’” On George and Crofter agitation, see Wood, “Transatlantic Land Reform,” esp. 94–99. See also James Hunter, “The Politics of Highland Land Reform, 1873–1895,’ Scottish Historical Review 53, no. 155, part 1 (Apr. 1974): 45–68; and D.W. Crowley, “The ‘Crofters’ Party,’ 1885–1892,” ibid., 35, no. 120, part 2 (Oct. 1956): 110–26. 121 Powell, “The New Liberalism and the Rise of Labour,” 375. 122 Ibid., 390.

282  Notes to Pages 133–5 123 James G. Kellas, “The Liberal Party in Scotland, 1876–1895,’ Scottish Historical Review 44, no. 137, part 1 (Apr. 1965): 14. 124 Derek W. Urwin, “The Development of the Conservative Party Organization in Scotland until 1912,” Scottish Historical Review 44, no. 138, part 2 (Oct. 1965): 95. 125 Thomas M. Devine, Clanship to Crofter’s War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 234. See also on the essential conservatism of Gladstone with regard to nationalist movements, Keith A.P. Sandiford, “W.E. Gladstone and LiberalNationalist Movements,” Albion 13, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 27–42. 126 Aberdeen, “Home Rule for Scotland,” Westminster Review 133 ( Jan. 1890), 57–8. See also the favourable coverage in “Home Rule for Scotland,” Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 1 Mar. 1890. 127 On the two movements, see Jackson, The Two Unions. 128 Balfour, Ne Obliviscari: Dinna forget I, 295. 129 Richard A. Cosgrove, “Dicey, Albert Venn (1835–1922),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/32811, accessed 18 Dec. 2011]. 130 Cawood, “The Lost Party: Liberal Unionism,” 35–6. 131 Kinealy, “At Home with the Empire: The Example of Ireland,” 95. 132 Helland, “Embroidered Spectacle,” 102. 133 Jackson, Loulou, 166. 134 “Liberal News,” Woman’s Herald, 5 Sept. 1891. 135 “Ulster or Ireland,” ibid., 18 June 1892. 136 Anne Isba, Gladstone and Women (London: Hambleton Continuum, 2006), 146. 137 Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 92–3. 138 “Women’s Liberal Federation,” The Scotsman, 28 May 1891. 139 See D.A. Hamer’s assessment of male Liberals, “The Irish Question and Liberal Politics, 1886–1894,” Historical Journal 12, no. 3 (1969): 515–16. His conclusions apply more generally. 140 Pall Mall Gazette (19 Nov. 1889), cited in Jonathan Schneer, “Politics and Feminism in ‘Outcast London’: George Lansbury and Jane Cobden’s Campaign for the First London County Council,” Journal of British Studies 30, no. 1 ( Jan. 1991): 64. See also Myrim Boussahba-Bravard, “‘To Serve and to Elect’: The Women’s Local Government Society, Britain 1888–1918,” in A City of One’s Own, eds. Sophie Body-Gendrot, Jacques Carré, and Romain Garbaye (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 181–200. 141 “Women and the County Council,” Pall Mall Gazette, 25 Jan. 1889. See also K.D. Reynolds, “Mansfield, Margaret, Lady Sandhurst (bap. 1827, d. 1892),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/41211, accessed 18 Dec. 2011]; A.C. Howe, “Unwin, (Emma) Jane Catherine Cobden (1851–1947),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2006 [http://

Notes to Pages 135–9 283 www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/38683, accessed 18 Dec. 2011]; Judi Leighton, “Cons, Emma (1838–1912),” in ODNB [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/37310, accessed 18 Dec. 2011]; Andrew Saint, Politics and the People of London: The London County Council, 1889–1965 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 7–8 and Poole, Philanthrophy and the Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship, passim 142 “Women in Municipal Life,” The Scotsman, 27 Jan. 1893. 143 Pugh, March of the Women, 73. 144 See Poole, Philanthrophy, 49–50. 145 Hirshfield, “Liberal Women’s Organizations and the War against the Boers.” 146 HH, Scrapbook Sept. 1886–Apr. 1889, “West Edinburgh Women’s Liberal Association,” Scottish Leader, 11 Mar. 1889. 147 Mrs Humphrey Ward, “An Appeal against Female Suffrage,” The Nineteenth Century ( June 25 1889): 781–8. See Maroula Joannou, “Mary Augusta Ward (Mrs Humphry) and the Opposition to Women’s Suffrage,” Women’s History Review 13, no. 3&4 (2005): 561–80, who points out that Ward supported higher education and female philanthropy, revealing the sometimes close affiliations of pro- and anti-suffrage forces. 148 Millicent Garrett Fawcett, “From ‘The Appeal Against Female Suffrage: A Reply,’” The Nineteenth Century, no. 26 ( July 1889): 86–96. 149 HH, Box 1/5, Copy typescript Ishbel Aberdeen to John Morley, 20 May 1889; emphases in original. This letter is quoted here at length because it has not been previously cited by historians. 150 Quoted in Priscilla Bright McLaren, “Lady Aberdeen in Glasgow,” Women’s Penny Paper, 16 Mar. 1889. 151 UBSCLP, Reports of Annual Council and General Meetings, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Council, 22 May 1889, 4. 152 “The Women’s Liberal Federation and Women’s Suffrage,” Women’s Penny Paper, 13 Dec. 1890). 153 “Woman Suffrage,” North Eastern Daily Gazette, 14 Nov. 1890. 154 “Political Women,” Women’s Penny Paper, 20 Dec. 1890, 139. 155 “Liberal News,” Woman’s Herald, 12 Sept. 1891. On Whigs’ efforts to control liberalism, see Kellas, “The Liberal Party in Scotland.” On loyalty to the Liberal Party, see McLaren’s conclusions in Lady Frances Balfour, Dr Elsie Inglis (New York: Cosimo, 2006 [1919]), 92. 156 Pugh, March of Women, 134. Megan K. Smitley, “‘Woman’s Mission’: The Temperance and Women’s Suffrage Movements in Scotland, c. 1870–1914,” doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow, 2002, 10. 157 “The Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation,” The Scotsman, 22 Apr. 1892. 158 “Women’s Liberal Federation,” Woman’s Herald, 21 Feb. 1891.

284  Notes to Pages 139–42 159 Miss Helen Waddell in “Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation,” Woman’s Herald, 30 Apr. 1892. 160 E.F.M. “Interview,” ibid., 14 May 1892; emphasis in original. 161 “Notes and Comments,” ibid., 4 Feb. 1893. 162 “The Future of the Federation,” ibid., 11 Feb. 1893; “Not a Master of the English Language,” ibid., 9 July 1892; “The Explanation of the Obnoxious Circular,” ibid., 2 July 1892. See also Pugh, March of the Women, 135. 163 Balfour, Dr Elsie Inglis, 106. 164 Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 94. See also “The Manifesto of the Anti-Progressive Party,” Woman’s Herald, 30 Apr. 1892. 165 Pugh, March of the Women, 136. See, e.g., the joint delegation from the WLF and the Trades’ Union Congress, the Women’s Trades’ Union Association, the London Trades Council and others urging female factory inspectors. “Factory Legislation,” Northern Echo (Darlington), 25 Jan. 1893. 166 Pugh, March of the Women, 71. 167 Aberdeens, We Twa I, 272–3. 168 “Prologue” to Marie Helene Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World: The Dynamic Story of the International Council of Women since 1888 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 11. 169 Quoted in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Report of the International Council of Women 1 (1888), 336. See also McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy, 174. 170 “Prologue” to Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 3. 171 Quoted in Ray E. Bloomhower, But I Do Clamor: May Wright Sewall, A Life, 1844–1920 (Zionsville: Guild Press of Indiana, 2001), 88. 172 Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age, 95. 173 Appendix I, “Preamble and first two articles of the ‘CONSTITUTION OF THE ICW’ adopted in Washington, 1888,” in Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 329. Capital letters in original. 174 May Wright Sewall, Genesis of the International Council of Women and the Story of Its Growth, 1888–1893 (Indianapolis: np, 1914), 1. For the best recognition of Sewall’s influence, see D’Itri, Cross Currents in the International Women’s Movement, chapters 7 and 8. 175 McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy, 172. 176 Sandra S. Holton, “To Educate Women into Rebellion: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Creation of a Transatlantic Network of Radical Suffragists,” American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (Oct. 1994): 1120. 177 D’Itri, Cross Currents, 77–80. 178 Ibid., 83. 179 LAC, NCWCP, Reel 2033, Marjorie Pentland, In the Nineties: Ishbel Aberdeen and the I.C.W. (London: Caxton, 1947), 9. Americans remained suspicious. See the

Notes to Pages 142–6 285 1899 observation that the Countess of Aberdeen was “not entirely converted to suffrage” by suffragist Rheta Childe Dorr in her biography of Susan B. Anthony: The Woman Who Changed the Mind of a Nation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1928), 23. 180 “A Woman’s Week at Chicago,” Star (NZ), 13 Aug. 1893. 181 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 15. 182 Sangster, “Crossing Boundaries,” 18–19. 183 On the initiative by Alice Hart, see Fintan Cullen, Ireland on Show: Art, Union, and Nationhood (Farnham: Ashgate: 2012), 137–40. 184 “A Woman’s Week at Chicago.” 185 Ann Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions (London: Leicester University Press, 1999), 31. 186 Countess of Aberdeen, “Ireland at the World’s Fair,” North American Review 157, no. 44 (1893): 21. 187 Fiionnghuala Sweeney, Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007). See also Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late Nineteenth Century Northwest Coast (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), chapter 2. 188 Neil Harris, “Selling National Culture: Ireland at the World’s Columbia Exposition,” in Imaging an Irish Past: The Celtic Revival, 1840–1940, ed. T.J. Edelstein (Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, and the University of Chicago, 1992), 99. 189 David Lambert and Alan Lester, “Introduction: Imperial Spaces, Imperial Subjects,” in Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. D. Lambert and A. Lester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 11. 190 Marjory Harper, “Rhetoric and Reality: British Migration to Canada, 1867–1967,” in Rediscovering the British World, eds. Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), 162. On the interest of Canada’s Irish in Ireland, see Robert McLaughlin, Irish Canadian Conflict and the Struggle for Irish Independence, 1912–1925 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). 191 See McLaughlin, Irish Canadian. 192 Saywell, “Introduction,” xxiii–xxiv. 193 “The Earl of Aberdeen’s Appointment,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 30 May 1893. For similar sentiments by Aberdeen’s citizens, see “The Governor-General of Canada,” ibid., 4 Aug. 1893. 194 “The New Viceroy of Canada,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 12 May 1893. 195 See Richard Davenport-Hines, “Blackwood, Frederick Temple HamiltonTemple-, first marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1826–1902),” in ODNB; online

286  Notes to Pages 146–50 edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/31914, accessed 2 June 2012]. 196 Percy A. Hurd, “Canada and Her New Governor,” English Illustrated Magazine 121 (Oct. 1893): 102. 197 W.T. Stead, “Character Sketch: Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” Review of Reviews (Feb. 1894): 138. 198 Ibid., 146. 199 Quoted in Donna McDonald, Lord Strathcona: A Biography of Donald Alexander Smith (Toronto: Dundurn, 1996), 395. On the Aberdeens’ relations with Gladstone, see James Conacher, “A Visit to the Gladstones in 1891,” Victorian Studies 2, no. 2 (Dec. 1958): 155–60. 200 J.M.D., “Social Gossip,” The Australian (Melbourne), 24 Sept. 1892. 201 Reprinted in “The Model Earl and Countess,” Nelson Evening Mail (NZ), 30 Oct. 1893. 202 Editorial, The Scotsman, 31 May 1893. 203 “Lord Aberdeen and Canada,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 3 July 1893. 204 Aberdeens, We Twa II, 16–17. 205 “Bienvenue à Lord Aberdeen,” La Patrie (Quebec), 27 Sept. 1893, 4. 206 See Address from “Le conseil de ville d’Ottawa,” in “Lord Aberdeen à Ottawa,” La Minerve (Quebec), 27 Sept. 1893. 207 Aberdeen, “Notre Gouverneur General,” La Minerve, 28 Sept. 1893. 208 For an excellent introduction to the role of the Aberdeens and other parents in the enterprise of educating young imperials, see Kathryn Bridge, “Being Young in the Country: Settler Children and Childhood in British Columbia and Alberta, 1860–1925,” doctoral dissertation, University of Victoria, 2012. 209 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 127–8. 210 Aberdeen, The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 26 Sept. 1896, 365. 211 On the Lornes in BC, see Ruth Sandwell, “Dreaming of the Princess: Love, Subversion, and the Rituals of Empire in British Columbia, 1882,” in Majesty in Canada: Esays on the Role of Royalty, ed. Colin Coates (Toronto: Dundurn, 2006), 44–67. 212 “Canada Protests against Flunkeyism,” Reynolds’ Newspaper, 27 May 1894. 213 McLeish, “Sunshine and Sorrows,” 257. 214 Saywell, “Introduction,” xxxii. 215 Ibid. 216 See Martin L. Friedland, The Case of Valentine Shortiss (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). 217 See Sharon Anne Cook, “Davis, Adeline (Chisholm; Foster, Lady Foster),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/index-e.html. 218 Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Place: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 31–2.

Notes to Pages 150–3 287 219 Countess of Aberdeen The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 2 Feb. 1894, 67. 220 Jan. 25, 1894, in Saywell, “Introduction,” xxxix. See also James T. Watt, “AntiCatholic Nativism in Canada: The Protestant Protective Association,” Canadian Historical Review 48, no. 1 (Mar. 1967), esp. 53 on John Gordon’s opposition. 221 Michael Brown, “The Beginnings of Reform Judaism in Canada,” Jewish Social Studies 34, no. 4 (Oct. 1972), 331–2. 222 “Lord Aberdeen in Canada,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 29 Nov. 1893. 223 Quoted in Sydney F. Wise and Robert Craig Brown, Canada Views the United States (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 98. 224 Sarah Carter, “‘Your Great Mother across the Salt Sea’: Prairie First Nations, the British Monarchy and the Vice Regal Connection to 1900,” Manitoba History, no. 48 (Autumn/Winter 2004): 45. 225 McLeish, “Sunshine and Sorrows,” 270. 226 For a sympathetic view of Tupper as a consummate builder of the Conservative Party and possessor of his own strict code, see Phillip Buckner, “Tupper, Sir Charles,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004 -119.01-e.php?BioId=41869. 227 For a critical view of their role, see McDonald, Lord Strathcona, chapter 16. 228 On this controversy, see Little, Patrician Liberal, chapter 8, and Saywell, “Introduction,” lxxxii–1xxxiii. 229 Simone Philogène, “The Feminization of the Crown: The Role of a GovernorGeneral’s Consort in Post-Confederation Canada, 1867–1898,’ MA thesis, McGill University, 1993, 5–6. 230 Ibid., 52. 231 NLS, Rosebery Papers 10105, Ishbel Aberdeen to Lord Rosebery, 2 Aug. 1895. 232 Quoted in Little, Patrician Liberal, chapter 6. 233 Quoted in Cynthia Cooper, Magnificent Entertainments: Fancy Dress Balls of Canada’s Governors Generals, 1876–1898 (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions and Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1997), 70. See also James Mavor, Book of the Victorian Era Ball (Toronto: Rowsell and Hutchison, 1898). 234 Aberdeens, We Twa II, 56. 235 Nadeau, Fur Nation, 110. 236 See the correspondence regarding the case of John Marr, the son of a tenant, who received mortgage assistance for a Canadian farm. He cost the Aberdeens $500, a substantial sum in the day. HH, Box 1/45 and 1/47. 237 HH, Box 10/2, 20 Feb. 1894. 238 See Aberdeens, We Twa II, 64, and HH, Box 10/2, Ishbel Aberdeen’s Journal, 7 Nov. 1894. 239 HH, Box 10/3, address printed and folded as pamphlet without a title for May Club, Ottawa, 1 May 1898.

288  Notes to Pages 154–6 240 See Veronica Strong-Boag, “The Citizenship Debates: Race and Gender in the 1885 Franchise Act,” in Constructing Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings, eds. Robert Adamoski, Dorothy Chunn, and Robert Menzies (Toronto: Broadview, 2002), 69–94, and “Independent Women, Problematic Men: First and Second Wave Anti-Feminism in Canada from Goldwin Smith to Betty Steele,” Histoire sociale/Social History 57 (May 1996): 1–22. 241 “Lady Aberdeen’s Influence in Canada,” Woman’s Herald, 23 Nov. 1893. 242 “Lady Gay” [Emily Cummings], “Between You and Me,” Saturday Night (8 Jan. 1898): 8. 243 Ibid., (26 May 1894), 7. 244 Tynan, Years of the Shadows, 108. 245 “Suffrage Demonstration in London,” Woman’s Herald, 16 Nov. 1893. 246 On the details of the history, see Veronica Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women: The National Council of Women of Canada, 1893–1929 (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1976), and Naomi E.S. Griffiths, The Splendid Vision: Centennial History of the National Council of Women of Canada, 1893–1993 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1997). 247 See Sharon Anne Cook, “‘Sowing Seed for the Master’: The Ontario WCTU and Evangelical Feminism, 1874–1930,” Journal of Canadian Studies 30, no. 3 (1995): 175–94. 248 Mrs MacDonell, NCWC Report (1894), 16. 249 ECOL, “Hints on How to Organize New Local Councils of Women” (National Council of Women of Canada, c. 1894). 250 Mrs Boomer, “Mothers’ Unions,” NCWC Report (1894), 263. 251 “The Earl and Countess of Aberdeen in Canada,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 11 Sept. 1894. 252 See Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Women’s Work, Markets, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). 253 “Lord and Lady Aberdeen in Canada,’ Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 19 Sept. 1895. 254 See HH, Bound Volume “Speeches, Addresses & Articles By & On Lord & Lady Aberdeen,” vol. 1., the Countess of Aberdeen, “The Question of Domestic Service” reprinted from the Ladies Home Journal (Apr. 1895). 255 See Ellen Mary Easton McLeod, In Good Hands: The Women of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). 256 LAC, NCWCP, Reel 2020, Montreal Daily Herald, 1 Dec. 1893. 257 Ibid. 258 Ibid. 259 Ibid. 260 Mrs Charles Archibald, “Private Work of Woman in Her Home and Her Public Duty to the State,” in “Inaugural Meeting of the Local Council of Women of Halifax” (1894), n.p., http://archive.org/details/cihm_25532.

Notes to Pages 156–9 289 261 ECOL, “Hints on How to Organize New Local Councils of Women” (NCWC, c. 1894). 262 On the general phenomenon, see Robert Kelly, The Transatlantic Persuasion: The Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone (New York: Knopf, 1969). 263 Eliza Ritchie, “Women and the Intellectual Virtues,” International Journal of Ethics 12, no. 1 (Oct. 1901): 71. 264 Ibid., 78 and 79. 265 See Rupp and Taylor, “Forging Feminist Identity,” 363. 266 “Aberdeen Ladies’ Union,” Woman’s Signal (London), 4 Feb. 1897. 267 LAC, NCWCP, Reel H2020, Copy typescript letter from Aberdeen, Mar. 1894? 1895? 268 HH, Box 10/2, Ishbel Aberdeen, Journal, 19 Sept. 1894; emphasis in original. 269 LAC, NCWCP, Reel H2020, Ishbel Aberdeen to Emily W. Cummings, 20 Sept. 1895. 270 Ibid., 1 Apr. 1895. 271 Kimberly Boehr, “‘Individual Acts of Kindness’ and Political Influence: Alice Park’s Experience with the Vernon Women’s Council,” British Columbia History 35, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 8–17. 272 On funding, see Pernilla Jonsson, “On Women’s Account: The Finances of ‘Bourgeois’ Women’s Organizations in England, Germany, and Canada, 1885–1924,” in Crossing Boundaries: Women’s Organizing in Europe and the Americas, 1880s–1940s, eds. P. Jonsson, S. Neusinger, and J. Sangster (Uppsala: University of Uppsala Press, 2007), 157–86. 273 LAC, NCWCP, Reel H2022, Message from A. Stowe Gullen, “Tribute to Lady Aberdeen and Temair” (1939). 274 Ibid., Remembrance from Elizabeth Shortt (1939). 275 On Denison, see Deborah Gorham, “Flora Macdonald Denison: Canadian Feminist,” in A Not Unreasonable Claim, ed. Linda Kealey (Toronto: Women’s Educational Press, 1979), 47–70; Andrea Williams, “Flora MacDonald Denison and the Rhetoric of the Early Women’s Suffrage Movement in Canada,” in The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric, eds. Christine M. Sutherland and Rebecca J. Sutcliffe (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1999), 173–82. 276 The best overall treatment of this is Carol Lee Bacchi, Liberation Deferred? The Ideas of the English-Canada Suffragists, 1887–1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983). 277 See Constance Backhouse, “Martin, Clara Brett,” DCB (vol. XV 1921–1930) [http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/martin_clara_brett_15E.html, accessed 28 June 2014]. 278 See Sheila Penney, A Century of Caring, 1897–1997: The History of the Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada (Ottawa: VON, 1996); Christina Bates, D.E. Dodd,

290  Notes to Pages 160–3

279

280 281 282 283 284

285

286 287

and Nicole Rousseau, eds. On All Frontiers: Four Centuries of Canadian Nursing (Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2005), esp. chapter 3; Lynda M. Orr, “Ministering Angels: The Victorian Order of Nurses and the Klondike Goldrush,” British Columbia Historical News 33 (Autumn 2000): 18–21; and Beverly Boutilier, “Helpers or Heroines? The National Council of Women, Nursing, and ‘Women’s Work’ in Late Victorian Canada,” in Caring and Curing: Historical Perspectives on Women and Healing in Canada, eds. Dianne E. Dodd and Deborah Gorham (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1994), 17–47. Unfortunately, this aspect of his reception has not been studied, but see the description of Laurier as “the finest and simplest gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man” by his friend and biographer, Oscar Skelton. Much the same was often said of Aberdeen. Oscar D. Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, vol. 1 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1921), i. “The Governor-Generalship of Canada,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 14 Nov. 1898. “Lady Aberdeen’s Ideas,” Western Mail (Cardiff), 16 Nov. 1895. “Unjust Attack on Lady Aberdeen,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 16 June 1897. Quoted in Friedland, The Case of Valentine Shortis, 126. Carman Millar, “Elliott, Gilbert John Murray-Kynynmound, Viscount Melgund and fourth Earl of Minto,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography [http://www .biographi.ca/index-e.html]. LAC, NCWCP, Reel H2020, Clipping, “Editorial. The Resignation of Lord Aberdeen,” Pictou Times, 19 May 1898. See also in the same file, Clippings “Lord Aberdeen’s Retirement,’ Witness [Montreal?], dated 14 May [1898]. “Toronto’s Farewell to Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” The Scotsman, 21 Nov. 1898. Quoted in Thomas Wayling, “Canadian Forever,” Canadian Home Journal (Aug. 1937): 131.

5.  From Hope to Heartache 1 See “To-day’s Great Wedding,” Daily Mirror, 12 July 1904. 2 See Jane Ridley Clayre Percy, “Grenfell, Ethel Anne Priscilla, Lady Desborough (1867–1952),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/40733, accessed 4 Jan. 2012]; and Mark Pottle, “Carter, (Helen) Violet Bonham, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury (1887–1969),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/31961, accessed 4 Jan. 2012]. On the doubts of both the Aberdeens and the Asquiths, see HH, Box 1/5, Herbert Asquith to Lady Aberdeen, 29 June 1906 marked private. The papers of Violet Asquith contain heart-breaking testimony to the harrowing experience of watching Archie Gordon die slowly over two weeks and abundant evidence of

Notes to Pages 163–4 291

3

4 5

6

7 8

9 10

young love. While neither the Asquith nor the Aberdeen elders had appeared supportive of the match before the accident, all recognized Violet’s great distress. She would later spend weeks in Dublin and accompany Ishbel on a visit to the United States, and she also composed many 1910 diary entries directly to Archie. See OUBL, Violet Asquith Bonham Carter Papers, 146–8. The Aberdeen family also encouraged her to live fully and in time to marry. See ibid. 174, Dudley Gordon to Violet Asquith, 1 Oct. 1912, and Ishbel Aberdeen to “my dearest Violet,” 29 Dec. 1909. See “The Late Lady Ridley,” Weekly Standard and Express (Blackburn), 18 Mar. 1899. The Ridley family was accustomed to spending Christmas at Haddo House, and relations had remained close despite political differences. See the obituary, which stresses her charitable works, “The Late Countess Dowager of Aberdeen,” The Times, 17 Apr. 1900. C.H. Lane, Dog Shows and Doggy-People (London: Hutchinson, 1902), 22. The Marjoribanks in particular were renowned for kennels breeding both golden retrievers and Cairn terriers but Ishbel also had a fondness for West Highland terriers and Shelties. Few family photos lack dogs. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate substantial material on the Aberdeens and spiritualism. Sympathizers nevertheless had many occasions to meet. See Lord Aberdeen’s chairing of a speech on theosophy by Annie Besant, ‘“Lord Aberdeen and Mrs Besant,” Aberdeen Journal, 19 Dec. 1891. My thanks as well to Kathryn Bridge who also searched for more material. See Arthur Findlay, Where Two Worlds Meet (London: Psychic, 1968), 133. Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 202. See also Sally Morita, “Unseen (and Unappreciated) Matters: Understanding the Reformative Nature of 19thCentury Spiritualism,” American Studies 40, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 99–125; J. Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Ramsay Cook, “Spiritualism, Science of the Earthly Paradise,” Canadian Historical Review 65, no. 1 (Mar. 1984): 4–27; A. Owen, “Women and Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism: Strategies in the Subversion of Femininity,” in Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, eds. J. Obelkevich, L. Roper, and R. Samuel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), 130–53; and Joy Dixon, Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Women’s Rights and Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 4 and 6. LAC, ICWP, Reel H2033, “‘What the National Council of Women of Canada Has Done.’ Being a Report of the Proceedings of a Public Meeting, held in

292  Notes to Pages 164–7 Connection with the Local Council of Women of Ottawa, Feb. 1896” (Ottawa, 1896), 13–14. 11 See Leila J. Rupp, “Sexuality and Politics in the Early Twentieth Century: The Case of the International Women’s Movement,’ Feminist Studies 23, no. 3 (Autumn 1997): 577–605. 12 HH, Box 1/4, Ruth Weston to “my dear Aberdeen,” 27 Feb. 1915. See also many other letters soliciting assistance in these years at both Haddo House and in the papers of the NCWC at LAC. 13 J.A. Thompson, “The Historians and the Decline of the Liberal Party,” Albion 22, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 71. 14 HH, Box 1/40, Lord Aberdeen to “My Dear Factor,” 2 Mar. 1914, copy. 15 HH, Box 1/6, Aberdeen to “My Dear Factor,” 19 Mar. 1914, copy. 16 See Francis Herbert Stead, How Old Age Pensions Began to Be (London: Methuen, 1909), 241. 17 “Home-Coming of Lord Aberdeen,” The Scotsman, 22 Feb. 1915. 18 HH, Box 1/6, Envelope marked Francis R. Merrick, Postman at 58 Grosvenor St, 1906. Merrick to “My Lord,” 24 Oct. 1912. 19 Gordon, “Spencer, John Poyntz, fifth Earl Spencer.” 20 BL, Aberdeen Add. 76985, Aberdeen to My dear Spencer, 17 June 1908. 21 Mr C. Montefiore, “Motives of Moral Action,” Parents’ Review: A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture (edited by Charlotte Mason) 12 (1901): 591–600, http://www.amblesideonline.org/PR/PR12p591MotivesofMoral.shtml. 22 See F.P. Gibbon, William A. Smith of the Boys’ Brigade (Glasgow: Collins, 1934). 23 Katherine Mullin, James Joyce, Sexuality, and Social Purity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 49. 24 See HH, Box 1/6, Lord Salisbury to Lord Aberdeen, 19 May 1901. On this issue and the agreement of Edward VII and George V that the oath was offensive, see Norman Bonney, “The Evolution and Contemporary Relevance of the Accession and Coronation Oaths of the United Kingdom,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 13, no. 4 (Nov. 2011): 603–18. 25 Stewart Angus Weaver, The Hammonds: A Marriage in History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 32. See also his “Hammond, ( John) Lawrence Le Breton (1872–1949),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/33673, accessed 12 Jan. 2012]. 26 McCarthy, British Political Portraits, 173. 27 Kinship remained influential for the Aberdeens. Both maintained close ties with Lord Balfour of Burleigh, married to John’s sister, Katherine, and an active Tory democrat, who preceded John Sinclair as Scottish secretary (1895–1903). See Michael Fry, Patronage and Principle: A Political History of Modern Scotland (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987), 13, and W.F. Gray, “Bruce, Alexander Hugh,

Notes to Pages 167–9 293 sixth Lord Balfour of Burleigh (1849–1921),” revised by H.C.G. Matthew, in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/32129, accessed 5 Jan. 2012]. 28 John Stewart, “‘This Injurious Measure’: Scotland and the 1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act,” Scottish Historical Review 78, no. 205 (Apr. 1999): 90. See also on the radicalism of Sinclair, John Brown, “Scottish and English Land Legislation 1905–11,” Scottish Historical Review 47, no. 143 (Apr. 1968): 72–85. 29 Stewart, “‘The Injurious Measure,’” 93. 30 Crowley, “The ‘Crofters’ Party,’” 26. 31 Packer, “The Land Issue,” 53. See Urwin, “Development of the Conservative Party Organization,” for the argument that the alliance between labour and liberals was disintegrating and the future of the Liberal Party already compromised by the First World War. 32 Philip P. Poirier, The Advent of the British Labour Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 182. 33 B.C. Roberts, The Trades Union Congress, 1868–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 204. 34 Packer, “The Land Issue,” 53–5. 35 I.G.C. Hutchison, Scottish Politics in the Twentieth Century (London: Palgrave, 2001), 11. See John F. McCaffrey, Scotland in the Nineteenth Century (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 1998), 83, for similar conclusions. 36 Quoted in Ellen Mappen, Helping Women at Work: The Women’s Industrial Council, 1889–1914 (London: Hutchinson, 1985), 20. 37 “Lady Aberdeen Sees White Plague Homes,” New York Times, 2 Jan. 1913. 38 Editorial, The Scotsman, 18 Oct. 1901. She had the same hopes for Canada’s Liberal women. See Maria Carney, “Re-examining History: Bringing a Name to Life Nellie Langford Rowell” (1987), Nellie Langford Rowell Library, http://www .yorku.ca/nlrowell/nelbio.htm. 39 Editorial, The Scotsman, 18 Oct. 1901. 40 Pugh, March of the Women, 136. 41 See Hirshfield, “Fractured Faith,” passim. 42 HH, Box 1/5, Henry Campbell-Bannerman to Ishbel Aberdeen, 16 Mar. 1904. 43 Ibid., 6 Jan. 1906. 44 HH, Red Archival Box, unlabelled with unbound articles, Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Progress of the Women’s Movement,” The Scotsman (Suppl.), no date, but internal evidence suggests 1934 or 1935. 45 See Hirshfield, “Fractured Faith,” 182, and Pugh, March of the Women, 138. 46 Pugh, March of the Women, 141; emphasis in original. 47 Ian Christopher Fletcher, “‘Women of the Nations, Unite!’ Transnational Suffragism in the United Kingdom, 1912–1914,” in Women’s Suffrage in the British

294  Notes to Pages 169–72 Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race, eds. Ian Christopher Fletcher, Laura E. Nym Mayhall, and Philippa Levine (London: Routledge, 2000), 105. 48 Pugh, March of the Women, 143. 49 W. Hamish Fraser, Scottish Popular Politics: From Radicalism to Labour (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 142. 50 John W. Auld, “The Liberal Pro-Boers,” Journal of British Studies 14, no. 2 (May 1975): 81. 51 Ibid., 94. 52 H.C.G. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists: The Ideas and Policies of a Post-Gladstonian Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 170. 53 UBSCLP, “Annual Meeting of the Council of the Women’s Liberal Federation, June 12, 13th, & 14th 1900,” 6. 54 John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family and Empire (London: Pearson Longman, 2005), 193. 55 E.W. McFarland, “‘Empire-Enlarging Genius’: Scottish Imperial Yeomanry Volunteers in the Boer War,” War in History 13, no. 3 ( July 2006): 304. See also HH, Box 1/6, Lord Lovat to Lord Aberdeen, 16 Apr. 1900. 56 Donald Sinclair, The History of the Aberdeen Volunteers (Aberdeen: Aberdeen Daily Journal Office, 1907), 238 and 260. 57 Stewart J. Brown, “‘Echoes of Midlothian’: Scottish Liberalism and the South African War, 1899–1902,” Scottish Historical Review 71, no. 191/192, parts 1&2 (April–Oct. 1992), 163. 58 “Crusade of Peace,” Daily News (London), 22 Mar. 1899. 59 “Lord Aberdeen on the War,” The Times, 7 Nov. 1899. 60 T. Boyle, “The Liberal Imperialists, 1892–1906,” Historical Research 52, no. 125 (May 1979): 48. 61 Brown, “‘Echoes of Midlothian,’” 177. 62 HH, Box 1/6, Margaret Jenkins to Lord Aberdeen, 5 Aug. 1900. See also her letter indicting imperialism more generally, ibid., 22 July 1900. 63 Aberdeen to the Editor, The Speaker: The Liberal Review, 29 Sept. 1900. 64 Laura E. Nym Mayhall, “The South African War and the Origins of Suffrage Militancy in Britain, 1899–1902,” in Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race, eds. Ian Christopher Fletcher, Laura E. Nym Mayhall, and Philippa Levine (London: Routledge, 2000), 9. 65 “The Settlement in South Africa. Speech by Lady Aberdeen,” Manchester Guardian, 9 May 1901. 66 UBSCLP, “WLF. Reports of Annual Council and General Meetings,” “Visit of the Women’s Liberal Federation to Birmingham,” 1901, 11. 67 “The Countess of Aberdeen at Perth,” The Scotsman, 26 Sept. 1903. 68 “Women’s Liberal Federation,” Manchester Guardian, 13 May 1903.

Notes to Pages 172–4 295 69 Mayhall, Militant Suffrage Movement, 26. 70 Lindsay Papers, University Library, Keele University, Ishbel Aberdeen to Mrs Lindsay, 13 Dec. 1901. 71 Hirshfield, “Liberal Women’s Organizations,” 48. 72 See The Scotsman, 18 Oct. 1901, and “Lady Aberdeen’s Advice to Liberals.” See also Hirshfield, “Liberal Women’s Organizations,” 48. 73 McLeish, “Sunshine and Sorrows,” 262n10. 74 “The Countess of Aberdeen at Perth,” The Scotsman, 26 Sept. 1903. On the attitude of the Conservative government, see Jason Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy: The International Thought of a Conservative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 107. 75 Keith Robbins, Politicians, Diplomacy and War in Modern British History (London: Hambledon, 1994), 217. 76 Emmie Avery Keddell, “Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” Quiver ( Jan. 1906): 730. 77 HH, Box 1/ 4, John Still to Aberdeen, 31 May 1908. 78 HH, Box 1/ 4, John Still to “My Dear Godfather,” Ceylon, 28 Jan. 1909. See also acknowledgment of Still in D.T. Devendra, “Seventy Years of Ceylon Archaeology,” Artibus Asiae 22, no. 1/2 (1959): 23–40. 79 Pentland, In the Nineties, 11. See the earlier conclusion: “We have no National Council of Women such as you speak of – our party lines forbid that” – from the “radical suffragist” Alice Cliff Scatcherd to May Wright Sewall, 27 July 1892, May Wright Sewall Papers, Indianapolis Marion County Public Library Digital Collection, http://digitallibrary.imcpl.org/index.php. See also Holton, “‘To Educate Women into Rebellion.’” See Beatrice Webb’s description of the split, which she described as between the conservative British Council allied to those of the Empire and the more progressive Councils of the United States and continental Europe. She identified Aberdeen and Sewell with the latter group. Her suggestion of an alliance between the American and British leader is highly unusual and has not been further confirmed in my research. Our Partnership, eds. Barbara Drake and Margarete I. Cole (New York: Longmans, Green, 1948), 188. 80 Rupp and Taylor, “Forging Feminist Identity,” 368. 81 Brown, “The Truest Form of Patriotism,” 160. 82 On the case of the NCW of France, see F.M. Butlin, “International Council of Women,” Economic Journal 9, no. 35 (Sept. 1899): 45–5. 83 Countess of Aberdeen, “The Women’s International Parliament,” North American Review 169 (Aug. 1899): 146–7. 84 Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann, The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 213.

296  Notes to Pages 175–8 85 See Caroline E. Playne, Bertha von Suttner and the Struggle to Avert the World War (London: Allen and Unwin, 1936). 86 Margaret Poulos, Arms and the Woman: Just Warriors and Greek Feminist Identity (New York: Gutenberg and Columbia University Press, 2008). 87 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 23. 88 Ishbel Aberdeen, “The Woman’s International Parliament,” North American Review 169, no. 513 (Aug. 1899): 151. 89 LAC, NCWCP, Reel H2008, Ishbel Aberdeen to Executive Members, 19 May 1899, 144. 90 “Women in Council,” Weekly Standard and Express (Blackburn), 24 June 1899. 91 See, e.g., “Praise from Lady Aberdeen,” New York Times, 9 July 1899. 92 “Penelope,” “Our Ladies’ Column,” Wrexham Advertiser and North Wales News, 15 July 1899. 93 “Lady Aberdeen on ‘International Woman,’” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 5 May 1899. 94 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (London: Routledge, 2006), 419. 95 “The Women’s Congress,” Evening Post (NZ), 28 June 1899. 96 Kassandra Vivaria [pseudonym adopted by Magda Sindici Heinemann], “On the International Congress of Women,” North American Review 169 (Aug. 1899): 158 and 161. 97 Beatrice Webb, Our Partnership, 188. See also John Davis, “Webb, (Martha) Beatrice (1858–1943),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/36799, accessed 30 June 2012]. 98 Quoted in Pentland, In the Nineties, 22. See also Judith R. Walkowitz, “Butler, Josephine Elizabeth (1828–1906),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2006 [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32214, accessed 14 Mar. 2011. 99 “Praise from Lady Aberdeen,” New York Times, 9 July 1899; emphasis in original. 100 C.P. Stenson, “The International Congress of Women,” in Charlotte Perkins Gilman, A Journey from within: The Love Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1897–1900, ed. Mary Armfield Hill (Lewisburg, NJ: Bucknell University Press, 1995), 150. 101 Carol Cornwall Madsen, “‘The Power of Combination’: Emmeline B. Wells and the National and International Councils of Women,” BYU Studies 33, no. 4 (1993): 657. 102 Aberdeen, “The International Council of Women in Congress,” 18. 103 Ibid., 21; emphasis in original. 104 Ibid., 25. 105 Quoted in Leila J. Rupp, “The Making of International Women’s Organizations,” in The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War, eds. Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 213; emphasis in original.

Notes to Pages 178–83 297 106 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 27. 107 “Women Rebuked at Congress,” New York Times, 19 June 1904. 108 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 27. 109 The Right Hon. Margaret Bondfield, A Life’s Work (London: Hutchinson, 1948), 55. See also, Philip Williamson, “Bondfield, Margaret Grace (1873–1953),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/31955, accessed 9 Feb. 2012]. 110 See Rupp, Worlds of Women, 34. 111 Susan Zimmerman, “The Habsburg Monarchy and the Development of Feminist Inter/national Politics,” Journal of Women’s History 17, no. 2 (2005): 88. 112 Ibid., 93. 113 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 30. 114 Bertha von Suttner (European Economic and Social Committee, 2006) http://www .eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/eesc-2006-06-en.pdf, 4. 115 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 30. 116 Mary R.S. Creese, “Gordon, Dame Maria Matilda (1864–1939),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/46415, accessed 7 Jan. 2012]. 117 Wilbur F. Crafts, A Primer of the Science of Internationalism (Washington, DC: International Reform Bureau, 1908), 71. 118 Ida Husted Harper, “Recent Congress of the International Council of Women,” North American Review 188 (Nov. 1908): 660. 119 Ibid., 659. 120 Ibid., 661. 121 Ibid., 662. 122 Ibid., 663. 123 Ibid., 664. 124 Ibid., 655. 125 See the observations of visitors in the Countess of Aberdeen, ed., Our Lady of the Sunshine and Her International Visitors (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1910). 126 Roberta Nicholls, “The Collapse of the Early National Council of Women of New Zealand, 1896–1906,” New Zealand Journal of History 27 (1993): 157–72. 127 Anna Howard Shaw, The Story of a Pioneer (New York: Harper and Bros, 1915), chapter 16, “Council Episode.” 128 “Lady Aberdeen, Suffragette,” New York Times, 22 June 1909. 129 Quoted in Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 39. 130 “Mrs Sewall Seeks to Oust Countess,” New York Times, 7 May 1914. 131 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 43. 132 See Harper, “Recent Congress,” 662, and Sophie Sanford, “Mrs Sanford’s Visit to Indian and Japan,” ICW Annual Report, 1907–08, as quoted in Leila J. Rupp,

298  Notes to Pages 183–5 “Challenging Imperialism in International Women’s organizations, 1888–1945,” NWSA Journal 8, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 12. 133 Quoted in Pentland, In the Nineties, 12; and see Helen Rapport, ed., “van Gripenberg, Alexandra (1859–1913) Finland,” in Encylopedia of Women Reformers, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: BC-CLIO, 2001), 723–4. 134 Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Equality and Revolution: Women’s Rights in the Russian Empire, 1905–1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), esp. 147 and 19. 135 Julie Carlier, “Forgotten Transnational Connections and National Contexts: An ‘Entangled History’ of the Political Transfers that Shaped Belgian Feminism, 1890–1914,” Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 503. 136 Brown, “The Truest Form of Patriotism,” 159. 137 D. George Bryce, “A First World War Transition: State and Citizen in Ireland, 1914–19,” in Ireland in Transition, 1867–1921, eds. D.G. Boyce and Alan O’Day (London: Taylor and Francis, 2004), 93. 138 Carman Miller, “Grey, Albert Henry George, fourth Earl Grey (1851–1917),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/33568, accessed 9 Jan. 2012]. This article suggests Grey was not a supporter of Home Rule. This might have been true in the 1880s, but by 1912 when he provided the preface to Harold Spender, Home Rule, 2nd ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), he was clearly a convert. 139 Kinealy, “At Home with the Empire,” 95. 140 Alvin Jackson, “Ireland, the Union, and the Empire, 1800–1960,” in Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Kevin Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 151. 141 On the divisions within the Liberal Party on Home Rule, see H.W. McCready, “Home Rule and the Liberal party, 1899–1906,” Irish Historical Studies 13, no. 52 (Sept. 1963): 316–48. The complications of precisely what was meant by federalism (mere local government or full-blown independence), and the paucity of much of the surviving archival record are also well illustrated in Wheatley, “John Redmond and Federalism in 1910,” 343–64. 142 See D.A.J. MacPherson, Women and the Irish Nation: Gender, Culture and Irish Identity, 1890–1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 143 James McConnel, “‘Jobbing with Tory and Liberal’: Irish Nationalists and the Politics of Patronage 1880–1914,” Past and Present, no. 188 (Aug. 2005): 108. 144 “An Appreciation by W.K.H.,” “Lord Aberdeen,” Hawera and Normanby Star, 8 Feb. 1906. 145 W.K.H., “Lord Aberdeen and Home Rule,” ibid., 20 Mar. 1911. 146 Paul Bew, “Redmond, John Edward (1856–1918),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/35702, accessed 6 May 2012].

Notes to Pages 185–6 299 147 Reprinted from the Freeman’s Journal, “Nationalist View of the Viceregal Addresses,” The Scotsman, 9 Feb. 1906. 148 HH, Box 1/5, Mr T.W. Rolleston to Ishbel Aberdeen, 5 Sept. 1906, copy. 149 HH, Box 1/24, Stephen Gwynn to Lady Aberdeen, 12 Nov. undated but c. 1905/6. See also, Carla King, “Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (1864–1950),” in ODNB; online edition, Sept. 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/33621, accessed 6 May 2012]. 150 On this, see M.J. Kelly, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 1882–1916 (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2006). 151 Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 4. 152 John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 170. 153 Kinealy, “At Home with the Empire,” 96. 154 Lady Gregory seems an especially interesting comparison with Ishbel. Both sought to find themselves in the Celtic Renaissance, which ultimately had little room for such women. For thoughtful observations but unfortunately no larger perspective on Gregory as one version of a New Woman, just as was Ishbel, see James L. Pethica, “Gregory, (Isabella) Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852–1932),” in ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/33554, accessed 2 Mar. 2013]. 155 HH, Box 1/24, Gwynn to Lady Aberdeen, 17 Dec. 1905. 156 Deborah Sugg Ryan, “Performing Irish-American Heritage: The Irish Historic Pageant, New York, 1914,” in Ireland’s Heritages: Critical Perspectives on Memory and Identity, ed. Mark McCarthy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 107. See also Foster, “Yeats, William Butler.” 157 Lucy McDiarmid, “Augusta Gregory, Bernard Shaw, and the Shewing-Up of Dublin,’ Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 109 ( Jan. 1994), 35. See also Mullin, James Joyce, Sexuality, and Social Purity, 21; Derek Attridge, Semicolonial Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 194; Marjorie Howes, Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Celia Marshik, British Modernism and Censorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Christopher Murray, Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to Nation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). 158 McDiarmid, “Augusta Gregory, Bernard Shaw,” 7. See also S. Pašeta, “Markievicz, Constance Georgine, Countess Markievicz in the Polish nobility (1868–1927).” ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/37472, accessed 17 Jan. 2012]. 159 T.M. Healy, Letters and Leaders of My Day (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1928) http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/THealy/healy36.htmChapelizod.

300  Notes to Pages 186–8 160 “Lady Aberdeen’s Visit to Limerick,” Irish Times, 24 Feb. 1906. See also, “North Dublin Guardians and Lady Aberdeen,” ibid., 17 May 1906. 161 Roger Sawyer, “We Are but Women”: Women in Ireland’s History (London: Routledge, 1993), 83. 162 Joseph Robins, Champagne and Silver Buckles: The Viceregal Court at Dublin Castle, 1700–1922 (Dublin: Lilliput, 2001), 153. 163 Ibid., 155. 164 “Lord Aberdeen to Campbell-Bannerman, 28 Dec. 1906,” letter quoted in R.B. McDowell, “The Irish Executive in the Nineteenth Century,” Irish Historical Studies 9, no. 35 (Mar. 1955): 279. See also, Christopher Harvie, “Bryce, James, Viscount Bryce (1838–1922),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32141, accessed 9 Jan. 2012]. 165 Pat Jalland, “Birrell, Augustine (1850–1933),” in ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/31901, accessed 9 Jan. 2012]. 166 See Lawrence W. McBride, The Greening of Dublin Castle: The Transformation of Bureaucratic and Judicial Personnel in Ireland, 1892–1922 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991). For a more sceptical point of view, see Fergus Campbell, The Irish Establishment, 1879–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 167 Jalland, “A Liberal Chief Secretary”; and Dermot Meleady, Redmond: The Parnellite (Cork: Cork University Press, 2008), 190. 168 R.B. McDowell, “The Irish Executive,” 272. 169 See James Pope-Hennessy, Lord Crewe, 1858–1945 (London: Constable, 1955), who suggests that John Morley and King Edward considered sending Aberdeen to South Africa “to get him out of the way” (85). 170 House of Commons, Hansard (31 July 1916), as quoted in Kieran Flanagan, “The Chief Secretary’s Office, 1853–1914: A Bureaucratic Enigma,” Irish Historical Studies 24, no. 94 (Nov. 1984): 202. 171 See “Ladies’ Gossip,” Otago Witness, 9 May 1906; “The Morning’s Gossip,” Daily Mirror, 3 June 1905; and “Scandal When Lady Aberdeen Drinks Tea with the Servants,” Toronto Saturday Night, 26 Oct. 1903. 172 Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII: A Biography I (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 472. 173 Pádraig Yeates, Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2000), 126. 174 Loughlin, British Monarchy and Ireland, 272. 175 Ibid., 342. 176 See Michael Wheatley, “‘These Quiet Days of Peace’: Nationalist Opinion before the Home Rule Crisis, 1909–1913,” in Ireland in Transition, 1867–1921, ed. Alan O’Day (New York: Routledge, 2004), 58 and passim.

Notes to Pages 188–9 301 177 Roger Blaney, Presbyterians and the Irish Language (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation 1996), 179. On the significance of Gaelic to the Irish nationalist project, see Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, “The Position of the Irish Language,” in The National University of Ireland, ed. Tom Dunne (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2008), 33–46. 178 See Vice-Regal Commission on Irish Railways, including Light Railways, Fifth and Final Report of the Commissioners 6 (1910), Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland http://eppi.dippam.ac.uk/documents, 79. 179 See the minority and majority reports reprinted in Roy Lubove, Social Welfare in Transition: Selected English Documents, 1834–1909 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 1966), 115–334. 180 Loughlin, British Monarchy and Ireland, 282. On the phenomenon of the royal family’s involvement in this endeavour, see Prochaska, Royal Bounty. On previous visits by Victoria and Edward VII, see also Senia Pašeta, “Nationalist Responses to Two Royal Visits to Ireland, 1900 and 1903,” Irish Historical Studies 31, no. 124 (Nov. 1999): 488–504, which emphasizes growing nationalist resistance to such display even before the arrival of the Aberdeens. 181 On Victoria, see James H. Murphy, Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland during the Reign of Queen Victoria (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), xv. 182 This information is from Every Woman’s Encylopaedia (London), 1910–1912, http:// chestofbooks.com/food/household/Woman-Encyclopaedia-1/Lady-Of-Quality -Vicereine.html#.VBSV1EtjopE, accessed 13 Sept. 2014. 183 It is suggestive of the lack of regard for Aberdeen that the colonial secretary and Liberal leader in the House of Lords, Lord Crewe, was given credit for the petition by his biographer. See Pope-Hennessy, Lord Crewe, 89. But see the letter also cited by Aberdeen to Crewe, 1 Aug. 1910, which emphasizes the importance of acknowledging that not all Protestants are “bigots.” 184 See Aberdeen’s hopes for George V in his letter to the king’s private secretary, Stamfordham, 30 Dec. 1914, Asquith Papers 4, OUBL. 185 “In Woman’s Realm,” Victoria Daily Colonist, 10 Mar. 1909. 186 Patrick Maume, Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life, 1891–1918 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1999), 130. See also his “Lady Microbe and the Kailyard Viceroy: The Aberdeen Viceroyalty, Welfare Monarchy, and the Politics of Philanthropy,” in The Irish Lord Lieutenancy, c. 1541–1922,” eds. Peter Gray and Olwen Purdue (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2012), 199–214, which appeared after this manuscript was completed and makes much the same argument about the efforts of Ishbel to transform the idea of monarchy in Ireland. 187 See Marchioness of Aberdeen & Temair, “Helping Ireland to Help Herself,” The Outlook (29 Mar. 1916), 761–6.

302  Notes to Pages 189–92 188 Loughlin, British Monarchy and Ireland, 276. See also “The British Monarchy and the Irish Viceroyalty: Politics, Architecture and Place, 1870–1914” in The Irish Lord Lieutenancy, c. 1541-1922– 179–98. 189 Blaney, Presbyterians and the Irish Language, 179. 190 Katharine Tynan, “Lady Aberdeen’s Crusade,” Catholic World (New York), May 1913, 113. 191 MacPherson, Women and the Irish Nation, 71. 192 Ibid., 130. 193 “National Insurance,” Weekly Irish Times, 9 Mar. 1912. Support for national insurance flew in face of the opposition of the Catholic Church. See Bryce, “A First World War Transition,” 97. 194 Yeates, Lockout, 329. 195 “Health in the Home,” Manchester Guardian, 22 Jan. 1909. 196 See C.S. Breathnach and J.B. Moynihan, “An Irish Statistician’s Analysis of the National Tuberculosis Problem – Robert Charles Geary (1896–1983,” Irish Journal of Medical Science 172, no. 3 (Autumn 2003): 149–153, and their “The Frustration of Lady Aberdeen in Her Crusade against Tuberculosis in Ireland,” Ulster Medical Journal 82, no. 1 (2012): 37–47; and Joseph V. O’Brien, Dear, Dirty Dublin: A City in Distress, 1899–1916 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 114. 197 Matthews, Irish Republic Women, 79. 198 “Lady Aberdeen and Timid Guardians,” Manchester Guardian, 30 Sept. 1909. 199 On some of the controversy over the relationship with the Aberdeens, see “Peamount and Lady Aberdeen,” Irish Times, 2 July 1917, and “Lady Aberdeen and the Peamount Farm,” ibid., 7 July 1917. 200 Murray Fraser, John Bull’s Other Homes: State Housing and British Policy in Ireland, 1883–1922 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), 94. 201 “Extraordinary Affair in Co. Dublin,” Weekly Irish Times, 27 July 1912. 202 See Helen E. Meller, Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and City Planner (London: Routledge, 1994), 130–3. 203 Katharine Tynan, “Lady Aberdeen’s Crusade,” Catholic World (May 1913): 194–5. 204 See Anna Louise Strong, On the Eve of Home Rule: Snapshots of Ireland in the Momentous Summer of 1914 (Austin, TX: O’Connell Press, 1914), who thanks Ishbel for her support, 10. My thanks to Suzanne Morton for recognition of Strong. 205 Philip Boardman, Patrick Geddes, Maker of the Future (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 322. 206 Fraser, John Bull’s Other Homes, 134. 207 Ibid., 138. 208 Geddes, Cities in Evolution, viii.

Notes to Pages 192–5 303 209 Adrian Gregory and Senia Pašeta, Ireland and the Great War: “A War to Unite Us All”? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 52, and Leon Ó Broin, The Chief Secretary: Augustine Birrell in Ireland (London: Chatto and Windus, 1969), 129. 210 Katharine Tynan, “Lady Aberdeen’s Crusade.” 211 Gregory and Pašeta, Ireland and the Great War, 51, and Ó Broin, Chief Secretary, 106. 212 See Campbell, The Irish Establishment, 87, where Lady Aberdeen is identified as critical in the appointment of the director of the National Museum. 213 See McConnel, “‘Jobbing with Tory and Liberal.’” 214 Charles O’Mahony, The Viceroys of Ireland: The Story of the Long Line of Noblemen and Their Wives Who Have Ruled Ireland and Irish Society for over Seven Hundred Years (London: John Long, 1912) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36193/36193-h/ 36193-h.htm, 329. 215 Ibid., 334. 216 John Bew, The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009). 217 Ruth Dudley Edwards, “Connolly, James (1868–1916),” in ODNB [http://www .oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/37308, accessed 13 Jan. 2012]. 218 O’Brien, Dear, Dirty Dublin, 219. See also Emmet Larkin, “Larkin, James (1874–1947),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/37656, accessed 6 May 2012]. 219 Quoted in “Dublin Strike,” Sydney Morning Herald (New South Wales), 21 Nov. 1913. See also John Shepherd, “Lansbury, George (1859–1940),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/34407, accessed 6 May 2012]. 220 Yeates, Lockout, 545 and 125–6. 221 Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland, 263. 222 Margaret Ward, In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism (Dublin: Attic, 1995), 31. 223 Quoted in Rosemary Cullen Owens, Smashing Times: A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1889–1922 (Dublin: Attic, 1984), 47. 224 Quoted in ibid., 48. See, too, Alan O’Day, “Dillon, John (1851–1927),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/32831, accessed 6 May 2012]. 225 See Cliona Murphy, The Women’s Suffrage Movement and Irish Society in the Early Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989). 226 Owens, Smashing Times, 56. On Irish suffragism, see also Murphy, The Women’s Suffrage Movement. 227 Julia Bush, Women against the Vote: Female Anti-Suffragism in Britain (London: Oxford University Press, 2007), 292.

304  Notes to Pages 195–6 228 McLeish, “Sunshine and Sorrows,” 281. 229 See Diane Urquhart, “Stewart, Edith Helen Vane-Tempest-, marchioness of Londonderry (1878–1959),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/45461, accessed 11 Jan. 2012]; and Anne de Courcy, Society’s Queen: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry (London: Phoenix, 2004). See also the middle-class suffragist, Noel Armour, “Isabella Tod and Liberal Unionism in Ulster, 1886–96,” in Irish Women’s History, eds. Alan Hayes and Diane Urquhart (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2004), 72–87. 230 Owens, Smashing Times, 74. 231 Ibid., 84. 232 Virginia Crossman, Politics, Pauperism, and Power in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 193. 233 Hill, “Divisions and Debates: The Irish Suffrage Experience,” 264. 234 Owens, Smashing Times, 64. 235 Margaret Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington: A Life (Dublin: Attic, 1997) 236 HH, Red Archival Box, unlabelled with unbound articles, Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Progress of the Women’s Movement,” The Scotsman (Suppl.), xxii, no date but internal evidence suggests 1934 or 1935. 237 “Militant Suffragette and Lady Aberdeen,” The Scotsman, 27 June 1913. 238 “Disapprove Tactics of Militant Women,” Ottawa Citizen, 6 June 1913. 239 See Patricia Jalland and John Stubbs, “The Irish Question after the Outbreak of War in 1914: Some Unfinished Party Business,” English Historical Review 96, no. 381 (Oct., 1981): 778–807. 240 See D. George Boyce, “Carson, Edward Henry, Baron Carson (1854–1935),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/32310, accessed 3 Feb. 2013]. For the suggestion that Carson’s “advocacy of exclusion” was an effort to “avoid civil war, not a vision for the future,” see Jeremy Smith, “Federalism, Devolution and Partition: Sir Edward Carson and the Search for a Compromise on the Third Home Rule Bill, 1913–14,” Irish Historical Studies 31, no. 140 (Nov. 2007): 500. 241 In a typical employment of his networks, Aberdeen cited a relative, “a Colonel Hogg” of a cavalry regiment stationed in Ireland, in arguing that sufficient numbers of troops were loyal and would combat the gun-running Ulster Volunteers. See OUBL, Asquith Papers 41, Aberdeen to Augustine Birrell, 26 Apr. 1914. 242 Ó Broin, Chief Secretary, 95–7. 243 Jalland and Stubbs, “The Irish Question,” 795–6. 244 There is some indication that neither Prime Minister Asquith nor King George approved of the Aberdeens’ retreat to the United States. This owed much to the

Notes to Pages 197–200 305 fact that the King’s secretary, Arthur Bigge, first Baron Stamfordham, appeared to largely dismiss Aberdeen’s abilities and probably saw him as a loose cannon on the Irish question. See OUBL, Asquith Papers, Stamfordham to Maurice Bonham Carter, secretary to Herbert Asquith, Dec. 29, 1914, marked Private. 245 “The Irish Viceroy,” Manchester Guardian, 16 Feb. 1906. 246 Meleady, Redmond: The Parnellite, 483. 247 Ibid., 5. 248 See Thompson, “The Historians and the Decline of the Liberal Party”; Peter Stansky, “‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’: Fifty Years After,” Albion 17 (Winter 1985): 401–3; Carolyn W. White, “‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’ in Its Time,” ibid., 425–47. 249 McCarthy, British Political Portraits, 156, 162, 165, 170, 173. 250 Asquith was at Archibald Gordon’s deathbed and contributed to a memorial volume. 251 HH, Box 1/5, Asquith to Lord Aberdeen, marked private, Whitehall, July 1912. 252 John Russell Vincent, ed., The Crawford Papers: The Journals of David Lindsay, Twenty-Seventh Earl of Crawford and Tenth Earl of Belcarres (1871 to 1940) during the Years 1892 to 1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 123. See the appeal of both Aberdeens to Violet Asquith to get her father to retain Pentland in the Cabinet as secretary for Scotland. OUBL, Violet Asquith Bonham Carter Papers, Ishbel Aberdeen, signing herself “Archie’s mother” to “‘dearest Violet,” 9 Feb. 1912, and Aberdeen to “dear Violet,” same date. Ishbel argued that the loss of Pentland would “cause deepest regret amongst thousands & thousands of Liberals in Scotland, especially amongst the poor & inarticulate.” 253 Quoted in Jalland, “A Liberal Chief Secretary,” 442. 254 HH, Box 1/5, Asquith to Aberdeen, marked Confidential, 8 Oct. 1914, and OUBL, Asquith Papers, Asquith to Lady Aberdeen, 2 Dec. 1914. Neither suggest unhappiness with performance, but see the correspondence between the King’s and Asquith’s private secretaries, OUBL, Stamfordham to Bonham Carter, 29 Dec. 1914 and 6 Jan. 1915 . 255 John Kendle, Federal Britain: A History (London: Routledge, 1997), xii. 6.  Faithful unto Death 1 In 1870, Aberdeen had paid £800 in annual estate taxes, but fifty years later this was £19,000. T.M. Devine, The Scottish Nation, 1700–2005 (London: Penguin, 2006), 455. 2 The latter seem to have included Viscount William James Pirrie (1847–1924; raised to a baronetcy 1906), Sir Alexander MacRobert (knighted 1922; 1854–1922), Viscount Cowdray (raised to the peerage 1910; 1856–1927), Sir

306  Notes to Pages 200–2

3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10

11

12

Thomas Glen-Coats (created a baronet 1894; 1846–1922), and Sir Dorabji Tata (knighted 1910; 1859–1932). The specifics of these obligations, which prompted some personal embarrassment, are not clear in the Haddo House collection for this period. See Michael S. Moss, “Pirrie, William James, Viscount Pirrie (1847–1924),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/35534, accessed 7 May 2012]. MacRobert, an Aberdeen poor boy made good, was founder of the British India Corporation and knighted in 1922. Geoffrey Jones, “Pearson, Weetman Dickinson, first Viscount Cowdray (1856–1927),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .library.ubc.ca/view/article/35443, accessed 7 May 2012]; R. Choksi, “Tata, Sir Dorabji Jamshed (1859–1932),” revised, in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/36420, accessed 7 May 2012]. HH, Box 1/36, Cecile to “My dear Doddie,” 15 Sept. 1915. HH, Box, 1/36, Dudley to D[ear] D[odie], 18 July 1918. See also PAL, Papers of John Campbell Davidson MP (1889–1970), DAV/76, J.C. Davidson to General Sir Earnest Dunlop Swinton, 15 Feb. 1918, marked “Private and Confidential” (copy) which noted the Aberdeens’ “good work for the Allied cause” in the United States, but suggested that they were on “the verge of bankruptcy failing to realize the value of money and her lavish donations to good works.” Archie Gordon, 5th Marquess of Aberdeen, A Wild Flight of Gordons (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1985), 10. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 192. Ibid., 208. See Cameron Hazlehurst and Sally Whitehead, A Guide to the Papers of British Cabinet Ministers, 1900–1964 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 330–1. See the all too brief discussion of her role in London’s St Pancras House Improvement Society by Elizabeth Darling, Reforming Britain: Narratives of Modernity before Reconstruction (London: Routledge, 2006), 125–6. See James Moore, Eminent Gurdjieffians: Lord Pentland (London: Gudjieff Studies Ltd, 2011). The appeal of this leader, who has been variously identified with Sufism and Hinduism, religious unity, the power of love, and the similarity of all humanity, calls to mind the hopes for altruism expressed by the early Aberdeen mentor, Henry Drummond. See David Westerlund, “The Contexualisation of Sufism in Europe,” in Sufism in Europe and North America, ed. D. Westerlund (New York: Routledge, 2004), 21, and Gerald Horne, The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 7. See HH, Old Trunk filled with otherwise unidentified, largely handwritten letters, many from Ishbel to Doddie and other correspondents from 1890s

Notes to Pages 202–5 307 through 1920s, others from lawyers re estate matters, etc, “Is. T.” to “Mr Hunter” [a family lawyer], 1 Nov. 1918, copy. 13 “Haddo House Estate Sale,” Aberdeen Free Press, 3 Mar. 1919, 3. 14 HH, Box 1/23, Envelope marked “Lord Aberdeen’s Letter to the Tenantry on the H.H. Estates, 25 Feb. 1919.” 15 Aberdeens, We Twa II, 313–15. 16 HH, Box 1/6, Typescript copy “My Keepsakes” by the Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair as told to Sydney V. Wilson, Philadelphia, 10 and 13. 17 Katharine Tynan, “We Twa,” The Observer, 18 Oct. 1925. See also “Gentle Annals of Lord and Lady Aberdeen: We Twa,” New York Times Book Review, 17 Jan. 1926. 18 HH, Selection of Reviews, “We Twa,” in hardcover scrapbooks on model of We Twa; Roger Englewood, “‘We Twa’: The Love Story and the Life Story of Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” Sunday at Home, Jan. 1926. 19 HH, Selection of Reviews, “We Twa,” in hardcover scrapbooks on model of We Twa; “We Twa,” Southend News, 23 Jan. 1926 and “Gentle Annals of Lord and Lady Aberdeen.” 20 See resurrection of the old story in Henry Furniss, Some Victorian Women: Good, Bad, and Indifferent (London: Jane Lane The Bodley Head, 1924), 198. Early in the twentieth century, the playwright James Barrie had insisted that the Aberdeens were not the model for this behaviour in his The Admirable Crichton, and Furniss was also forced to agree that the story was “mere myth.” See Aberdeens, We Twa II, 11. 21 Leonard Williams, Growing Old Gracefully: Health Laws and Lessons Meanwhile (London: Jarrolds, 1929). 22 Tell Me Another (London: Edward Arnold, 1926) and Jokes Cracked by Lord Aberdeen (Dundee: Valentine and Sons, 1929). 23 HH, Box 1/6, Helen Keller to Lord Aberdeen, 23 Apr. 1929. 24 Quoted in “Golden Wedding Anniversary of Lord and Lady Aberdeen,” Reading Eagle, 8 Nov. 1927. 25 UBSCLP, Lady Sinclair, “Lord Aberdeen,” Liberal Woman’s News (Apr. 1934): 58. 26 “The Man Who Invented Aberdeen Jokes,” Daily Express, 8 Mar. 1934, 13. See also New York Times, 8 Mar. 1934. 27 Pamela Hinkson, “Lord Aberdeen as Idealist,” The Observer, 11 Mar. 1934, 21. 28 Prochaska, Royal Bounty, 213. 29 HH, Box 1/23, “To the Tenants on the Estate of Cromar,” two-page typescript, dated 11 Apr. 1934. 30 HH, Box 1/6, William Lyon Mackenzie King to Lady Aberdeen, 8 Apr. 1934. 31 LAC, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Diary, 12 Oct. 1934, http://www

308  Notes to Pages 205–7 .collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/king/index-e.html?PHPSESSID=skddnb funj7ciqfjt29ok6qic4. 32 See Prochaska, Royal Bounty. 33 Unfortunately, it has not proven possible to document the details of Ishbel’s relationship with Queen Mary, but the latter’s “welfare monarchism” seems a good place to start. See Frank Prochaska, “Mary (1867–1953),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/ article/34914, accessed 20 Feb. 2012]. 34 Kitty Clive, “Echoes of the Town,” Irish Times, 9 Oct. 1936. 35 Aberdeen, Musings of a Scottish Granny, 16. 36 The Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Introduction” to The House of Windsor: A Book of Portraits (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1937), no page number. 37 “Life-Long Work for Women,” The Age, 20 Apr. 1939. 38 “A Great Friend of Ireland,” Irish Times, 19 Apr. 1939. 39 “Tributes to Lady Aberdeen,” Glasgow Herald, 20 Apr. 20, 1939. For friendly but somewhat ambivalent Canadian coverage, see “Founder of V.O.N. Lady Aberdeen Is Dead at Age of 82,” Ottawa Citizen, 18 Apr. 1939, which remembered her as part of the “Darby and Joan of the Peerage.” 40 NLI, Souvenir Album presented to the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair as a farewell gift by Members of the Staff of 1905–1915 in remembrance of Their Excellencies’ Vice-royalties in Ireland in 1886 and 1905–1915 (Published “by request”; printed by Dollard, Ltd, Dublin; no date). 41 J.G. Swift MacNeill, “The Irish Lord-Lieutenancy,” Fortnightly Review 97, no. 580 (Apr. 1915): 705–714. See also S.L. Gwynn, “MacNeill, John Gordon Swift (1849–1926),” revised by Alan O’Day, in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com .ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/34815, accessed 24 Jan. 2012]. 42 D.P Moran of the The Leader in Ó Broion, Chief Secretary, 130. 43 See PAL, Lloyd George Papers, LG/F/I/I/4, Typescript, anonymous set of verses. 44 See OUBL, Asquith Papers 46, Asquith to Lady Aberdeen, 2 Dec. 1914, copy. 45 See NLI, Frances Sheehy-Skeffington Papers, MS 4-0, 473/1, FSS, copy marked “Private,” Redmond to Lord Aberdeen, 11 Feb? 1915. See also the letter to Lord Aberdeen from Redmond’s son-in-law. This confirms Redmond’s regret at the retirement. HH, Box 1/5, Max Green to Lord Aberdeen, 28 May 1918. 46 NLI, John Redmond Papers 15,164/1, Redmond to Aberdeen, 22 Mar. 1915. On the attitude of the government, see also PAL, Lloyd George Papers, C/6/11/26, Henry Bonham Carter to Aberdeen, 6 Feb. 1915, copy, for a confirmation of the opposition of the Irish nationalists and the Unionists alike. 47 Birrell concluded that “the poor dear innocents are flouted and disgraced.” Quoted in Ó Broin, Chief Secretary, 132.

Notes to Pages 207–10 309 48 PAL, David Lloyd George Papers, LG/F/1/1/2, Aberdeen to Lloyd George, 20 July 1917. 49 On John Gordon’s early membership, see “Pilgrims’ Society Grows,” which mentions his election to the London branch. New York Times, 17 May 1903. Unfortunately, scholarly literature on this near-secret society is scant, but a useful beginning is found in Joel van der Reijden, “The Pilgrims Society” (Dec. 2005), http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_pilgrimsociety01.htm. 50 See “Lady Aberdeen Guest: Reception and Tea Given by Boston Women. Fund Started in Peeress’ Honor to Further Work in Ireland,” Boston Daily Globe, 15 Oct. 1915, 11, and “Lady Aberdeen’s Lace Sale,” ibid. 51 “To Save Irish Babies,” New York Times, 22 Jan. 1916. 52 “Lord Aberdeen Pities Casement,” ibid., 28 Apr. 1916. See also D. George Boyce, “Casement, Roger David (1864–1916),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32320, accessed 24 Jan. 2012]. On US sympathy for Casement, see Alan J. Ward, “America and the Irish Problem, 1899–1921,” Irish Historical Studies l16, no. 61 (Mar. 1968): 78–9. 53 “Lord Aberdeen Asks for United Ireland,” New York Times, 28 May 1916. 54 Parliamentary Papers, London, Lloyd George Papers, LG/D/14/3/8, Aberdeen to Lloyd George, copy, 16 June 1916. 55 LAC, Laurier Papers, Microfilm C910 702, pp. 193469–70, Ishbel Aberdeen to Wilfrid Laurier, 20 Oct. 1916. 56 Lady Aberdeen, “The Sorrows of Ireland,” Yale Review 6 (Oct. 1916): 61. 57 Ibid., 64. 58 Ibid., 65. 59 Ibid., 67; emphasis in original. 60 Ibid., 71. 61 Ibid., 75–6. 62 Ibid., 78. 63 Shane Leslie, The Irish Issue in Its American Aspect: A Contribution to the Settlement of Anglo-American Relations during and after the Great War (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1917), 185. 64 James K. McGuire, What Could Germany Do for Ireland? (New York: Wolfe Tone, 1916). 65 Francis Jones, History of the Sinn Fein Movement and the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (New York: P.J. Kennedy and Sons, 1917), 148–9. 66 “Oppose Aberdeens’ Work: Irish-American Societies Declare Their Mission Is a Subterfuge,” New York Times, 20 Feb. 1916. 67 “Bishop Objects to Aberdeen’s Views,” ibid., 11 June 1917. 68 McBride, Greening of Dublin Castle, 221.

310  Notes to Pages 210–13 69 Meleady, Redmond: The Parnellite, 181. On Canada, see Terry Copp, “The Military Effort, 1914–1918,” 35–61, and J.L. Granatstein, “Conscription in the Great War,” 62–75, in Canada and the First World War: Essays in Honour of Robert Craig Brown, ed. David MacKenzie (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). See also Margaret Levi, “The Institution of Conscription,” Social Science History 20, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 133–67. 70 See PAL, David Lloyd George Papers, LG/F/1/1/1, Aberdeen to Lloyd George, 27 Dec. 1916. 71 Loughlin, British Monarchy and Ireland, 318. 72 Mary E. Daly, “‘The Women Element in Politics’: Irish Women and the Vote, 1918–c. 1970,” in Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century, eds. Pat Thane and Esther Breitenbach (London: Continuum, 2010), 80. 73 F.S.L. Lyons, John Dillon: A Biography (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 475. 74 Sybil Oldfield, “Skeffington, Johanna Mary Sheehy- (1877–1946),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/38533, accessed 24 Jan. 2012]. See her collected speeches, in Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, British Militarism as I Have Known It, 5th ed. (Tralee: Kerryman, 1946). 75 Owens, Smashing Times, 119. 76 Ibid., 132. 77 “Lord Aberdeen. A Devoted Friend of Ireland,” Manchester Guardian, 8 Mar. 1934. 78 Ireland’s Prosperity,” New York Times, 14 May 1918. 79 Bondfield, A Life’s Work, 187. 80 Aberdeen and Temair to Times, “Ulster’s Attitude,” The Times, 21 Nov. 1921. 81 “Ireland’s Plight. Lady Aberdeen and Scottish Attitude. Appeal for National Movement,” The Scotsman, 1 June 1921. 82 “Lord Aberdeen on Home Rule,” ibid., 11 Nov. 1922. 83 Aberdeen, Musings of a Scottish Granny, 164. 84 Ibid., 165. 85 Keane, Ishbel: Lady Aberdeen in Ireland, passim. 86 See PAL, Lloyd George Papers, LG/D/16/1/2, which includes letters from Dudley Gordon regarding explosives and Aberdeen to Lloyd George, 8 Sept. 1915. 87 “Lord Aberdeen Not a Pacifist,” Manchester Guardian, 29 Dec. 1916. 88 PAL, London, Lloyd George Papers, LG/F/a/1/2, Aberdeen to Lloyd George, 20 July 1917, from New York City. 89 LAC, ICWP, Reel 2011, N.M. Butler to Emily Willoughby Cummings, 5 Dec. 1918. 90 Aberdeens, We Twa II, 288–93, and opposite 291. 91 HH, Box 8/13, A.J. Russell, London Express, to Earl of Haddo, 16 Sept. 1923, with attached handwritten rejected submission by Haddo from which the above quotes come.

Notes to Pages 213–4 311 92 On these divisions, see UC, Churchill Archives, Viscount Thurso Papers, II, 69/1, Ishbel Aberdeen to Sir Archibald Sinclair (leader of the British Liberal Party and a remote cousin of John Sinclair, Lord Pentland), 25 July 1935. 93 HH, Brown Scrapbook labelled “Clippings,” 23 Apr. 1936–30 Apr. 1938; Philip H. Bucknell, “Scotland Needs a Fair Deal. Lay Aberdeen’s Views. No Women on New Economic Council ‘A Retrograde Step,”’ Daily Record and Mail, 21 Apr. 1936. 94 On this role, see Miles Jebb, Lord Lieutenants and Their Deputies (Chichester: Philimore, 2007). 95 The Aberdeens continued to favour a federal system for Britain. James Graham, the Duke of Montrose, originally a Unionist Conservative and supporter of Scottish Home Rule switched to the Liberals in 1935 in order, he hoped, to strengthen Scotland’s position, an aim shared with Lady Aberdeen. See HH, Box 1/7, Montrose to Ishbel Aberdeen, 22 May 1936. See also the correspondence between Archibald Sinclair, Liberal leader with the 6th Duke of Montrose, copies, NAS, RH2/8/52, Papers of the Dukes of Montrose; Jack Brand, The National Movement in Scotland (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978); and Michael Fry, “Graham, James, sixth duke of Montrose (1878–1954),” in ODNB; online edition, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ view/article/72367, accessed 26 Jan. 2012]. 96 HH, Brown Scrapbook labelled “Clippings,” 23 Apr. 1936–30 Apr. 1938, Philip H. Bucknell, “Scotland Needs a Fair Deal. Lady Aberdeen’s Views. No Women on New Economic Council ‘A Retrograde Step,’” Daily Record and Mail, 21 Apr. 1936. 97 Michael Freeden, Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought, 1914–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 1. See also Peter Fraser, “British War Policy and the Crisis of Liberalism in May 1915,” Journal of Modern History 54, no. 1 (Mar. 1982): 1–26. 98 I.G.C. Hutchison, “The Nobility and Politics in Scotland, c. 1880–1939,” in Scottish Elites: Proceedings of the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar at the University of Strathclyde 1991–1992, ed. T.M. Devine (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1994), 146–­7. Feminist journalist and novelist Winifred Holtby also described Burleigh in the House of Lords introducing the Public Places (Order) Bill, with its assertion of an equal moral standard for women and men, and chairing a London meeting to “protest against the ‘refusal of certain resturants, cafes, and other places of refreshment to admit women unaccompanied by men, after certain hours.’” These are reproduced, respectively, in “Sex and the Policeman,” Nation and Athenaeum, 23 June 1928, and “Ladies in Restaurants,” Manchester Guardian, 28 Mar. 1930. Both appear as well in Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, eds. Paul Berry and Alan Bishop (London: Virago, 1985), 157 and 67.

312  Notes to Pages 214–6 99 I.G.C. Hutchison, “Scottish Issues in British Politics, 1900–1939,” in A Companion to Early Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. Chris Wrigley (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 80. 100 Glasgow Herald, 16 Oct. 192. 101 UBSCLP, Lord Aberdeen to Alexander D. Clark, of Glasgow Young Liberals, 2 Jan. 1930. 102 UK House of Lords, Hansard, 13 May 1919. 103 Ibid., 29 Mar. 1920. See also ibid., 21 June 1921, speech by Lord Buckmaster and Punch, or the London Charivari 158, 7 Mar. 1920. 104 UK House of Lords, Hansard, 7 Mar. 1922. See also 8 Mar. 1922. 105 Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales: The Christian Church, 1900–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 181. 106 Eunice G. Murray, “The Ministry of Women and the Church’s Attitude to Reform,” Globe, 17 July 1931. 107 See G.I.T. Machin, Churches and Social Issues in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), chapter 2; and S.J. Brown, “‘A Victory for God’: The Scottish Presbyterian Churches and the General Strike of 1926,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42, no. 4 (Oct. 1991): 596–617. 108 Sue Innes, “Constructing Women’s Citizenship in the Interwar Period: The Edinburgh Women Citizens’ Association,” Women’s History Review 13 no. 4 (2004): 622–3. For a similar persperctive, see Valerie Wright, “Education for Active Citizenship: Women’s Organizations in Interwar Scotland,” History of Education 38, no. 3 (May 2009): 419–36. See also the contrasting argument by Susan K. Kent, “The Politics of Sexual Difference: World War I and the Demise of British Feminism,” Journal of British Studies 27 ( July 1988): 232–53. 109 “Women Candidates on the Election,” Manchester Guardian, 23 Nov. 1922. 110 Hirshfield, “Fractured Faith,” 189. 111 This was published as The Next Five Years – An Essay in Political Agreement (Edinburgh: R.&R. Clarke, 1935). 112 Unfortunately, although Eleanor Rathbone was associated with the Canning Women’s Settlement, a long-time cause for Ishbel, a “crucial voice on imperial and international issues,” and an anti-appeaser allied with the Duchess of Atholl in the 1930s, it has not been possible to trace relations with Ishbel. See Susan Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 2004), 239. 113 “Foreword,” ibid. 114 T.C. Kennedy, “The Next Five Years Group and the Failure of the Politics of Agreement in Britain,” Canadian Journal of History 9, no. 1 (Apr. 1974): 52–3. 115 See Daniel Ritschel, The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), ch. 6.

Notes to Pages 216–8 313 116 Arthur Marwick, “Middle Opinion in the Thirties: Planning Progress and Political ‘Agreement,’” English Historical Review, no. 311 (Apr. 1964): 298. For the important reminder that not all Liberals shared with Ishbel a fondness for nonpartisan cooperation, see Julia Stapleton, “Resisting the Centre at the Extremes: ‘English’ Liberalism in the Political Thought of Interwar Britain,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 1, no. 3 (Oct. 1999): 270–92. 117 Kennedy, “The Next Five Years Group,” 52–3. 118 Daniel Ritschel, The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 276. 119 G.D.H. Cole, review of The Next Five Years, Economic Journal 45, no. 180 (Dec. 1935): 723. 120 G.D.H. Cole, “Chants of Progress,” Political Quarterly 6, no. 4 (Oct. 1935): 332–3. 121 Hugh Dalton quoted in Kennedy, “The Next Five Years Group,” 68. 122 Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “Memories of Gladstone, Contemporary Review, no. 148 ( July/Dec. 1935): 415. 123 See HH, Box 1/6, Archibald Sinclair to Lady Aberdeen, 13 Feb. 1939 (typescript). See also L.H. Mates, “The North-East and the Campaigns for the Popular Front, 1938–39,” Northern History 43, no. 2 (Sept. 2006): 273–301; and Peter Clarke and Richard Toye, “Cripps, Sir (Richard) Stafford (1889–1952),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/view/article/32630, accessed 26 Jan. 2012]. 124 “Relief in Russia,” Letter to Saturday Review, 17 Mar. 1923, signed by notables including Aberdeen, preacher and suffragist Maude Royden, journalist J.A. Spender, writer H.G. Wells, Labour politicians Arthur Henderson and J. Ramsay MacDonald, Liberal Oxford professor Gilbert Murray, and others. 125 Trentmann, “After the Nation-State,” 37. 126 HH Box 1/6, Archie Sinclair to Lady Aberdeen, 5 Mar. 1938. 127 Trentmann, “After the Nation-State,” 46. 128 See Fry, The Scottish Empire, 430–1. 129 UBSCLP, Lord Aberdeen to Alexander D. Clark, of Glasgow Young Liberals, 2 Jan. 1930. 130 Ibid. 131 Richard S. Grayson, Liberals, International Relations, and Appeasement: The Liberal Party, 1919–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 1. He draws on distinctions made by Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 132 Aberdeens, We Twa II, 288. 133 Helen McCarthy, “Leading from the Centre: The League of Nations Union, Foreign Policy and ‘Political Agreement’ in the 1930s,” Contemporary British History 23, no. 4 (2009): 529.

314  Notes to Pages 218–9 134 “Lady Aberdeen and War,” The Scotsman, 1 Dec. 1927. 135 “How to Prevent War,” Manchester Guardian, 6 May 1924. 136 “Call for Peace. 2000 Women in Aberdeen Demonstration,” The Scotsman, 3 June 1935. 137 McCarthy, “Leading from the Centre,” 11. 138 HH, Brown Scrapbook labelled “Clippings,” 23 Apr. 1936–30 Apr. 1938,” “Mothers of the World Unite? A Clarion Call by Marchioness of Aberdeen,” Glasgow Weekly Herald, 10 July 1937. 139 “B.B.C. in Aberdeen. New Headquarters Opened. Ishbel Lady Aberdeen,” The Scotsman, Dec. 1938. 140 Sir Robert Wilson, “Glasgow Peace Pavilion,” Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1939. 141 HH, Box 8/3, Austin Chamberlain to Lord Aberdeen, 25 July 1933, 36. Chamberlain quotes an earlier letter from Aberdeen. See also D.J. Dutton, “Chamberlain, Sir ( Joseph) Austen (1863–1937),” in ODNB; online edition, Jan. 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/32351, accessed 27 Jan. 2012]. 142 This support seemed largely symbolic as the school has no further mention of Aberdeen beyond her enlistment as a founder. Louise Avery, Gordonstoun Archivist, to Veronica Strong-Boag, 22 Feb. 2012, email communication. The Aberdeen family did, however, have later associations with the school. See also George Wedell, “Hahn, Kurt Matthias Robert Martin (1886–1974),” in ODNB; online edition, Oct. 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc .ca/view/article/31187, accessed 23 Feb. 2012]. See also Hahn’s salute: HH, Old Trunk filled largely with handwritten letters with various correspondents 1890s–1930s, K. Hahn to her son Lord Aberdeen after her death but otherwise undated: “The memory of your mother will be forever sacred in this school … Her courage, goodness, and wisdom live with me as an ever present obligation to do honour to her by one’s deeds rather than by one’s words.” 143 HH, Brown Scrapbook labelled “Clippings,” 23 Apr. 1936–30 Apr. 1938. Pamphlet “Order of Service for the Aberdeen Women’s Mass Peace Demonstration … Sunday, 17th May 1937,” with typescript of Aberdeen’s speech. See also Sheila Fletcher, “Royden, (Agnes) Maude (1876–1956),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/35861, accessed 8 May 2012]. 144 HH, Box 8/12, Pamphlet “‘One Generation to Another’: Remembrance Day Sunday, Nov. 7, 1937.” 145 HH, Brown Scrapbook labelled “Clippings,” 23 Apr. 1936–30 Apr. 1938, “Bombing of Open Towns: Protest Meeting Tonight in Aberdeen,” Aberdeen Press and Journal, 29 Sept. 1937. 146 See the discussions of the 1938 Liberal Summer School in Grayson, Liberals, International Relations, and Appeasement, ix–xi.

Notes to Pages 220–3 315 147 CUL, Churchill Archives, Thurso Papers, Ishbel Aberdeen to Archibald Sinclair, 4 Dec. 1938. See also Gavin Bowd, “Scotland for Franco: Charles Saroléa v. The Red Duchess,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, no. 31 (2011): 195–219; Stuart Ball, “The Politics of Appeasement: The Fall of the Duchess of Atholl and the Kinross and West Perth By-election, Dec. 1938,” Scottish Historical Review 69, no. 1 (Apr. 1990): 49–83; Martin Pugh, “The Liberal Party and the Popular Front,” English Historical Review 121, no. 494 (Dec. 2006): 1327–50; and Daniel Gray, Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War (Edinburgh: Luath, 2008), 85. 148 Angela Jackson, British Women and the Spanish Civil War (London: Routledge, 2002), 248. 149 Aberdeen University Library and Archives, MS2671/4/3, Admission Card: Aberdeen Committee for Spanish Relief Public Meeting, 22 Jan. 1939. This shows Ishbel Aberdeen as a speaker. 150 Pentland, A Bonnie Fechter, 231. 151 “Sympathy with Czechs. Lady Aberdeen on Need for Collective Action,” The Scotsman, 3 Oct. 1938. 152 “Law and Order. Time for Britain to Take Lead,” The Scotsman, 20 Mar. 1939. 153 “One Generation to Another: Lady Aberdeen Speaks,” Children’s Newspaper, 20 Nov. 1937, http://www.lookandlearn.com/childrens-newspaper/CN371120 -006.pdf, 10 May 2011. 154 HH, Box 10/4, Envelope marked “Memoir File,” handwritten headed “Notes on the real significance of the I.C.W. to me in my inner life,” no date but internal evidence suggests 1936. 155 Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, Women of the Bible (London: Lutterworth, 1927), 159. 156 HH, Green Scrapbook marked only “Cuttings,” but mostly on the July 1938 Jubilee of the ICW in Edinburgh, “Lady Aberdeen World Tributes at Congress,” Edinburgh Evening News, 18 July 1938. 157 Christine Bolt, Sisterhood Questioned? Race, Class and Internationalism in the American and British Women’s Movements, c. 1880s–1970s (London: Routledge, 2004), 3. 158 Nitza Berkovitch, From Motherhood to Citizenship: Women’s Rights and International Organizations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 62. 159 On many of these groups, see Berkovitch, From Motherhood to Citizenship, and Valentine M. Moghadam, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 160 See Rupp, Worlds of Women. 161 Sangster, “Crossing Boundaries,” 9–19. See also M. Bosh with A. Koosterman, eds., Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902–1942 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990). 162 Mazower, No Enchanted Place. 163 Bolt, Sisterhood Questioned? 14.

316  Notes to Pages 223–6 164 Nina Mjagkij, Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations (New York: Garland, 2001), 278–81. 165 National Council of African Women, About Us, http://ncaw.org/history, 27 Jan. 2012. 166 See Stephanie A. Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), esp. chapters 2 and 3. 167 Hilkka Pietila, Engendering the Global Agenda: The Story of Women and the United Nations (Geneva: UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service, 2002), 9. 168 Carol Miller, “Women in International Relations? The Debate in Inter-War Britain,” in Gender and International Relations, eds. Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 64. 169 Bolt, Sisterhood Questioned? 1. 170 Asunción Lavrin, Women, Feminism and Social Change in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, 1890–1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995). 171 See, e.g., “Lady Aberdeen Sees Peace in Golden Rule Adherence by Women,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 21 Apr. 1925. 172 See Madsen, “‘The Power of Combination,’” 657. 173 LAC, NCWCP, Reel 2020, Aberdeen to Emily W. Cummings, 24 Mar. 1915?, copy. 174 Proceedings of the Biennial Meetings of the National Council of Women, Washington, Jan. 1916, and the Executive Meeting, New York, June 1916: with report of the International Congress of Women http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/ rbnawsa/n8355/n8355.old. 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid. 177 Ibid. 178 D’Itri, Cross Currents in the International Women’s Movement, 138. 179 Miss M. Cécile Matheson, “The Meeting of the International Council of Women,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, 3rd series, 3, no. 1 (1921): 112. 180 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 45. See also the account that stresses access to Georges Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister at the Peace Conference, Sian Reynolds, France between the Wars: Gender and Politics (New York: Routledge, 1996), 185. 181 HH, Unidentified archival box, Copy of Memo sent to family lawyer M.R.L. Hunter from Ishbel Aberdeen, 20 Nov. 1934. See also Peter Hanlon, “Sandford, W.E.,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004 -119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6417. 182 Quoted in D’Itri, Cross Currents in the International Women’s Movement, 87–8.

Notes to Pages 226–9 317 183 “Council of Women,” Evening Post, 28 Dec. 1920, 2. See also Matheson, “The Meeting of the International Council of Women,” 113. 184 See Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography, http://www.topicsites .com/booker-t-washington/booker-t-washington-biography.htm. 185 Mark R. Schneider, African Americans in the Jazz Age (Landham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 127. 186 On the latter, see Sybil Oldfield, “Franklin, Henrietta [Netta] (1866–1964),” in ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/53683, accessed 10 May 2011]. 187 See the obituary in the official publication of the NAACP, “A Great Woman,” The Crisis 27 no. 3 (23 Dec. 1923): 77. 188 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 112. 189 Ibid., 226–7. 190 Sandi E. Cooper, “French Feminists and Pacifism, 1889–1914: The Evolution of New Visions,” Peace and Change 36, no. 1, ( Jan. 2011): 5–33. 191 “Women Candidates on the Election,” Manchester Guardian, 23 Nov. 1922. 192 Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “The Child in the Future,” Quiver ( July 1921): 776. See also Linda Mahood, “Eglantyne Jebb: Remembering, Representing and Writing a Rebel Daughter,” Women’s History Review 17, no. 1 (2008): 1–20. 193 See NLI, Department of the Taoiseach, Annie O Brien Christich, a former recording secretary for the ICW, to the “Private Secretary to President de Valera, the Republic of Ireland,” 22 Mar. 1962, which notes that she deposited unpublished letters from Irish Catholic bishops to Aberdeen which confirmed that she would not permit “any proposal submitted to our assemblies which would not be in keeping with Catholic Doctrine.” Unfortunately, the letters have disappeared. 194 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 154. 195 Ibid., 52. 196 Ibid. 197 Quoted in ibid., 175. On Kallas, see also Thomas A. Dubois, “Writing of Women, Not Nations: The Development of a Feminist Agenda in the Novellas of Aino Kallas,” Scandinavian Studies 76, no. 2 (2004): 205–32. 198 “Irene Parlby,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia .com/articles/mary-irene-parlby. 199 “Disappointed in the Washington Conference,” Lethbridge Herald, 18 June 1925. 200 Vera Britain, “Fathercraft,” Manchester Guardian, 13 Sept. 1928. 201 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 162. 202 Ibid., 61. 203 See HH, Box 10/4, Folder marked “Beginning of Lady Aberdeen’s Journal in Vienna 1930,” hand written. On the National Council of Women’s Citizens’

318  Notes to Pages 230–3 Associations, see Barbara Caine, English Feminism, 1780–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 201. 204 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 37. 205 Ruthchild, Equality and Revolution, 248–9. See also Norma C. Noonan and Carol Nechemias, eds., Encylopedia of Russian Women’s Movements (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), 63. 206 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 4. 207 Martha Bochachevsky-Chorniak, Feminists Despite Themselves: Women in Ukrainian Community Life, 1884–1934 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1988), 273. 208 Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “The Call of the Balkan Women,” The Outlook (18 May 1927): 81. See also Roxana Cheschebec, “The Achievement of Female Suffrage in Romania,” in The Struggle for Female Suffrage in Europe, eds. Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz and Ruth Rubio-Marín (Leyden: Brill, 2012), 357–72. 209 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 195. 210 See her fears for Salomon who was soon forced to flee to the United States. HH, Ishbel Aberdeen Diary, labelled only with the notation “Executive Meeting of I.C.W. at Stockholm 1933,” entries for 22–7 June. 211 HH, Ishbel Aberdeen Diary, no label or title, but first entry “Lord Warden Hotel Dover 2 Sept. 1936.” 212 LAC, NCWCP, Reel 2024, Copy of letter from Mercedes Gallagher Parks, NCW Peru, Lima, 26 Feb. 1937, translated from Spanish. 213 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 77. 214 Rupp, “Challenging Imperialism,” 12–13. 215 Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 109. 216 LAC, NCWCP, Reel H2022, Pamphlet “Public Meeting in Memory of the Late Lady (Dorabji) Tata, C.B.E.,” 20 July 1931, 2 and 7. 217 LAC, NCWCP, Reel H2022, Pamphlet “An Historic International Conference in India,” (reprinted from The Statesman (Calcutta), 1 Feb. 1936. 218 See the case of France, in Paul Smith, Feminism and the Third Republic: Women’s Politics and Civil Rights in France (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 21. 219 HH, Box 8/8, “President’s New Year Message,” Bulletin International Council of Women XII, no. 5, Jan. 1934. 220 UWSC, Aberdeen Papers, Lady Aberdeen to Elizabeth Smith Short, 17 Feb. 1934. 221 Bochachevsky-Chorniak, Feminists despite Themselves, 187. 222 Alice Salomon, Character Is Destiny: The Autobiography of Alice Salomon, ed. Andrew Lees (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 147. 223 HH, Box 8/8, Printed “Lady Aberdeen’s Farewell Address as President of the I.C.W. Dubrovnik (Dalmatia),” Oct. 1936; emphasis in original.

Notes to Pages 233–8 319 224 “A Woman’s Work for Women,” Manchester Guardian, 8 May 1937. 225 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 72. 226 Rupp, Worlds of Women, 88. 227 LAC, NCWCP, Reel 2030, Pamphlet “President’s memorandum regarding the council meeting of the International Council of Women, held at Edinburgh (Scotland), July 11–21, 1938.” 228 HH, Box 1/6, Alice Masaryk to Lady Aberdeen, 23 June 1938. 229 HH, Box 8/8, “National Council of Czechoslovakian Women, Praha II, Václavské no. 7,” Nov. 1938. 230 Lefaucheux, Women in a Changing World, 75. 231 Salomon, Character Is Destiny, 149. Conclusion 1 HH, Golden Wedding Scrapbook, not further identified, in Katharine Tynan, “We Twa,” The Bookman Christmas Number, 1925. 2 Prochaska, Royal Bounty, 206. 3 Sangster, “Crossing Boundaries,” 18–19; emphasis in original.

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Bibliography

Major Archival Collections Of particular significance to this volume are the extensive records maintained in the archival collection of the Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, identified here as Haddo House. These papers are now undergoing reorganization and the Finding Aid available through the National Archives of Scotland should be regarded as no more than a rough (and sometimes misleading) description. I have been as specific as possible in my reference to materials, but future reorganization is likely to arrange material far more rationally. Various materials used in previous biographies, notably by Marjorie Pentland and Doris French Shackleton, cannot be readily identified, indeed sometimes seem to have disappeared, and may well have been destroyed. Despite such difficulties, the Haddo House collection remains essential to understanding the Aberdeens and the family’s support for scholarly research is exemplary. Aberdeen Fonds, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) H.H. Asquith Papers, Oxford University, Bodleian Library, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts (OUBL) H.H. Asquith Papers, Parliamentary Archives, London (PAL) Violet Asquith Bonham Carter Papers, OUBL Henry Campbell-Bannerman Papers, British Library (BL) Lady Aberdeen Collection, Special Collections, University of Waterloo Library (LAUWL) Lord Crewe Papers, Cambridge University, Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives (CUL) Haddo House Collection, Haddo House, Aberdeenshire (HH) International Council of Women (ICW) Fonds, LAC Wilfrid Laurier Fonds, LAC Liberal Party Papers, University of Bristol, Special Collections (UBSCLP) Lloyd George Papers, PAL

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Index

Abdication Crisis, 4, 206, 236 Aberdeen, 4th Earl of (George HamiltonGordon; 1784–1860), 14, 21 Aberdeen, 5th Earl of (George John James Hamilton-Gordon; 1816–64), 17, 25–6 Aberdeen, 6th Earl of and 3rd Viscount Gordon (George Hamilton-Gordon; 1841–70), 30–3 Aberdeen, Countess of (Mary Baillie Hamilton-Gordon), 17, 21, 24–32, 41, 43, 78, 89, 95, 132, 163 Aberdeen and Temair, 1st Marchioness of (Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon), 301n186, 303n212, 314n142; and depression, 117, 162, 196; education, 59–67; family history, 44–59; leadership of the International Council of Women, 15, 16, 140–4, 162, 170, 172, 204, 206–7, 221–34, 318n210; marriage (see under Aberdeen, Lord and Lady); and model Irish Village, 128, 143, 147; and religion (see under Christianity); and spiritualism, 163, 205, 291n6; and Women’s Liberal Federations, 5, 15, 70–1, 106, 120, 135–42, 168–72,

213, 236; and women’s suffrage, 6–7, 11, 15–16, 68, 102, 135–40, 146, 196, 208, 283n147, 284–5n179, 295n79 Aberdeen and Temair, 3rd Marchioness of (Cécile Elizabeth Drummond), 163, 200 Aberdeen and Temair, 1st Marquess of ( John Campbell Gordon): and depression, 33, 43, 162, 196; education, 26–35; family history, 17–18, 20–44, 245n1; finances (see under Aberdeen, Lord and Lady); as governor general of Canada (1893–98), 144–9, 169–70, 200, 236; and the House of Lords, 14, 16, 21, 25, 31, 40–2, 73, 81, 104–7, 115, 199, 211, 236; as lord lieutenant of Ireland (1886; 1905–15), 107, 110, 144–5, 162, 183–96, 200, 207, 236, 272n194, 273n208, 273n215, 300n169, 304n241; marriage (see under Aberdeen, Lord and Lady); and masculinity (see under masculinity); and religion (see under Christianity) Aberdeen, Lord and Lady, 273n208, 291nn5–6, 292n27, 305n252, 308nn46–7; and charity (see under

362 Index charity); children of (see specific children’s names); finances, 26, 30, 75, 121, 127, 159, 166, 200–3, 269n132, 305n1, 305–6n2, 306n4; and the Liberal Party, 14–16, 18, 43, 76, 102–6, 132–35, 162, 199, 205, 213, 233; marriage of, 16, 70, 72–8, 81, 85, 148, 203–4, 235–6, 257n64; and philanthropy (see under philanthropy); relationships with servants, 160, 187–8, 204, 307n20; residences of (see specific names of properties); and tenant farmers, 165–6, 236–7 Aberdeen and Temair, 2nd Marquess of (George Gordon; “Doddie”), 81, 163, 200–1 Aberdeen and Temair, 3rd Marquess of (Dudley Gladstone Gordon), 33, 81, 125, 163, 200–1, 212–13, 250n96 Aberdeen and Temair, 5th Marquess of (Archibald Victor Dudley Gordon), 200–1 Aberdeen Ladies’ Union (later Aberdeen Union of Women Workers), 91, 99, 100–1 Aberdeen Rifle Volunteers, 21, 36 Aboriginal peoples, 122–4, 144, 151, 160–1. See also Indigenous peoples age of consent, 105, 158 agricultural depression, 37, 54, 90–5, 200. See also emigration Albert, Prince Consort, 20, 27, 53, 110, 149 Albert Victor, Prince (“Prince Eddy”), 20 alliances: activist, 6–7, 156, 222–3, 295n79; cross-class, 4, 11, 101, 213; cross-party, 25, 49, 109, 133, 188; liberal-labour, 102–3, 167, 293n31; Lord Aberdeen with feminist causes,

18–20, 41; through marriage, 49–51, 58; reform, 84–5 American Civil War, 28, 40 American Woman Suffrage Association, 141 Andrews, Amanda, 6, 7, 13 Anglican Girls’ Friendly Society, 27, 92, 93, 100, 111, 154 Anglicans, 28, 34, 46, 66–8, 75, 129, 132, 174, 195, 210, 249n60. See also Anglican Girls’ Friendly Society; Christianity Anglo-Afghan War, Second. See Second Anglo-Afghan War Anglo-Zulu War, 42, 132 Anthony, Susan B., 140–2, 175–6 anti-lynching campaigns, 13, 132, 226–7 anti-slavery movement, 13, 40, 71, 244n53 Argyll, 8th Duke of (George Douglas Campbell), 41–2, 75, 89, 91, 102, 105–6, 134 Asquith, Herbert Henry, 57, 163, 212, 214; and Ireland, 184, 196–8, 210; opposition to suffrage, 169, 194–5; relationship with the Aberdeens, 187, 192, 197, 207, 290–1n2, 304–5n244, 305n250, 305n252, 305n254 Asquith, Violet, 163, 197, 220, 290–1n2, 305n252 Australia, 30, 38, 116, 118–19, 142, 146, 179, 183–4, 261n149 Baillie, Mary. See Aberdeen, Countess of Baird, Charlotte. See Haddo, Lady Balfour, Arthur James. See Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, 1st Earl of (Arthur James Balfour), 19–20, 71, 73, 113, 126, 128, 172, 197, 246n18

Index 363 Balfour, Eustace, 71 Balfour, Frances Campbell, 10, 71, 134 Balmoral Castle, 27, 53 Barclay, Katie, 26, 76 Barnardo, Thomas, 37, 91 Belich, James, 12, 13, 38, 54, 118, 243n48 Birrell, Augustine, 187, 192–5, 308n47 birth control, 34, 81, 88, 228 Black women, 144, 158, 160–1, 172, 222–4, 227, 230 Boel, Baroness Marthe, 232–3 Boers, 48, 170–2, 184. See also South African War Boer War. See South African War Bolt, Christine, 221–2, 224 A Bonnie Fechter (Marjorie Sinclair, Lady Pentland, 1953), 5, 202, 255n37 Bowell, Mackenzie, 149, 151–2 Boys’ Brigade, 98–9, 130, 166 Boy Scouts, 98–9 Bradlaugh, Charles, 34, 87–8, 104 breweries, 49, 52–3, 55–6, 59 Bright, John, 49, 61, 102 Brook House, 52, 56, 68 Bruce, Alexander Hugh. See Burleigh, 6th Lord Balfour of Bryce, James, 187 Burdett-Coutts, Angela, 52, 98 Burleigh, 6th Lord Balfour of (Alexander Hugh Bruce), 214, 292n27, 311n98 Burleigh, Lady (Katherine Eliza Gordon; “Katie”), 29, 292n27 Butler, Josephine, 154, 171, 176 Byron, Lord George Gordon, 20, 21 Campbell-Bannerman, Henry, 56, 78, 133, 162, 167–9, 171, 184, 197, 263n9 Campbell, George Douglas. See Argyll, 8th Duke of

The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 1893–1898 ( John T. Saywell, 1960), 5 Cannadine, David, 4, 10, 27, 105–6 Carlisle, Countess of (Rosalind Frances Howard), 10, 70–1, 140, 168, 169, 171 Carson, Baron Edward Henry, 196, 304n240 Catholics: the Aberdeens and, 12, 45, 50, 111, 114, 166, 188–9, 193, 207–9, 272n198, 317n193; in Canada, 12, 144, 147, 149–51, 183; and emancipation, 112–13; and Home Rule, 128, 185, 210–11; and the International Council of Women, 142, 222, 228, 230, 317n193; and the National Council of Women of Canada, 154–5, 157–8; and the Women’s National Health Association, 190, 302n193. See also Christianity Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 62, 107 Cavendish, Lucy Lyttelton (Lady Frederick), 7, 62–3, 67–9, 107, 131, 135–6 Celtic renaissance, 15, 50, 96, 111–14, 119, 150, 186, 193, 207, 299n154 Chamberlain, Austin, 219 Chamberlain, Joseph, 106, 197, 314n141 charity. See philanthropy Cheam preparatory school, 28–9, 46 child welfare, 71, 159, 167, 182, 190, 224; the Aberdeens and, 22, 38, 68, 91, 95, 98, 110, 112, 131, 172, 211, 225, 227–8 China, 25, 45, 48, 80, 170, 219–20, 248n45 Christianity, 25–7, 45–50; the Aberdeens and, 4–5, 14, 19–21, 33–6, 40–3, 49,

364 Index 59, 67–72, 76, 83–8, 98–101, 105, 108, 113, 117, 120–1, 130–3, 163, 205, 221, 228, 236, 247n28, 301n183, 306n11; conflicts over, 41, 83, 144, 150–2, 157–60, 180; and the “Golden Rule,” 35, 141, 176–7, 179, 214, 224, 232. See also Anglicans; Catholics; Presbyterians; Protestants Churchill, Randolph, 28, 29, 55 Churchill, Winston Spencer, 49, 55, 59 Church of Scotland, 14, 17, 24, 36, 71, 87, 215; disestablishment of, 88, 104, 106, 133, 176 citizenship, 138, 166, 172, 179; education for, 7, 48, 67, 99; and the Irish, 112–13, 119, 184; and women, 67, 68, 71, 93, 129, 132, 137, 156–7, 215, 222–3, 229, 231–2, 237. See also manhood suffrage; women’s suffrage Cochrane, Grizel, 51, 60, 256n41 Coit, Stanton, 126, 279n65 Connell, R.A.J., 19–20, 246–7n21 Conservative Party (British), 14, 55, 58, 135, 147–52, 170; and Ireland, 15, 106, 113, 116, 133–5, 210 Conservative Party (Canadian), 145, 149, 151–2, 160, 287n226 Conservative Primrose League, 71, 82, 106, 135 Contagious Diseases Acts, 77, 85, 176. See also prostitution; social purity movement coronation oath, campaign to revise, 166, 189, 292n24 Coutts, Thomas, 51–2, 256n43 Crimean War, 22–3, 42, 103 Crofters’ Party, 90, 133 Cromar House, 16, 200, 202–3, 205 Curzon, George Nathaniel, 33, 84

Dangerfield, George, 113, 197 Darwin, Charles, 34, 83 Davitt, Michael, 110, 273n215 de Lotbiniére, Henri-Gustave Joly, 12, 150 Demetriou, Demetrakis Z., 19–20 Denison, Flora Macdonald, 158 Dicey, Albert V., 134 Dilke, Charles, 100, 118, 120–1, 149, 277n21 disestablishment of the Scottish Church. See under Church of Scotland Disraeli, Benjamin, 40–2, 49, 55, 57–8, 79, 103 Dollis Hill house, London, 52, 96 Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association, 154, 158–9 Donaldson, James, 104 Drummond, Cécile Elizabeth. See Aberdeen and Temair, 3rd Marchioness of Drummond, Henry, 14, 35, 83–7, 97, 102, 108, 116, 118, 120–1, 132, 156, 163, 206, 306n11 Dudley, Earl of, 73, 261n149 Dufferin, Lady, 152 Dufferin, Lord, 146 Dundas, Henry (later 1st Viscount Melville), 22 Easter Rebellion, 187, 197–8, 208, 210 East India Company, 45–7, 51, 65, 117 Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women, 101, 129 education, 48, 84, 92–9, 117, 144, 151, 168, 179, 181–2, 188–90, 209, 221; of the Aberdeens’ children, 50, 81–2, 147–8, 286n208; of the Aberdeens’ staff and tenants, 24, 95, 127, 165, 167; home, 30, 70; and industrial

Index 365 schools, 46, 97, 105, 131, 151; of the poor, 49, 52; reform of, 40, 46, 71, 109, 190; of women, 7, 62–3, 66–9, 84, 86, 93, 101–2, 104, 129, 136, 155–6, 223, 231, 237, 283n147 Edward VII, 57, 59, 65–6, 166, 188–9, 292n24, 300n169, 301n180 Edward VIII, 4, 206, 236 Egypt, 14, 25, 27, 40, 78–80, 103; Suez Canal, 41, 79, 116–17 Elizabeth II, 4 Elizabeth, Queen Consort, 4 emigration, 98, 118, 181; Scottish, 9, 21, 37–8, 47–8, 51, 54, 90–1, 100 employment, 26, 40, 53–4, 156, 165–6, 191, 216, 222–3. See also unemployment insurance; wages; workers equal rights, 7, 130, 137. See also women’s equality; manhood suffrage; women’s suffrage fascism, 16, 216–23, 230–7 Fawcett, Henry, 20 Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 20, 136, 141, 169, 171 femininity, 8, 18, 20–1, 23, 30, 50, 67, 72, 101, 142, 179–80, 235. See also masculinity feminism: international, 13–14, 116, 204, 232; maternal, 4–5, 7, 13, 85, 156–7, 224; post-colonial, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 79, 107, 113, 218. See also International Council of Women; Women’s Liberal Federations; women’s suffrage Fenians. See Irish Republican Brotherhood Fenwick, Ethel Bedford, 142 Fenwick Miller, Florence, 142

First World War, 185, 192, 293n31; and the Aberdeens, 15–16, 57, 88, 163, 166, 196, 201–2, 207–14, 218, 306n4; and the International Council of Women, 224, 226, 229 franchise, extension of the. See manhood suffrage; women’s suffrage Freeman’s Journal, 145, 185, 192 French Shackleton, Doris, 6, 85 Frere, Henry B., 89–90 Friends of the Mission to Seamen, 37, 98 Gaelic League, 11, 184, 185 Geddes, Patrick, 191–2 George V, 57, 196, 292n24 George VI, 4, 205, 236, 304–5n244 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 176 Girls’ Friendly Society. See Anglican Girls’ Friendly Society Girton College, Cambridge, 66, 70, 187, 202 Gladstone, Catherine Glynne, 22, 53, 62, 77–8 Gladstone, William Ewart, 83, 90, 116, 120; and Ireland, 106–13, 118, 128, 134, 282n125; and the Liberal Party, 40, 42; relationship with the Aberdeens, 10, 15, 23, 71, 76–8, 87–8, 99–105, 133–6, 144–7, 217, 237, 259n104; relationship with the Marjoribanks, 49, 53, 61–2, 64; and women’s suffrage, 135, 138 Glasgow Protective and Provident League, 129–30 Glyn, Reverend Edward, 75 Gordon, Archibald Ian, 81, 85, 148, 163, 197, 290–1n2, 305n250 Gordon, Archibald Victor Dudley. See Aberdeen and Temair, 5th Marquess of

366 Index Gordon, Charles (a.k.a. Ralph Connor), 35, 84–5 Gordon, Charles George, 18, 19, 80 Gordon, Dorothea Mary (“Dorothy”), 81, 92 Gordon, Dudley. See Aberdeen and Temair, 3rd Marquess of Gordon, George (1764–91). See Haddo, Lord Gordon, George (1879–1965). See Aberdeen and Temair, 2nd Marquess of Gordon, Ishbel Maria Hogg Marjoribanks. See Aberdeen and Temair, Marchioness of Gordon, James Henry (“Jem”), 27–9, 31–2 Gordon, John Campbell (“Johnny”). See Aberdeen and Temair, 1st Marquess of Gordon, Katherine Eliza (“Katie”). See Burleigh, Lady Gordon, Mary. See Polwarth, Lady Graham, Alice Anna, 46 Graham, James. See Montrose, 6th Duke of Grant, Ulysses S., 40 Great Depression, 216, 226, 232 Gregory, Lady (Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory), 185–6, 299n154 Grey, 4th Earl (Albert Henry George), 183, 298n138 Griffin, Ben, 11, 34 Grosvenor Square house, 81, 96, 97, 129 Guisachan (“Place of the Firs”): Ranch, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, 12, 50, 123–4, 148, 208; Invernesshire estate, 49–50, 53–6, 68–9, 73, 80, 206, 257n57, 269n132 Gwynn, Stephen Lucius, 185–6

Haddo, Lady (Charlotte Baird), 21 Haddo, Lord (George Gordon; 1764–91), 21–2, 24 Haddo House Association, 92–3, 99, 108 Haddo House Club, 126, 148 Haddo House Estate, Aberdeenshire, 16, 82, 99, 101, 126, 145, 226–7, 291n3; finances, 26, 30, 75, 121, 127, 159, 166, 200–2, 269n132, 305n1, 305–6n2; renovation of, 22, 80–2, 88; tenants of, 24–5, 36, 39, 84, 90–6, 98, 101, 123–4, 165–7, 202. See also Haddo House Association; Haddo House Young Women’s Improvement Association Haddo House Young Women’s Improvement Association, later the Onward and Upward Association, 92–4, 99, 126–9 Hall, Catherine, 11, 107 Hamilton-Gordon, Arthur. See Stanmore, 1st Baron Hamilton-Gordon, Catherine Elizabeth, 23 Hamilton-Gordon, Douglas, 75 Hamilton-Gordon, George (1784–1860). See Aberdeen, 4th Earl of Hamilton-Gordon, George (1841–70). See Aberdeen, 6th Earl of, and 3rd Viscount Gordon Hamilton-Gordon, George John James. See Aberdeen, 5th Earl of Hamilton-Gordon, Harriet Douglas, 23 Hamilton-Gordon, John Campbell. See Aberdeen and Temair, 1st Marquess of Hamilton-Gordon, Mary Baillie. See Aberdeen, Countess of Harper, Ida Husted, 180

Index 367 Harper, Marjory, 9, 91 Healey, Timothy, 186 Hepburne-Scott, Walter Hugh. See Polwarth, 8th Lord Highlanders, views regarding, 20, 114, 123–4, 143 Hirshfield, Claire, 10, 136, 168 Hogg, Isabel Weir, 44–5, 49–51, 54, 61, 67–8, 74, 163, 255n37 Hogg, James Weir, 1st Baronet Hogg, 254nn19–20 Hogg, Lady (Mary Claudine Swinton), 44–6, 69 Hogg, Quintin (“Piggy”), 46–9, 59, 63, 68, 83, 97 Holland, Reverend Francis James, 68, 75 Home for Working Boys, 97–9 home industries, Aberdeen support for, 96, 111, 127–8 Home Rule: home rule all round, 15, 43, 133–5, 150, 164, 172, 237; Irish, 11–12, 15–16, 40, 42, 55, 70–1, 106–7, 109–12, 114, 116, 118, 119–20, 128, 132, 134, 136–7, 139, 143–44, 160, 168–9, 183–9, 193–7, 208–10, 298n138, 298n141, 304n241; Scottish, 132–5, 169, 274–5n231, 282n125, 311n95; Welsh, 169. See also imperial federalism homosexuality, 8, 15, 20, 85, 86, 188, 262n7 House of Lords, 25, 42, 45, 52, 100, 113, 131, 134, 188, 259n104, 301n183, 311n98; Lord Aberdeen in, 14, 16, 21, 25, 31, 40–2, 73, 81, 104–7, 115, 199, 211, 236; movement to abolish, 104, 133, 272n187; and Royal Commission on Railway Accidents, 37, 98

The House of Windsor: A Book of Portraits (Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon, 1937), 4, 206, 236 housing, 37–40, 49, 52, 53, 98, 104, 110, 131, 166, 172, 191–2, 202, 209 Howard, Rosalind Frances. See Carlisle, Countess of Hutchison, I.G.C., 9, 96, 106, 214 imperial federalism, 12, 15, 298n141 imperialism, 6, 13, 19, 47–8, 65–6, 203– 4, 207, 209; liberal, 8–9, 42, 56, 63, 91, 106, 113–25, 132, 164, 169–73, 183, 218, 235. See also Aboriginal peoples; imperial federalism; Indigenous peoples; race India, 21, 27, 132, 153, 175, 192, 203, 218; Aberdeen travels in, 91, 116–19; colonial administration of, 42, 46, 66, 84, 89, 134, 173; and East India Company, 45–7, 51, 65; and Hogg family wealth, 14, 41, 44–6, 48–51; and the International Council of Women, 175, 180, 182–3, 227, 231; Queen Victoria as Empress of, 40, 65 Indigenous peoples, 6, 12, 42, 47, 117–8, 123–4, 132, 146, 150–53, 158, 171–3. See also Aboriginal peoples industrialists, 53, 192, 200, 203 industrialization, 31, 41, 48, 97, 114, 122, 128–9, 144, 158, 166–7, 178, 191, 193, 284n165. See also trade unions; workers Inglis, Elsie, 140 International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, 229, 231, 237 International Council of Women, 5, 6, 13, 116, 155, 238, 295n79; Lady Aberdeen’s leadership of, 15, 16,

368

Index

140–4, 162, 170, 172, 204, 206–7, 221–34; and suffrage, 141–2, 173–83, 222–31, 237. See also National Council of Women International Federation of University Women, 222, 229 internationalism, 9, 16, 172, 177–8, 182, 217–21, 238 International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, 178–9 Ireland, viceroyalty of, 6, 11, 14–15, 23, 84, 107–9, 118, 134, 166, 179, 183–97, 200, 243n39 the Irish, attitudes towards, 107–8, 111–13 Irish Crown Jewels, theft of, 85–6, 188 Irish Free State, 23, 186, 210–11, 233 Irish nationalism. See Irish republicanism Irish Nationalist Party, 134 Irish Parliamentary Party, 11–12, 107, 109, 169, 183–5, 192, 194–5, 207, 210 Irish Republican Brotherhood, 110, 143, 149, 185 Irish republicanism, 11–12, 15, 52, 108–13, 119, 143, 184–90, 195, 197, 207, 210, 236–7, 301n180 Irish viceroyalty. See Ireland, viceroyalty of Ishbel and the Empire: A Biography of Lady Aberdeen (Doris French Shackleton, 1988), 6, 85 Jackson, Alvin, 9, 113 Jalland, Patricia, 10, 243n39 Jews, 29, 130, 150, 219; and the International Council of Women, 142, 223, 226–7, 230, 232; and the National Council of Women of Canada, 154, 157, 158 Johnston, Tom, 43, 89

Kendle, John, 12, 198 King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 163, 205, 206 Knightley, Lady, 82, 264n36 labour, 47, 64, 98, 135, 144, 153, 158, 164–7, 191–5, 210, 227–8; and “dignity of labour,” 37–9, 93; farm, 26, 39, 90–1, 108, 165, 236, 255n20; reform, 108, 131–2, 231. See also Labour Party; trade unions; unemployment insurance; wages; workers Labour Party, 11, 103, 174, 178, 193–5, 199–200, 210–11, 213, 237; and Liberals, 102, 106, 133, 164–9, 172, 216–17, 293n31, 313n124 Ladies’ Association on Foreign Missions, 84, 101 landlordism, 9, 52–3, 64, 113, 200, 210; and Aberdeens as landlords, 14, 22, 24–6, 36, 50, 80, 89–91, 95, 108, 110, 165, 213; Liberal attitudes towards, 52, 112, 167 Laurier, Wilfrid, 149, 151–2, 154, 159–60, 162, 208, 290n279 Laurier, Zoe, 154 League of Nations, 13, 16, 143, 170, 179, 213, 216, 218–32 League of Nations Union, 218–21 liberalism, 9, 11, 16, 41, 61, 85, 116–17, 185, 197–9, 213–17, 232, 305n252; Canadian, 149–53; and imperialism, 169–73; and liberal internationalism, 217–21; “New Liberalism,” 11, 41, 102, 133, 140, 164–68, 190, 216, 235–6; official, 57, 102–6, 108, 112– 13, 133–7, 140, 313n116; and reform, 125–32; and suffragism, 168–9. See also Liberal Party

Index Liberal Party, 11, 55–6, 70, 164, 188, 237; Aberdeens and, 14–16, 18, 43, 76, 102–6, 132–5, 159, 162, 199, 205, 213, 233; and Ireland, 113, 169, 184, 195, 298n141; and Labour, 102, 106, 133, 164–9, 172, 216–17, 293n31, 313n124; Scottish, 8, 15, 102, 133, 167, 170, 214. See also Gladstone, William Ewart; liberalism; Rosebery, Lord; Women’s Liberal Federations Lloyd George, David, 207–10, 212, 214 local government, 102, 125, 135, 167 Lorne, Marquess of, 5, 8, 124, 148 Louise, Princess, 8, 148 Macdonald, John A., 124, 145, 149 MacNeil, John G.S., 207 MacRobert, Alexander, 202, 305–6n2 manhood suffrage, 47, 68, 137. See also women’s suffrage Manitoba Schools Question, 144, 151–2 Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward, 107, 272n198 Marjoribanks, Annie Grizel, 50, 58 Marjoribanks, Archibald John (“Archie”), 58–9, 120, 148, 163 Marjoribanks, Coutts, 58, 120 Marjoribanks, Dudley Churchill. See Tweedmouth, 3rd Baron of Marjoribanks, Dudley Coutts (1820–94). See Tweedmouth, 1st Baron of Marjoribanks, Edward (1776–1868), 51–2 Marjoribanks, Edward (1814–79), 52 Marjoribanks, Edward (1849–1909). See Tweedmouth, 2nd Baron of Marjoribanks, Ishbel Maria Hogg. See Aberdeen and Temair, Marchioness of Marjoribanks, Mary Georgiana (“Polly”). See Ridley, Lady

369

Marjoribanks, Stewart (1774–1863), 51 Marjoribanks, Stewart (1852–64), 50, 58 Markievicz, Countess Constance Georgine, 186, 194–5, 210 Martin, Maureen, 9, 20 Mary, Queen, 205 masculinity, 26, 53, 160, 170, 257n64; hegemonic, 10, 14, 124, 153, 223, 246–7n21, 278n53; Lord Aberdeen and, 17–21, 24, 29, 36, 38, 73, 86, 98–100, 114, 120, 130, 166, 235–7; and critiques of Aberdeen’s masculinity, 8, 18, 100, 146–7, 186, 204; Regency, 19–20, 247n28. See also femininity Mason, Charlotte, 81–82 maternal feminism. See under feminism McCarthy, Justin, 114, 166, 197 McGee, Thomas D’Arcy, 12, 144, 149–50 McLaren, Eva Muller, 102, 138–9, 169 McLaren, Priscilla Bright, 102, 138–9 Meiklejohn, John Miller Dow, 63 Meux, Henry (1770–1841), 52 Meux, Henry (1817–83), 52, 59 Meux, Henry (1856–1900), 52, 59 Moody, Dwight L., 35–6, 68, 83, 126 Morley, John, 109, 113, 134, 136, 300n169 The Musings of a Scottish Granny (Lady Aberdeen, 1936), 206 National Association for Promoting State-directed Emigration and Colonization, 98 National Association for the Promotion of Social Sciences, 38 National Council of African Women, 222–3 National Council of Women, 71, 101, 174–83, 221–34; Canada, 5, 12, 15,

370

Index

142, 154–62, 177, 180–1, 212, 238; Great Britain and Ireland (formerly National Union of Working Women), 174, 179, 181, 295n79; United States, 141–2, 176, 224–5, 295n79. See also International Council of Women National Council of Women Citizens’ Associations, 215, 229 nationalism: Irish, 11–12, 15, 52, 109–10, 143, 184–6, 190, 195, 197, 207, 210, 236–7 (see also Irish Republicanism); Scottish, 9, 28, 113 National Liberal Federation, 112, 138, 168, 272n187 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, 174, 175 National Union of Working Women. See under National Council of Women the “New Woman,” 20, 78, 85, 155–6, 174, 299n154. See also femininity New Zealand, 42, 51, 88, 116, 119, 142, 146–7, 176, 178, 181, 183–5 Next Five Years group, 216–7 Nightingale, Florence, 39, 159 old age pensions, 11, 165, 167, 216 Onward and Upward (Lady Aberdeen), 92, 121, 124 Onward and Upward Association. See Haddo House Young Women’s Improvement Association ornamentalism, 4, 15, 66, 109, 111, 148 Ottoman Empire, 41, 103 Oxford University, 28, 30, 38, 55, 66, 68, 84, 134, 216, 249n60; Aberdeens at, 14, 33–5, 75, 163, 187, 204, 251n102 Pankhurst, Emmeline, 78, 169, 194, 196 Pankhurst, Richard, 78, 169 Parlby, Irene Marryat, 228–9

Parnell, Charles Stewart, 107, 109, 110, 120–21, 149, 277n21 Pentland, 1st Baron ( John Sinclair), 126, 162, 166–7, 171, 197, 218, 292n27, 305n252, 311n92 Pentland, 2nd Baron (Henry John Sinclair), 162, 202, 213, 306n11 Pentland, Baroness (Marjorie Adeline Gordon, later Sinclair), 5, 50, 81, 148, 162, 200–2, 231, 306n11 Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline, 78 Pethick-Lawrence, Frederick, 78 philanthropy, 11, 25, 45–8, 54, 59, 130, 191; the Aberdeens and, 15, 41, 76–80, 83–4, 87–101, 110–11, 125–32, 145, 160–1, 164, 201, 235–6, 287n236; Lady Aberdeen and, 27, 100–1, 130, 153–9, 211–12, 306n4; Lord Aberdeen and, 8, 36–9, 105, 125, 130–1, 165–7; women and, 4, 52, 62, 68–9, 71, 77, 101, 130, 176, 283n147 Pitt, William (the Younger), 22 police, 99, 159, 215 Polwarth, 8th Lord (Walter Hugh Hepburne-Scott), 25 Polwarth, Lady (Mary Gordon), 25 Poole, Andrea Geddes, 4, 10, 11, 67 the poor, 34–5, 90, 104, 158, 167, 189–90, 224, 272n198, 305n252; education of, 49, 52, 54; notion of deserving and undeserving, 38–9, 112; rural, 95, 111, 165; urban, 19, 24–6, 37–8, 69, 97–8, 110–12, 131, 211, 236–7. See also Poor Laws Poor Laws, 68, 167, 188, 190. See also the poor poverty. See the poor Presbyterians, 9, 35, 58, 68, 71, 79, 84–8, 108, 114, 118, 125, 157, 171, 193, 237. See also Christianity

Index Primrose League. See Conservative Primrose League Prochaska, Frank, 4, 5, 10, 67–9, 205, 238 prostitution, 49, 59, 77, 85, 87, 99, 114, 166, 176, 223. See also social purity movement Protestants: the Aberdeens and, 12, 45, 68, 72, 83, 111, 126, 186, 301n183; Anglicans (see Anglicans); in Canada, 12, 144, 147, 149–50, 154, 157–8, 183; and the International Council of Women, 142; Irish, 52, 113, 128, 185–7, 189, 192–6, 209–10; Presbyterians (see Presbyterians); and the Women’s National Health Association, 190. See also Christianity Pugh, Martin, 10, 140, 169 Quebec Chapel, Mayfair, 68, 73, 75 race: the Aberdeens’ attitudes towards, 6, 13, 65, 79–80, 113–14, 125, 149–51, 153, 160–1, 208–9, 219; and the French-English divide in Canada, 125, 150, 157, 160; hierarchies of, 3, 4, 7–9; and imperial attitudes, 12–13, 17, 47–8, 63, 65–6, 114, 130, 153, 173; and the International Council of Women, 13, 175–80, 225, 230, 233 railways, 98, 122, 131, 181; development of, 41, 146, 188; Lord Aberdeen’s enthusiasm for, 17, 33, 37, 237 Rathbone, Eleanor, 216, 312n112 Reay, Lord (Donald James Mackay), 91, 117 Redmond, John, 185, 196, 207–10, 308n45 Regency masculinity. See under masculinity

371

religion. See Anglicans; Catholics; Christianity; Presbyterians; Protestants Reynolds, K.D., 10, 51, 95 Ridley, Lady (Mary Georgiana Marjoribanks; “Polly”), 49, 57, 58, 163, 291n3 Ridley, Matthew White, 1st Viscount Ridley, 49, 57, 291n3 Ritchie, Eliza, 156–7 Roche, Antonin, 61–2, 67 Rolleston, T.W., 185 Rosebery, Lady Hannah, 226 Rosebery, Lord, 15, 78, 97–8, 102, 104, 120, 133–4, 147, 171, 197; and commonwealth of nations, 15, 116, 173; and relationship with the Aberdeens, 47, 81, 101, 107–8, 114, 131, 152, 249n60 Royden, Maude, 219, 313n124 Rupp, Leila, 6, 8, 9, 174, 222, 231 rural reform, 26, 90–7, 111, 128, 182, 184, 269n137 Ruskin, John, 34, 38, 63, 89, 95 St Margaret’s Hall, Oxford, 66 Salisbury, Lord, 58, 113, 134, 197 Salomon, Alice, 226, 229–30, 232–3, 234, 318n210 Salvation Army, 68, 125, 130 Sangster, Joan, 143, 222, 238 Sankey, Ira David, 35–6, 47, 68, 83, 126 Saywell, John T., 5, 12, 145, 149 Scottish nationalism. See under nationalism Scottish National Party, 213–4 Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation, 102, 135, 139, 142, 167, 172 Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878–80, 21, 42

372

Index

Second World War, 207, 217, 233–4 servants, 15, 50, 91–4, 121, 123, 128–9, 131, 160, 188, 203–5; education of, 24, 26, 86–7, 92–3, 155, 268n117 Sewall, May Wright, 141–2, 176–8, 182–3, 295n79 Shaftesbury, Lord, 8, 25, 37, 40, 76, 97–8, 100, 115, 125, 131 Shaw, Anna Howard, 181 Shortt, Elizabeth Smith, 158 Sinclair, Archibald, 217–8, 220, 233 Sinclair, Henry John. See Pentland, 2nd Lord Sinclair, John. See Pentland, 1st Lord Sinclair, Margaret Ishbel, 162, 202 Sinclair, Marjorie. See Pentland, Lady Sinn Féin, 11, 184, 185, 192, 194, 209–12. See also republicanism slavery, 13, 40, 71, 244n53, 254nn19–20 Smith, Donald A. See Strathcona, Lord socialism, 70, 89–90, 129, 141, 174, 178, 193, 216, 222, 238; and socialist parties, 103, 133, 174, 213 social purity movement, 25, 78, 99, 100, 102, 166, 179–80, 186, 189 Society for Promoting Industrial Villages, 97, 269n137 Society for the Protection of Children, 98, 131 Somers-Cocks, Lady Isabella. See Somerset, Lady Isabella Somerset, Lady Isabella, 10, 70–1, 142 Somerset, Lord Henry, 70 the Souls, 19–20, 163 South Africa, 15, 41, 48, 170–2, 184. See also South African War South African War, 15, 57, 59, 164, 170–2 Spanish Civil War, 219, 232 Spencer, Lord, 61, 109, 166

Spencer-Churchill, Lady Fanny Octavia Louise. See Tweedmouth, Baroness Stanmore, 1st Baron (Arthur HamiltonGordon), 23, 30, 42, 77, 107, 118, 146, 173 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 140–1 Stead, William T., 24, 78, 122, 146 Still, John, 173 Stowe-Gullen, Augusta, 158 Strathcona, Lord (Donald A. Smith), 146, 152 Suez Canal. See under Egypt suffrage. See manhood suffrage; women’s suffrage suffragettes. See under women’s suffrage sugar, 46–7, 49 Swinton, Mary Claudine. See Hogg, Lady Swinton, Samuel, 44–5, 47 Tabor, Robert Stammers, 28, 46 Tait, Archibald Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury, 75 Tata, Lady Meherbai, 231 Tata, Lord Dorabji, 203, 305–6n2 Tavistock, Lady Adeline Mary (later the Duchess of Bedford), 87 temperance, 39–41, 70–1, 95, 141–2, 154, 167, 228 tenant farmers, 24, 25, 43, 54, 90–4, 105, 121, 124, 155, 287n236 Thompson, Annie, 154 Thompson, John Sparrow, 121, 149, 150 Through Canada with a Kodak (Countess of Aberdeen, 1893), 121, 123, 277n30 Tosh, John, 18, 100 trade unions, 40, 86, 114, 133, 140, 148, 177–8, 190–1, 237; and women workers, 129–31, 153 Tupper, Charles, 149–52, 287n226 Turkey, 41, 64, 172

Index Tweedmouth, 1st Baron of (Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks), 44, 49–54, 86, 257n57 Tweedmouth, 2nd Baron of (Edward Marjoribanks), 49, 54–8, 72, 106, 136, 138–9, 163, 167, 171–2, 206 Tweedmouth, 3rd Baron of (Dudley Churchill Marjoribanks), 57, 258n76 Tweedmouth, Baroness (Fanny Octavia Louise Spencer-Churchill), 49, 55–7, 139, 163 Tweedsmuir, Lord, 206 Tynan, Katharine, 203, 205 unemployment insurance, 11, 165, 216. See also labour; trade unions; wages; workers Unionists, 70, 89, 116, 118–19, 137, 144, 167, 195–6, 209–11, 311n95; attitudes towards the Aberdeens, 110, 113, 134, 160, 185–8, 190–1, 193, 308n46; and the Conservative Party, 15, 106, 113, 133, 188, 195. See also Home Rule United Irishwomen, 11, 184, 190 United States, 28, 48, 57–8, 126, 127, 150–1; the Aberdeens in, 15, 31, 67, 119–20, 162, 196, 199, 200, 207–13, 218, 291n2, 304n244, 306n4; and Anglo-American relations, 12, 208, 213; expansionism, 12, 122, 152–3, 159; feminists, 7, 70, 140–4, 154, 176–8, 180–2, 222, 224–7, 230, 284–5n179, 295n79 University of St Andrews, 30, 104 urban reform, 14, 37, 47, 68–9, 97–8, 131–2, 159, 184, 189–92, 269n137 Verney, Frederick, 39 Victoria, Queen, 53, 62, 68, 73, 74, 76,

373

109, 134, 149, 159, 189; descendants of, 8, 20, 142; as Empress of India, 40, 65; and ideal of womanhood, 27, 93, 110; and the International Council of Women, 176, 183, 232 Victorian Order of Nurses, 5, 12, 159–60, 189 wages, 54, 98, 101, 129, 130–1, 165, 167, 171, 190. See also labour; trade unions; unemployment insurance; workers Ward, Mrs. Humphry (Mary Augusta), 136–7, 283n147 Webb, Beatrice, 176, 295n79 Wee Willie Winkie (Marjorie and Ishbel Gordon, 1937), 92, 121 welfare monarchism, 4, 15, 109, 111, 189, 205, 213, 235, 308n33 West Indies, 46–7, 254–5nn19–20 Westminster, Duke of, 73 We Twa ( John Campbell Gordon and Ishbel Gordon, 1925), 5, 203, 206 The Windsors (Ishbel Gordon, 1937), 16 Whigs, 9, 15, 22, 41, 61, 71, 89, 102–8, 132–4, 167, 281n120. See also liberalism; Liberal Party Wilde, Oscar, 8, 20 Willard, Frances, 70, 141–2 Wilson, Teresa F., 142 Wilson, Woodrow, 225 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 141–2, 154 The Women of the Bible (Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, 1927), 221 women’s education. See under education women’s equality, 8, 13, 15, 78, 88, 102, 125, 138, 143, 156–9, 168, 238, 246–7n21. See also women’s suffrage

374

Index

Women’s Franchise League, 142, 195, 211 Women’s Industrial Council, 129, 167–8, 178 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 182, 222, 224, 229, 232 Women’s Liberal Federations, 10, 116, 156, 159, 174, 216, 238; English, 56–7, 106, 135, 140, 168, 170; Lady Aberdeen’s leadership of, 5, 15, 70–1, 106, 120, 135–42, 168–72, 213, 236; Scottish, 56, 102, 106, 135, 139, 140, 142, 167–8, 172 Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, 84 Women’s National Health Association, 189–91, 206, 208, 211, 212 Women’s Protective and Provident League, 129–30 Women’s Social and Political Union, 169, 174, 194–5 women’s suffrage, 56–7, 66, 70–1, 82, 84–5, 113, 121, 135–40, 236, 264n36; and the International Council of

Women, 141–2, 173–83, 222–31, 237; and Ireland, 194–6; Lady Aberdeen’s views on, 6–7, 11, 15–16, 68, 102, 135–40, 146, 196, 208, 283n147, 284–5n179, 295n79; and the National Council of Women of Canada, 154–5, 158–9; and suffragettes, 7, 158, 168–9, 179, 181, 184, 194–6; and Women’s Liberal Federations, 56–7, 102, 135–6, 138–40, 167–9, 171–2. See also manhood suffrage workers, 53, 93, 113, 133, 164, 197–8; the Aberdeens’ support for, 3, 8, 11, 41, 87, 91, 98, 101, 114, 128–31, 153, 166–8, 194, 236–8. See also labour; trade unions; unemployment insurance; wages World War I. See First World War Yeats, William Butler, 112, 185–6 Young Liberals, 103, 214 Young Women’s Christian Association, 100–1