Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery (née de Rothschild; 27 July 1851 – 19 November 1890) was the daughter of Baron Mayer de Rothschild and his wife Juliana (née Cohen). After inheriting her father's fortune in 1874, she became the richest woman in Britain. In 1878, Hannah de Rothschild married Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, and was thereafter known as the Countess of Rosebery.
During the final quarter of the 19th century, her husband, the Earl of Rosebery, was one of the most celebrated figures in Britain, an influential millionaire and politician, whose charm, wit, charisma and public popularity gave him such standing that he "almost eclipsed that of Royalty".[1] The Countess remains an enigmatic figure, and is often regarded as notable only for financing her husband's three ambitions: to marry an heiress, win The Derby, and become Prime Minister (the second and third of these possibly apocryphal ambitions were achieved after her death).[2] In truth, she was her husband's driving force and motivation. [citation needed]
Her marriage into the aristocracy, while controversial at the time, gave her the social cachet in an antisemitic society that her vast fortune could not.[3] She subsequently became a political hostess and philanthropist. Her charitable work was principally in the sphere of public health and causes associated with the welfare of working-class Jewish women living in the poorer districts of London.
Having firmly assisted and supported her husband on his path, she suddenly died in 1890, aged 39.
- ^ McKinstry, p. 1.
- ^ McKinstry, p. 68, footnote 35, explains that there is no written record of the often quoted ambition. It is frequently thought to have been conceived at Eton. The author Robert Rhodes James in his biography of Rosebery (published in 1995; ISBN 1-85799-219-9) has argued that it is apocryphal. McKinstry (p. 540) considers that if it was conceived by Rosebery, he probably told it to Samuel Ward, the American political lobbyist, at a meeting of the Mendacious Club during the 1870s. The ambition is told as fact in Samuel Ward's biography Sam Ward, King of the Lobby by Lately Thomas, published in 1965 (Cambridge, Mass).
- ^ Young, p. 18, in his authorised biography of Lady Rosebery's son states "Most people at the time (of Hannah Rosebery's marriage) were casually antisemitic, despite the Prince of Wales hob-nobbing with Jewish financiers".