Born: 5 February 1843, United Kingdom
Died: 25 October 1936
Country most active: International
Also known as: Hariot Georgina Rowan-Hamilton, Lady Dufferin
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Linde Lunney and Angela Byrne. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Blackwood, Hariot Georgina Hamilton-Temple- (née Rowan-Hamilton; Lady Dufferin) (1843–1936), marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, vicereine of India, philanthropist and memoirist, was born on 5 February 1843, the eldest of the seven children of Archibald Rowan and Catherine Rowan-Hamilton (née Caldwell) of Killyleagh Castle, Co. Down. Her paternal grandfather was United Irishman Archibald Hamilton Rowan.
She married, on 23 October 1862 at the age of 19, Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye, later 1st marquess of Dufferin and Ava. The wedding ceremony took place in the drawing room at Killyleagh Castle and the couple were received at their new home of Clandeboye – his family’s principal residence – by local schoolchildren dressed in white, scattering flowers at their feet. As distant cousins, he added her surname to his in recognition of the historic links between their families.
Eighteen years her senior, Lord Dufferin had a seat in the house of lords and had previously been on a diplomatic mission to Syria. Though young and inexperienced, Lady Dufferin joined him in London society while he pursued a parliamentary career. Just weeks after the wedding, she accompanied him to Paris for formal meetings with Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. Although he was overlooked for his coveted position as viceroy of India in 1872 – vacant following the murder of Lord Mayo – Lord Dufferin was appointed governor-general of Canada in the same year.
Life in the governor-general’s mansion: Canada, 1872–8
The Dufferins arrived in Canada at a time of rapid development and economic transformation. Urbanisation and manufacturing were proceeding apace as railroads, goldmines and industries fanned westwards. The family lived at Rideau Hall, Ottawa, the official residence of the governor-general. Dufferin’s negative first impressions of a modest house set in bleak surroundings quickly gave way as she embarked on an enthusiastic programme of renovations and improvements, including the addition of a ballroom. She entertained in a way that no governor-general’s spouse had before, hosting balls, dinners, tea dances, skating parties, theatrical productions, children’s parties, regattas, picnics and receptions; 1,500 guests were invited to one ball in 1876.
Dufferin not only cultivated her own public profile but completely reinvented the role of the governor-general’s spouse. She opened charitable bazaars, visited the sick and poor and opened schools for the deaf and blind. Her popularity was infectious and she proved able to win American hearts, too, during an official tour undertaken by the pair in 1876, with a long itinerary that stretched from Ottawa to Victoria, British Columbia, via Chicago, Omaha, Nebraska, Utah and San Francisco, from whence they sailed to Vancouver. Three journalists accompanied the travelling party, one of whom praised Dufferin for ‘win[ning] golden opinions everywhere she is seen’ in the US, and, during their stay in Vancouver, for deftly using their time in the lieutenant-governor’s official residence to replicate ‘the hospitality for which Rideau Hall has of late years become so renowned’ (St John, 1: 60, 212–13). On a personal level, she found great happiness in Canada, referring to her final day there as ‘one of the most miserable I ever spent’ (Canadian journal, 416).
The transformation she effected in the public role and profile of the governor-general and their spouse was not accidental. Dufferin was shrewdly alert to the growing importance of the diplomatic family, particularly the spouse’s role in providing lavish entertainment and establishing and re-establishing embassy households with every new posting. She was keenly aware of her own position within the wider political and diplomatic contexts in which her husband – and she herself – operated. She ably managed the familial challenges of their peripatetic life, coping with long separations from her three eldest children as they were educated in Europe and enduring two confinements in Canada, before quickly resuming public functions with infants in tow.
Russia, Turkey and Egypt, 1879–83
A flurry of international moves followed Lord Dufferin’s successful tenure as governor-general of Canada, with ambassadorships to St Petersburg (1879–81) and Constantinople (1881–2). The Dufferins’ time in Russia was overshadowed by domestic political unrest; the anarchist terror campaign and the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in March 1881 after repeated attempts on his life left a lasting impression on Lady Dufferin. In Constantinople, she maintained the usual rounds of private visits and receptions, briefly visited the Greek royal family in Athens, and showed a superficial interest in Turkish life and culture. The family left for Cairo in November 1882 when Lord Dufferin was made special commissioner to Egypt; during their four months there, they visited British archaeological digs (the museum at Clandeboye House, Co. Down, later contained Egyptian antiquities) and made an excursion up the Nile to Luxor. In her reduced position as a diplomatic spouse in Russia and Turkey, Dufferin did not have the same public role that she had so enjoyed fulfilling in Canada, confined mostly to conducting visits to charitable institutions and attending social events. Nor did she stray far from court in either St Petersburg or Constantinople; her Russian and Turkish journals, based on her letters to her mother, provide detailed insights into life as an embassy family, but shed little light on the culture and society of either country. As an embassy household, their needs were well catered for in both St Petersburg and Constantinople, with extensive, polyglot teams of household staff. In Constantinople, the children’s education was taken care of with the assistance of Lady Dufferin’s sister Katherine.
India
In 1884, Lord Dufferin’s career ambitions were achieved when he was named viceroy of India. The four years they spent there cemented Lady Dufferin’s position as one of the foremost – and most popular – women in public life in the British empire. She threw herself into life in Kolkata, taking lessons in Hindi-Urdu and photography, making public visits to orphanages and Hindu temples, handing out prizes at public events and hosting gatherings at the viceregal lodge. Now practiced at establishing diplomatic households, Dufferin arranged life at the residence with intent; she reorganised the rooms, instructed the band to play every evening during dinner (always at 8–9pm), had a smartly dressed servant attending to each member of the household at all times and had an aviary installed so that she could observe native wild birds from a balcony.
In August 1885, nine months after their arrival in India, Dufferin established the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India, also known as the Dufferin Fund, with the aims of training women doctors and midwives and establishing women’s hospitals all over the subcontinent. Though the initiative had been suggested to her by Queen Victoria before her departure from London, Dufferin was initially hesitant, confiding to her mother: ‘I don’t in the least mind the work, but I sometimes shudder over the publicity and wish it were a quieter little affair’ (Our viceregal life, 1:172). Administering the nationwide fund, visiting the medical schools and organising and attending fundraising events took up a great deal of her time, but despite her initial fears Dufferin found the work fulfilling and it generated tremendous goodwill for the viceregal couple; she received a gift from one Indian gentleman because she had, in his words, ‘evinced a kindly feeling towards our Eastern customs and the welfare of our women’ (Our viceregal life, 1:86). Rudyard Kipling commemorated her efforts in ‘The song of the women’ (1888), a poem published to mark her departure from India. (She was very sympathetic towards the women and children of India in particular, and her respect for local traditions is evident in her criticism, for example, of colonial schools teaching English-style crochet and wool-work to Indian girls instead of ‘encouraging their own beautiful embroideries’ (Our viceregal life, 1:81).) The Dufferin Fund was a great success and, after the Dufferins departed India in late 1888, was continued by Lady Lansdowne; by 1901, there were forty-one Dufferin hospitals operating across the subcontinent. Despite these achievements, and the contribution the scheme made to facilitating both Western and Indian women to enter the medical profession and giving them rare opportunities to practice, contemporary critics highlighted its focus on zenana (enclosed) women to the detriment of non-zenana (usually lower-caste and working-class) women, and the difficulty of recruiting Indian women to train in medicine.
Later life and assessment
Dufferin enjoyed her life in India and was disappointed when her husband was recalled to London; her leave-taking on the steps of the viceregal lodge was a tearful one. After the viceroyalty, the Dufferins returned permanently to their two-storey Georgian mansion at Clandeboye, complete with a museum filled with objects gathered during the pair’s travels and residences abroad. They immersed themselves in Ulster public life and in running their estate, which was in considerable financial difficulty.
Dufferin published her memoirs in three separate volumes, based on her private journals and her letters to her mother, treating of India, Canada, and the embassies to Russia and Turkey respectively. Our viceregal life in India (2 vols, 1889) is light, personal and entertaining, but rich with detail on the establishment and administration of the Dufferin Fund. Shortly afterwards, in 1891, she published My Canadian journal, a lively record of her impressions and experiences. My Russian and Turkish journals came later, in 1916, an impressionistic account of life in a politically turbulent Russia appended by generally positive, if somewhat detached, observations on Turkey. Profits made from the book were to be donated to war charities. Her intelligence and humanity, and her ability to engage and entertain, are evident in all three works, as is her tolerance for non-Christian faiths.
The Dufferins enjoyed a long and happy marriage of forty years and built a loving family that maintained strong bonds throughout long periods of separation, particularly while the children were sent to England or the Continent for their education. As a grandparent, she was remembered as ‘the most stimulating of companions – affectionate, passionately interested, and gay’ (Nicolson, 160). Bereavement and a financial crisis in the Dufferin estate overshadowed her later life. The eldest son and heir, Archibald, earl of Ava (1863–1900), died of wounds received in South Africa in January 1900 during the second Boer war, and just thirteen months later, in February 1902, Lord Dufferin himself died. Thereafter, ‘the lavish gaiety of Clandeboye became a thing of the past’ and Dufferin ‘moved listless and dispirited in widow’s weeds’ (Nicolson, 160, 264). Basil (1870–1917) was killed in action in France, and Terence (1866–1918), 2nd marquess of Dufferin and Ava and a clerk in the Foreign Office, died in London of pneumonia just six months later. Frederick (1875–1930), 3rd marquess of Dufferin and Ava, was killed in an aeroplane crash. Of Dufferin’s nine children, only three outlived her death in Chelsea on 25 October 1936; she was buried on 28 October in Clandeboye, Co. Down.
Dufferin received many awards in recognition of her work: she was made a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1917 and was a member of the Order of the Crown of India and of the Order of Victoria and Albert; she also received honours in Turkey and Persia. In her memoirs, particularly Our viceregal life, she consistently appears an able and willing hostess and diplomatic spouse who engaged in her own public programme in parallel to that of her husband. She made a great impression everywhere; Lord Dufferin claimed that the king of Greece said that ‘there was no lady in Europe who could enter a room like Lady Dufferin’ (Nicolson, 145). The Amir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, later remembered her as ‘the cleverest woman I had ever seen [… her] residence in India was of hardly less importance than that of her husband’ (Lyall, 2:95). As vicereine, she consolidated the public persona that she had begun to cultivate in Canada, setting a new standard for British diplomatic spouses and vicereines. Resisting her natural shyness, she embraced her public role, both fulfilling her duties and reaching beyond the mould of expectation. A representative of the British empire at the highest administrative levels in Canada and India, her concerns, actions and writings bear the imprint of the hierarchies and prejudices common to her class, albeit tending to the benignly paternalistic. The Dufferin hospitals undoubtedly remain her most important legacy, with several hospitals across Burma, India and Pakistan still bearing her name today.
The Dufferin and Ava papers in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (D/1071) contain c. 40,000 loose in-letters by c. 12,000 correspondents with Lady Dufferin, mainly dated 1864–84 and 1888–1902; ten volumes of her journals, 1872–96; fifty-three photographs and negatives taken in India in 1886; papers relating to the Dufferin Fund; and papers of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (Ulster District), of which Dufferin was president and treasurer in 1900–02 and 1914–16.