THE LATE LADY WARWICK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 89, 12 October 1938, Page 19

THE LATE LADY WARWICK

Lady Warwick, fifth Countess of Warwick, whose death occurred recently in England at her home at Easton Lodge, Dunmow, Essex, was born in 1861, states an exchange. She was the elder daughter of Mr. C. H. Maynard, who died before succeeding to. his father's title; and the last Lord Maynard left his estates at Dunmow i. Essex and elsewhere to his granddaughter. Lady Warwick's career was distinguished and eventful. As ST girl in society she led the life of the ordinary young aristocrat, with an added brilliance proceeding from great personal beauty and a strikingly original mind.

There was some talk of her becoming engaged to Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria's youngest son, but this project, mentioned by Lord Warwick in his "Memories of Sixty Years," was frustrated by her marriage to him, then Lord Brooke in her nineteenth year.

All her associations, combined with her wealth and landed position, should logically have impressed her with the desirability of keeping things as they are; but although she made her first entry into politics as j a Conservative in 1888, when her i able advocacy of her husband's candidature helped materially to secure his election as Tory member for Colchester, she afterwards explained away this action in the words, "I was very young then." Her philanthropic work, both at Warwick and in Essex, soon brought her in contact with facts and conditions that her independent mind and generous spirit refused to accept as unalterable. In addition to being a Poo.- Law guardian she devoted herself to many practical philanthropic schemes, such as founding a home for crippled children in Warwick, establishing an efficient nursing serivce both there and at Dunmow, and starting the Easton School of Needlework, whereby she helped to revive a decaying art in Essex and also provided a market in a Bond Street shop for the goods thus produced. She went on to more fundamental educational projects, and founded in 1897 at Bigod's Hall, Dunmow; a science and technical school for providing rural boys and girls in thei rteens with a sound education as land workers. Her horticultural college at Reading afterwards removed to Studley Castle, Warwick, was similarly run with a view vO openirig up a new career for young women of the professional classes. HER DEMOCRATIC OPINIONS. All these schemes, in addition to her natural benevolence, which made her beloved all over her estates, con-,

"STRIKINGLY ORIGINAL MIND"

firmed her in her democratic opinions. For a time after the Colchester election she reacted against the notion of party politics altogether, denying in a letter to the Press in 1899 the report that she was or had been a Liberal and affirming her faith in Socialism. She was a member of the Social Democrat Federation and the British Socialist Party, and later of the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Party (Westminster branch).

From the end of the war onwards she associated herself actively with . the official Labour campaign, unsuccessfully contesting in the Labour interests the Warwick and Leamington Division at the General Election of 1923. Her successful opponent was Mr. Anthony Eden.

In March of that year she offered her Essex home, Easton Lodge, to the Parliamentary Labour Party to be used by them for weekends and holidays, or as a place of conference. She followed this up and crowned her many years of devoted service to the cause of working people by offering her Easton home arid estate entirely, in February, 1926, to the Trades Uriion Congress, as the representatives of the organised workers. She wished to see established there a residential college for the Labour movement. The offer, however, was not taken up. ■ STATE OWNERSHIP ADVOCATED. Lady Warwick's attractive personality was reinforced by her many interests; she hunted with enthusiasm, was a great reader, and so keen a horticulturist that her Shakespeare Garden and other interesting features of the Easton grounds were widely known. She entertained many literary men and women in earlier days at Warwick Castle and wrote a good deal herself, among her publications heing a life of Joseph Arch and another of William Morris, besides a book on. "Warwick Castle and its Earls."

In 1929 she published a remarkable book of memoirs in which she, wrote of her long friendship with King Edward. No better exposition of her faith as a Socialist can be found than in an article which she wrote entitled "We Must Go." In that she said: "We who must go are the aristocracy of England in our position of hereditary landowners. . . . The only cure for present evils seems to me to be State ownership, the abolition of all private property,in the earth that was-given to all of us in common."

She was the mother of two daughters and of two sons. Her husband died in 1924, arid was succeeded by the elder son, father of the present Lord. Warwick, who died in 1927.