# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Somerset, Isabella Caroline

​SOMERSET, Lady ISABELLA CAROLINE, Lady Henry Somerset (1851–1921), was born in London 3 August 1851. Her father was Charles Somers Cocks, Viscount Eastnor, afterwards third and last Earl Somers; her mother was Virginia, seventh daughter of James Pattle, Bengal civil service, whose wife was a daughter of the Chevalier Antoine de l'Etang, page of honour to Queen Marie Antoinette. Of Earl Somers's three children, Isabella was the eldest, Adeline—subsequently Duchess of Bedford—the second; the third, Virginia, died young. In 1872 Lady Isabella married Lord Henry Somerset, second son of the eighth Duke of Beaufort. Her husband was comptroller of Queen Victoria's household from 1874 to 1879, and M.P. for Monmouthshire, 1871–1880. In 1874 her only child, Henry Charles Somers Augustus, was born. The marriage proved an unhappy one, and in 1878 Lady Henry found herself facing life alone with her child, whose custody had been secured to her by the courts. She now devoted herself to work amongst the poor in the country town of Ledbury, near her home, Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire. It was her acquaintance with the brutalizing effects of drunkenness in this place, made poignant by the suicide, under the influence of drink, of her dearest friend, that led her to take up the cause of temperance. Henceforth it became the absorbing interest of her life. She now began to speak publicly for the cause all over England. Her beauty, her eloquence, her power to hold and move great audiences, won for her a widespread reputation.
In 1883 Earl Somers died, and Lady Henry Somerset inherited his estates. This event did not affect her temperance work. In 1890 she was elected president of the British Women's Temperance Association, and in 1891 she went to America to represent the association at the convention of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union. It was at this convention, at Boston, Massachusetts, that she first met Miss Frances Willard. In company with her Lady Henry travelled much in the United States, everywhere receiving enthusiastic welcomes. But, later on, it became known that she could not support the prohibition movement, and her ​influence there came to an end. She returned to England in 1892, bent upon introducing into the English Temperance Association the wider views and the new methods which she had seen working so well in the United States. But she preached to unsympathetic ears. Eventually, in 1903, weary of controversy and with health impaired, she resigned her presidency. Meanwhile, in 1898, on the death of Miss Willard, she had been elected to replace her as president of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union, an office which she held until 1906.
In 1895 Lady Henry founded Duxhurst, a farm colony, near Reigate, for inebriate women, adding to it afterwards a ‘nest’ for children rescued from bad surroundings. Duxhurst was the first institution of its kind in England. In contrast with the usual procedure of institutions for inebriates the women were treated not as criminals and outcasts under punishment, but simply as patients, and met from the first with courtesy, trust, and sympathy. Living at the Priory, Reigate, in constant contact with them, Lady Henry by her charm, artistic gifts, resourcefulness, and sense of humour, in conjunction with her higher qualities, profoundly influenced the varied characters of those who had taken refuge in the colony. Ultimately it was upon religion that she relied the most, and to religious influences she was wont to attribute the unusual success of her work. The six and twenty years of her work at Duxhurst, taken all in all, brought more satisfaction and happiness into her life than any other of her public and private ventures. All that had gone before, of labour, of suffering, and of experience led up to this and found in this its compensating fruit. She worked on with a zeal which increasing infirmity was not allowed to abate, until, with short warning, she died in London 12 March 1921.
Lady Henry's publications include: Our Village Life (in verse, 1884); Sketches in Black and White (1896); In an Old Garden (1900); Under the Arch of Life (a novel, 1906); and Beauty for Ashes (1913). In 1894 she founded the Woman's Signal (the official organ of the British Women's Temperance Association), of which she became editor, and, in addition, she contributed many articles to English and American magazines.
[Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset: a Memoir, 1923; Ray Strachey, Frances Willard, her Life and Work, 1912; personal knowledge.]
E. F. R.