Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Howard, George James
HOWARD, GEORGE JAMES, ninth Earl of Carlisle (1843–1911), amateur artist, was the only son of Charles Wentworth George Howard, fifth son of George Howard, sixth earl [q. v.] and M.P. for East Cumberland, 1840-79, by his wife Mary, second daughter of Sir James Parke, Baron Wensleydale [q. v.]. George William Frederick Howard, seventh earl of Carlisle [q. v.], the statesman, was his father's eldest brother. Born in London on 13 Aug. 1843, Howard was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1861 he was one of a few undergraduates selected to join King Edward VII when Prince of Wales in attendance at a private course of lectures on history by Charles Kingsley. He graduated B.A. in 1865. On the death of his father in 1879 he was elected liberal M.P. for East Cumberland, lost the seat in 1880, but regained it in 1881 and held it till 1885. At the disruption of the party over Irish home rule he joined the liberal unionists, but did not sit in the 1886 parliament. He succeeded his uncle, William George Howard (1808-1889), the invalid and bachelor eighth earl of Carlisle, in 1889. In the House of Lords he continued to vote with the liberal unionists, while his wife had become an ardent public worker on the radical side. On one question of social reform, the temperance question, they were wholly agreed. On his accession to the earldom the public-houses both on the Yorkshire and on the Cumberland estates were closed, and one of his very rare speeches in the House of Lords was in favour of the licensing bill of the liberal government in 1908. Politics, however, were but a secondary interest to him; and though fond of country life and sports, especially shooting, he had from the beginning left the administration of his great estates in Cumberland, Northumberland, and Yorkshire in the hands of his wife. His real devotion was to art. Having shown as a boy a remarkable gift for likeness and caricature, he took up the practice of painting in earnest after leaving Cambridge, and was the pupil successively of Alphonse Legros and Giovanni Costa. Of his many friendships the most intimate were with artists, especially with the two above named and with Burne-Jones, Leighton, Watts, Thomas Armstrong, Pepys Cockerell, and latterly Sir Charles Holroyd. He had an intense sympathy for Italy and the Italians, and in early life cherished a close and reverential friendship for Mazzini. He became a skilled and industrious painter of landscape, principally in water-colour. His work was conceived in a topographical spirit, and he was at his best in studies made direct from nature rather than in work carried out afterwards in his studio. In later life he suffered much from gastric trouble, and partly for the sake of health made frequent winter journeys abroad, to Egypt, India, and East Africa, painting wherever he went; but the scenery which best inspired him was that of his beautiful north country homes, Naworth and Castle Howard. In the last year of his life he published 'A Picture Song-Book' (1910) a set of coloured reproductions from drawings in illustration of old English songs done to amuse his grandchildren. He was an influential trustee of the National Gallery for more than thirty years. He died at his daughter's residence, Brackland, Hindhead, Surrey, on 16 April 1911, and was buried at Lanercost Priory, Naworth.
Just before his fatal illness Carlisle had taken an active part in the movement for stopping the alterations of the bridge and paths in St. James's Park proposed by the office of works. He had at the same time agreed to offer to the National Gallery for a price much below its market value the masterpiece of Mabuse, the 'Adoration of the Magi,' which had been bought by the fifth earl and been for a century the chief glory of the Castle Howard collection. His wish in this respect was carried out by his widow after his death, and the picture is now the property of the nation. His private tastes and distastes in art were very decided, but he knew on occasion how to suppress them and support reasonable views which were not his own. He was a man of remarkable social charm, though not free from moods of cynicism and irony. A portrait of him in early life by Watts is in the gallery at Limnerslease. A sketch of him was executed for Grillion's Club by Henry Tanworth Wells in 1894. In 1864 he married Rosalind, youngest daughter of the second Lord Stanley of Alderley, by whom he had six sons, three of whom predeceased him, and five daughters, of whom one died in infancy. The eldest daughter, Lady Mary, is the wife of Professor Gilbert Murray; another daughter, Lady Cecilia, is wife of Mr. Charles Henry Roberts, liberal M.P. for Lincoln since 1906.
Carlisle was succeeded by his son, Charles James Stanley Howard, tenth earl (1867-1912), who was born on 8 March 1867, educated at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford, and married in 1894 Rhoda Ankaret, daughter of Colonel Paget W. L'Estrange, by whom he had one son and three daughters. He was captain in the third battalion Border regiment of militia, with which he served in South Africa in 1902; was an active member of the London school board (1894–1902); contested without success in the unionist interest Chester-le-Street, the Hexham division of Northumberland, and Gateshead; was unionist M.P. for South Birmingham (1904–11), and latterly one of the parliamentary whips for his party. His health was already failing when he succeeded to the title, and he died at 105 Eaton Place, London, on 21 Jan. 1912; he was buried at Lanercost.
[Private information; The Times, 18 and 21 April 1911; International Studio, 1903, xxl. 121.]