The tragic story of Britain’s insomniac prime minister
Archibald Philip Primrose resigned out of sheer weariness
Archibald Philip Primrose was praised as the “most dazzling speaker of his era,” but after his speeches he virtually collapsed from nerves. The former British prime minister experienced such mental anguish that he couldn’t sleep at night and, thus, resigned his post.
To those close to him, Primrose was sensitive and prone to reflective moods. He was born in 1847 to an aristocratic London family, and became the fifth Earl of Rosebery upon his grandfather’s death in 1868. But it was his father’s death that profoundly impacted the little boy. He emerged from a long period of grief with a quiet, reserved personality that would characterize most of his life.
Rosebery, as he was called after the earlship, was reportedly not close with his mother, who instead favored his younger brother. Lady Dalmeny called him “so sensitive that a harsh word throws him into a flood of tears…nor is he like his sisters, one instant crying, the next laughing — he is some time recovering from a burst of sorrow.”
Rosebery attended Eton and later Oxford, though he left after buying a racehorse against school rules and refusing to give it up. The races were his true passion.
Accounts of Rosebery’s temperament as a young adult show inconsistencies — he was apparently both hesitant and haughty, aloof and full of self-doubt. But it’s also clear the man struggled with public perceptions, and attempted to mask the nature of his emotions well into adulthood. According to Downing Street Blues: A History of Depression and Other Mental Afflictions in British Prime Ministers by Jonathan Davidson, Rosebery expressed good manners and wit so that “the admiring audiences of his public speeches had no notion of the immense trouble and the mental anguish which had preceded these triumphs, nor of the acute nervousness — almost amounting to terror — with which he inwardly confronted a large gathering.”
The lines of poetry he wrote on his 28th birthday reflect certain anxiety:
The years to come that break upon thy dream
How cold they glitter, like a grove of spears;
How sharp their points, how sinister their gleam.
In March 1878 at the age of 31, Rosebery married wealthy British heiress Hannah de Rothschild, whom he called “very simple, very unspoilt, very clever, very warm-hearted and very shy…I never knew such a beautiful character.” Hannah would help buoy her husband’s sense of worth and ultimately encourage his growing career in politics. In 1880, however, Rosebery contracted scarlet fever, from which followed a period of “complete depression and exhaustion,” in his words, and extreme insomnia. After recovering, Rosebery renovated a rural castle where the “stillness of the waters were conducive to sleep.”
Hannah and their four children lived on a separate estate nearby before her death from typhoid in 1890.
That event took a serious toll. A friend Lord Hamilton wrote: “R[osebery] has always been a puzzle to me, though probably I know him almost better than any one else…Whatever ambition he had was buried with his poor wife; that he has been totally unable to realise the importance of his own position; and that he thought his only chance of escaping finally from public life was to cut himself adrift now, or else it would (or might) be never.”
Rosebery’s grief was such that he insisted his children remain in their mourning clothes for long past the customary period, and he corresponded on black-trimmed stationary the rest of his life. He kept Hannah’s bedroom untouched, though occasionally added books to her shelves. His insomnia worsened and he became more sequestered; in 1894 he confessed he had not dined out in four years.
Given time, Rosebery rebounded from heartbreak, or so it seemed. He was appointed foreign secretary in 1892 and became prime minister upon William Gladstone’s resignation in 1894. Immediately Rosebery took a hard line with an imperialist platform against Irish independence, which came as a shock to counterparts from the Liberal party. The move lost him significant Parliament support and made positive legislative change nigh unachievable. People were mystified.
Meanwhile, Rosebery’s doctors prescribed increasing doses of morphine to treat their patient’s insomnia. During a particular three-week bout of sleeplessness, they even feared for his life. To get through his daily routine, however, Rosebery took cocaine, a standard prescription for the time. It was rumored he preferred cocaine before speeches, whereupon his mood changed drastically. A Lord George Hamilton gossipped:
“Rosebery made a rather curious speech the other day in the House of Lords. I am informed, by those who watch him, that the impression is he takes some drug before speaking, which makes him brilliant for the moment, but exceptionally flabby and invertebrate for the remainder of the day. He has got very big, and looks very much like the fat boy in Pickwick.”
It was the trial of Oscar Wilde that marked the end of Rosebery’s career. An accusation was hurled that the two had engaged in a homosexual affair. Though it was never proved and likely foundationless, the stress caused the prime minister to resign in 1896.
Rosebery was labeled the “flying Dutchman of politics,” seemingly unanchored and adrift in political contradictions. A combination of mental illness, cultural pressure, primitive medication, and terrific grief contributed to a life wrought with tragedy. In hindsight the struggles he endured are outrageous and heartrending, and yet, somehow even today, wistfully all too relatable.
Though not active in political office after his resignation, Rosebery went on to lead the Liberal Imperialist faction of the party. He continued to oppose Irish Home Rule into the 1900s. Conservatives begged his official return to career politics, but he refused. He spent the 1910s writing biographies and appearing for occasional meetings in the House of Lords.
In 1918 Rosebery had a stroke and spent the next 11 years in almost complete inactivity and, according to a peer, “crushed by bodily weakness” and “sunk in sad and silent meditations.”
He died on May 21, 1929, survived by three children and with an estate valued at £63 million in today’s currency, making him the wealthiest British prime minister in history.
