the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe (Savoy, 25 November 1882), King Gama in Princess Ida (Savoy, 5 January 1884), Ko-ko in The Mikado (Savoy, 14 March 1885), Robin Oakapple in Ruddigore (Savoy, 22 January 1887), and Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard (Savoy, 3 October 1888). The agility and droll dignity of his small frame, his dry humour, his pleasant voice, and the skill in rapid enunciation which caused his ‘patter-songs’ to be made a regular feature of these operas, suited Grossmith perfectly to this form of dramatic and musical art.
Meanwhile he had not wholly given up his ‘humorous and musical recitals’, which were more remunerative than the opera; and in 1889 he left the Savoy to devote himself to them. But for three appearances on the stage in comedy, this work fully occupied him, in private houses and public buildings far and wide over the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, until his retirement in 1909. He would fill by himself an hour and a half with words and music of his own making; and his shrewd, superficial satire and such songs as ‘The Muddle-Puddle Porter’, ‘The Happy Fatherland’, and ‘See Me Dance the Polka’, with their accompanying chat, made him, perhaps, more popular even than his friend, Richard Corney Grain [q.v.]. He composed the music to Gilbert's opera, Haste to the Wedding, and the incidental music to several plays; he also wrote two books of reminiscences, A Society Clown (1888) and Piano and I (1910), and, with his brother Walter Weedon Grossmith [q.v.], a well-known humorous book, The Diary of a Nobody (1894), which first appeared serially in Punch. In 1873 he married Emmeline Rosa (died 1905), only daughter of E. Noyce, M.D., and left two sons (George and Lawrence, both of whom became actors) and two daughters. He died at Folkestone 1 March 1912.
Walter Weedon Grossmith (1854–1919), comedian, younger brother of the preceding, was born in London 9 June 1854. Having studied at the Royal Academy schools and the Slade School he became a painter, and exhibited at the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery. In 1885 he went on the stage, and soon made a hit as Lord Arthur Pomeroy in Cecil Clay's A Pantomime Rehearsal. In 1888 (Sir) Henry Irving [q.v.] engaged him to play Jacques Strop in Robert Macaire at the Lyceum. In 1907 he appeared with (Sir) H. Beerbohm Tree [q.v.] in The Van Dyk. His successful career was mainly occupied, under his own management or that of others, in acting ‘dudes’ and small, underbred, unhappy men, in which parts he excelled. Among the plays that he wrote, The Night of the Party, which he produced at the Avenue Theatre in 1901, was the most successful. His artistic taste showed itself best in his flair for old furniture. He married in 1895 May Lever Palfrey, actress, a descendant of Charles Lever [q.v.], who, with one daughter, survived him. He died in London 14 June 1919.
[G. Grossmith, A Society Clown, 1888; W. Grossmith, From Studio to Stage, 1913; P. FitzGerald, The Savoy Opera, 1894; Memoir of George and Weedon Grossmith, by B. W. Findon, in The Diary of a Nobody, 5th edition, 1920; The Times, 2 March 1912, 16 June 1919; private information.]
GROSVENOR, RICHARD DE AQUILA, first Baron Stalbridge (1837–1912), railway administrator and politician, the fourth son of Richard Grosvenor, second Marquess of Westminster [q.v.], by his wife, Lady Elizabeth Mary Leveson Gower, second daughter of George Granville Leveson Gower, first Duke of Sutherland [q.v.], was born at Motcombe House, Motcombe, Dorset, 28 January 1837. He was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1855, and took his M.A. degree three years later. He became member of parliament for Flintshire as a liberal as early as 1861, and retained his seat until 1886. He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1872, and was vice-chamberlain of the royal household from 1872 to 1874. In 1886 he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Stalbridge, of Stalbridge, in the county of Dorset, in recognition of services rendered as patronage secretary to the Treasury and chief government whip throughout Mr. Gladstone's administration from 1880 to 1885. His experience as a liberal whip during the days of nationalist obstruction made it impossible for him to agree to Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy; and after the Home Rule crisis of 1886 he became a staunch and influential member of the liberal-unionist organization.
Lord Stalbridge's life work, however, was done in connexion with the London and North Western Railway Company, of which he was a director for more than forty years and for half that period the chairman. He became a director in 1870; he was elected chairman in succession to Sir Richard Moon in 1891, and held the office until 1911. Throughout
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