Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Leveson-Gower, Frederick
LEVESON-GOWER, [EDWARD] FREDERICK (1819–1907), politician and autobiographer, second son of Granville Leveson-Gower, first Earl Granville [q. v.], by his wife Lady Henrietta, or Harriet, Cavendish, daughter of the fifth duke of Devonshire, was born on 3 May 1819. He was always called by his second Christian name. His early years were partly spent with his parents at the British embassy, Paris. As a boy he was a frequent visitor at Holland House (cf. his autobiography, Bygone Years, 1905, ch. iii.; Lady Granville's Letters, ii. 3). Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he graduated B.A. in 1840; he was judge's marshal to Lord Denman and Baron Parke, and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1845. In 1846 he was returned as liberal member for Derby at a by-election, and was re-elected at the general election next year, but was unseated, his agent having illegally engaged voters as messengers. Returned for Stoke-on-Trent in 1852, he was at the bottom of the poll at the election five years later, the Chinese war having divided the liberals in the constituency. In 1859 he was returned for Bodmin, and held the seat until 1885, when he retired from political life. Leveson-Gower's speeches in the House of Commons were not numerous, though he seconded the address on the meeting of parliament in the autumn of 1854. Gladstone offered him the posts of chief whip and postmaster-general, but he refused both, thinking that there were others more deserving of promotion (Bygone Years, p. 258). He was for several years chairman of railway committees, a tribunal of which he formed no high opinion (ibid. p. 259).
In 1874 he became first chairman of the National School of Cookery, and held the position until 1903, when he became vice-chairman. He acted for some twenty years as a director of Sir W. G. Armstrong & Co., Ltd.
Leveson-Gower took much pleasure in foreign travel. In 1850-1 he visited India. In 1856 he went to Russia as attache to his brother, Lord Granville, the special envoy on the coronation of the Czar Alexander II {Bygone Years, ch. viii.; Fitzmaurice's Granville, ch. viii.). But it was as a social figure that he was most conspicuous. Gifted with agreeable manners, conversational tact, and a good memory, he excelled as a diner-out and giver of dinners. These quaUties are reflected in his 'Bygone Years' (1905), a pleasant volume of reminiscences, which contains many well-told anecdotes. His editing of his mother's 'Letters' (1894) also shows an intimate knowledge of several generations of society. In August 1899 he published an article with the object of showing that the author of 'Werner' was not Byron, but Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire (Nineteenth Century, vol. xlvi. pp. 243-250). The theory is discredited by Mr. Hartley Coleridge (The Works of Lord Byron, 1901, v. 329-333; see also Bygone Years, pp. 325-6, and the correspondence in Literature, 12, 19, and 26 August 1899). He was a member of Grillion's Club, and also of the Political Economy Club, of which science he made a serious study. He was J. P. for the county of Surrey and D.L. for Derbyshire.
Leveson-Gower married on 1 June 1853 Lady Margaret Mary Frances Elizabeth, second daughter of Spencer Joshua Alwyne Compton, second marquis of Northampton; she died on 22 May 1858. After her death he lived with his mother at Chiswick House, Chiswick, until she died in 1862, when he took No. 14 South Audley Street. In 1870 he also purchased Holmbury, near Dorking. There Gladstone visited him at least once a year, and other frequent guests were his brother, Lord Granville, to whom he was much attached, Mrs. Grote, Bishop Wilberforce, Tennyson, and Russell Lowell. Leveson-Gower died in London on 30 May 1907, and was buried at Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire. His only child, George Granville Leveson-Gower, who has been a commissioner of woods and forests since 1908, owns at 12 Norfolk-crescent, London, W., three portraits, including a half-length chalk portrait by H. T. Wells, R.A., done in 1871 for Gridiron's Club. In the apartments of the Dowager Lady Granville, Leveson-Gower's sister-in-law, at Kensington Palace are two portraits of him: one in water-colours taken at the age of seventeen by the Vicomtesse de Caraman, and the other in oils believed to be by Manana.
[Bygone Years, by the Hon. Frederick Leveson-Gower, 1905; Letters of Harriet, Coimtess Granville, edited by the Hon. Frederick Leveson-Gower, 1894; G. W. E. Russell, Sketches and Snapshots, 1910; The Times, 31 May 1907.]