Lady Gertrude Rolle
(1836-1924)

A pencilled inscription verso in a period hand identifies the sitter. The carte came with some other portraits, one of which showed the Honourable Mark Rolle. This is therefore almost certainly Lady Gertrude Rolle, age 34, who appears on the 1871 census, living at Stevenhouse House, St Giles-in-the-Wood, Devon [3 miles east of Great Torrrington] with her husband, Mark G. K. Rolle, age 35. A commercial directory and gazetteer of 1870 describes the house as ‘a noble mansion, in the midst of a fine park well stocked with deer, [...] now undergoing a complete restoration.’

Born Lady Gertrude Jane Douglas, she was the daughter of George Sholto Douglas, 17th Earl of Morton. On 6 October 1860 she married the Honourable Mark George Kerr Rolle, son of Charles Rodolph Trefusis, 19th Baron Clinton and Lady Elizabeth Georgiana née Kerr. Their marriage produced two daughters.

Lady Gertrude Rolle died on 21 March 1924. A lengthy obituary appeared in the Southern Reporter a few days later (27 March 1924), which read in part: 'Lady Gertrude Jane Rolle, who died at Leigh House, Chulmleigh, Devonshire, Friday, aged 88, was the last survivor of the eleven children of the 17th (or 19th) Earl of Morton, of Dalmahoy, Midlothian, and was the aunt of the present Earl, a Scottish Representative Peer. Amongst her brothers were the late Earl, a Bishop of Aberdeen, and Admiral the Hon. George Dowlas. One of her sisters married the late Earl Fitzwilliam, another married the late Bishop Ewing, Bishop of Argyll; and a third married a son of the 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister. Lady Gertrude married, in 1860, the Hon. Mark George Rolle, second son the 19th Lord Clinton by his marriage with Lady Elizabeth Kerr, daughter of the 6th Marquess of Lothian. He assumed the name of Rolle (in lieu of Trefusis) after the death of his uncle, Lord Rolle. Lady Gertrude is survived by two daughters.'