Windham Wyndham Quin, 4th Earl of Dunraven and Mount Earl

Background, education and early life

Lord Dunraven was the son of The 3rd Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl by his first wife, Florence Augusta Goold, third daughter of Thomas Goold. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. After serving as a lieutenant in the 1st Life Guards, a cavalry regiment, he became, at age twenty-six, a war correspondent for the London newspaper The Daily Telegraph and covered the Abyssinian War. In this capacity, he shared a tent with Henry Stanley of The New York Herald. Dunraven then became a special correspondent for a "big London daily" during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71. He reported the Siege of Paris, saw the Third Carlist War and war in Turkey, and probably the Russo-Turkish War. Dunraven witnessed both the signing of the Treaty of Versailles which ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, and later the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Military

Ensign of the 4th Company, Oxford University Rifle Volunteer Corps 30 December 1859 promoted Lieutenant. 1 March 1860., resigned 3 December 1861. Cornet and Sub-Lieutenant, 1st Life Guards, 2 June 1865. purchased promotion to Lieutenant on same date. Extra Aide-de-Camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1864. Retired from 1st Guards 1 February 1867. He was a Lieutenant in the Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry and resigned his Commission on 9 June 1875. He was appointed Honorary Colonel of the Glamorgan Artillery (Western Division) on 17 April 1895. He was appointed to the Honorary Colonelcy of the 5th Battalion, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, on 25 August 1897.

Boer War and the Sharpshoooters

During the early stages of the South African War 1899-1902, the British Army suffered defeats at the hands of the Boer Commandos, composed of men who were first class shots and good horsemen. The effect at home was to produce a rush of volunteers. The Earl of Dunraven formed a committee in Dec 1899 to raise a squadron of 'Sharpshooters' from those volunteers who could both ride and shoot well. By March 1900, a full battalion (18th Bn Imperial Yeomanry) had been raised.

On 6 April 1900, Dunraven's Sharpshooters started for South Africa. Lord Dunraven at the last moment decided to accompany the force and was posted as a supernumerary captain on the battalion staff. He was gazetted on 17 April 1900 to be Captain (Supernumerary) of the 18th Battalion of the Imperial Yeomanry, with the temporary rank of Captain in the Army, from 18 April 1900, which he relinquished in July 1901. He was mentioned in despatches (29 November 1900) by Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief during the early part of the War.

In January 1901, the Government made a further call for Yeomanry and between February and March, another 1,200 men were recruited by the Sharpshooters Committee and formed into two battalions, the 21st and 23rd. The Sharpshooters fought many small-scale actions against the Boers with increasing skill and showed the value of mobile, well-armed and resourceful troops. Following their success, Lord Dunraven was given permission to raise a regiment for service at home and on 23 July 1901, the 3rd County of London (Sharpshooters) Imperial Yeomanry was formally embodied.

On 25 March 1902 he resigned his Commission and received a new Commission subject to the provisions of the Militia and Yeomanry Act, 1901, retaining his rank and seniority as Lieutenant-Colonel (Honorary Captain in the Army). On 22 November 1903, Major-General Baden-Powell, Inspector of Cavalry, unveiled a memorial in the Church of St Martin's in the Fields. About 400 men of all ranks of 3CLY under the command of Colonel Lord Dunraven attended the ceremony. On 6 August 1904 he was appointed to the Honorary Colonelcy of the Regiment. In 1904 the Regiment's first battle honour South Africa 1900-02 was awarded.

Political career

Dunraven succeeded his father in the earldom in 1871 and took his seat in the House of Lords. He served as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies under Lord Salisbury from 1885 to 1886 and again from 1886 to 1887. During 1888 to 1890 he was chairman of the Commission on Sweated Labour. As a constructive moderate Unionist he sought to bring about a peaceful solution to the Irish land question and to the demand for Home Rule. In 1897 he published The Outlook in Ireland, the case for Devolution and Conciliation which was reprinted in 1907.

Dunraven was an inaugural member of Glamorgan County Council, representing Bridgend as a Conservative between 1889 and 1892. He also sat as Moderate Party councillor representing Wandsworth on the London County Council from 1895-99.

Dunraven was the owner of the 39,000-acre (160 km²) Adare Manor estate at Adare, County Limerick. Following the initiative of George Wyndham, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, he was instrumental in forming the 1902 Land Conference of which he was chairman, representing the landlord side. Together with William O'Brien, who represented the tenant side, the conference resulted in the publication of a unanimous report in January which led to the enactment of the very successful Wyndham Land (Purchase) Act (1903) which terminated the last vestige of landlordism and enabled tenants to purchase land from their landlords under favourable financial provisions.

After presiding over the Land Conference, Lord Dunraven went on to found the Irish Reform Association which, while reflecting primarily the views of progressive landlords like himself was intended to be a rallying point for all, regardless of political affiliation, who wished to see the 'conference policy' applied to other spheres of Irish life. In the course of 1904 this body had produced a scheme of "devolution"—that is, for granting to Ireland limited powers of local self-government. The Under-Secretary for Ireland, Sir Antony MacDonnell, had a hand in drafting it.

Greeted at first as a significant step towards self-government, while not Home Rule, the idea could be seen as a significant step in that direction. Such a policy failed to gain sufficient nationalist support, the new proposals dismissed by John Dillon. Unionist responded by forming the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905. For Dillon, devolution was not enough, for the alarmed Ulster Unionists, it was a Trojan Horse for Home Rule. In the end the controversy resulted in Chief Secretary George Wyndham being driven in ignominy from office.

Dunraven was as well as president of the Irish Reform Association, a member of the Order of Saint Patrick. Upon the foundation of the Irish Free State he became a member of the first Senate in December 1922.

Colorado huntsman

Lord Dunraven spent a great deal of his leisure time hunting wild game in various parts of the world. After hearing of the fine hunting in the American West, he decided to visit. He first arrived in 1872, and met and befriended Texas Jack Omohundro, who acted as a guide and led the earl's party on buffalo and elk hunts. In 1874, the young earl decided to make the whole of Estes Park, Colorado into a game preserve for the exclusive use of himself and his British and Irish friends. By stretching the provisions of the Homestead Act and pre-emption rights, Dunraven claimed 15,000 acres (61 km²) in the present-day Rocky Mountain National Park. His efforts resulted in what has been called "one of the most gigantic land steals in the history of Colorado". The coming of more settlers in 1874 and 1875 stopped this wholesale appropriation of land. Although for 33 years Dunraven considered the Park his personal property, the settlers did not. Their hostility forced him to give up the game preserve idea.

Dunraven later described the influx of settlers and his consequent plans:

Folks were drifting in, prospecting ... preempting, making claims; so we prepared for civilization. Made a better road, bought a sawmill at San Francisco, hauled the machinery in, set it up, felled trees, and built a wooden hotel...

Tourist enterprise

The noted landscape artist, Albert Bierstadt, induced by Dunraven to paint in Estes Park, helped select the site for Dunraven's 'English Hotel', which was built in 1877. It was situated in a meadow east of the present Estes Park village and was the first strictly tourist hotel built in the Park. The hotel was a three story timber-frame building. There were twelve narrow windows, and a large door opening onto a one-storied, columned porch. The roof of this porch formed an open deck surrounded by a small hand railing. The porch ran the full length of the front of the building and about halfway around each end.

Despite the success of this 'English Hotel and Lodge', the disillusioned Dunraven left the area forever in the late 1880s. He later explained:

People came in disputing claims, kicking up rows: exorbitant land taxes got into arrears; and we were in constant litigation. The show could not be managed from home, and we were in constant danger of being frozen out. So we sold for what we could get and cleared out, and I have never been there since.

Dunraven realized it would be impossible for him to control all of the park region and in 1907 sold his property to B. D. Sanborn of Greeley and F. O. Stanley of Newton, Massachusetts. Stanley would later build the historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. Dunraven's 'English Hotel' burned to the ground in 1911.

Sportsman

Lord Dunraven maintained an equestrian stud farm on his Adare Manor estate and experimented in growing tobacco until his factory was burned down in 1916. A keen yachtsman, the earl was the owner and co-owner of the 1893 and 1895 America's Cup yachts Valkyrie II and Valkyrie III. As a sportsman, he wrote Canadian Nights about "life and sports in the Rockies".

Personal life

Lord Dunraven married Florence Kerr, second daughter of Lord Charles Kerr, first son by his second wife of William Kerr, 6th Marquess of Lothian. They had three children:

In 1869, Lord Dunraven revealed in his diaries under the title Experiences in Spiritualism with D. D. Home that he had slept in the same bed with Daniel Dunglas Home. Many of the diary entries contain erotic homosexual overtones between Adare and Home.

Lord Dunraven died in June 1926, aged 85. As he died without a male heir the earldom passed to a cousin, Windham Wyndham-Quin, 5th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl, and the barony of Kenry, which had been created for his father, became extinct. He is buried at St. Nicholas' Church of Ireland in Adare, County Limerick, Ireland. Here is an image of his headstone. In 1895 Dunraven lived at 27 Norfolk Street, then 26 years after his death in 1939 the street was renamed Dunraven Street in his honour.