Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Mitford, Algernon Bertram Freeman-
MITFORD, ALGERNON BERTRAM FREEMAN-, first Baron Redesdale in the second creation (1837–1916), diplomatist and author, was born in South Audley Street, London, 24 February 1837. He was the third son of Henry Revely Mitford (1804–1883), by his wife, Lady Georgiana Ashburnham, daughter of George, third Earl of Ashburnham, and great-grandson of William Mitford [q.v.], the historian. In order to retrench, Mr. Mitford withdrew to the Continent in his son's third year. The family settled first at Frankfort on Main, but from 1842 to 1846 lived principally in Paris and at Trouville. In 1846 Algernon was sent to Eton. His school career, which lasted till 1854, threw him into the company of his cousin, Algernon Swinburne, his junior in school standing by three years, and the two became fast friends. Mitford proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, in October 1855. As an undergraduate he read voluminously, but hated Greek philosophy, and left in 1858 with ‘a dismal second-class’ in moderations. He was immediately appointed to the Foreign Office, worked creditably, and secured by his breeding and good looks an entry into the most exclusive London society; he was early among the associates of the Prince of Wales. He was running the risk of becoming a brilliant but rather showy ‘young man about town’, when in 1863 he was sent to St. Petersburg as second secretary of embassy.
Mitford's great energy was now turned into a political channel, and he made a close study of the conditions of life in Russia. Late in 1864 the lure of the East drew him to Constantinople, by way of Wallachia, and thence to Ephesus. His linguistic gifts were developing, and in 1865 he volunteered for China, where he was welcomed in Peking by Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas) Wade. Of his adventures in China Mitford has given a full account in The Attaché at Peking (1900). He was transferred to Japan in 1866, not expecting that this country, then so obscure and fabulous, was to be his home for nearly four years. When the British minister, Sir Harry Smith Parkes [q.v.], decided that it was undignified for the legation to be excluded from the capital, and forced his way to Yedo (Tokio), Mitford accompanied him, thus becoming a witness of the great struggle between the daimios and the shogun (tycoon). In May 1867 Parkes and Mitford were received at Osaka by the Shogun in circumstances of extraordinary solemnity and romance. When the civil war broke out, the British legation was in great danger. Mitford was left for five months alone at Kioto, in order to preserve the prestige of England at the Japanese court, and his life was constantly threatened by the fanatics. He occupied his leisure in thoroughly mastering the Japanese language, and he conducted difficult negotiations with the Mikado to the complete satisfaction of the Foreign Office. At Kioto Mitford began to collect and to translate the ‘Tales of Old Japan’. He returned unharmed to Yedo, but the anxieties and fatigues of a strenuous and isolated existence had told upon his health, and in 1870, on being invalided home, he returned to the Foreign Office, and to London society. In 1871 he published what is still the most popular of his writings, his Tales of Old Japan.
Mitford was now a young man of some celebrity, and he dreamed of a more interesting existence than that of secretary of legation at a humdrum European capital. Offered the embassy at St. Petersburg by Lord Granville, he refused this post and at his own desire was placed en disponibilité in 1871. He did not definitely resign the diplomatic service until 1873. Before that, he had started for the East again; he was soon in Damascus with his old friend (Sir) Richard Burton, at that time British consul there. Early in 1873 he chartered a tiny Genoese vessel in order to pay an improvised visit to Garibaldi in Caprera. He was received with much cordiality, and he has preserved a precious record of the great Italian's habits on his ‘storm-beaten island rock’. Mitford presently returned to London, only to start immediately on a long visit to the United States' where he gratified his curiosity by waiting upon Brigham Young in Salt Lake City.
On his return to London Mitford found the whole current of his life changed through his appointment by Disraeli in May 1874 to be secretary to the Board of Works. In December of the same year he married Lady Clementine Ogilvy, second daughter of the seventh Earl of Airlie. They settled in Chelsea, having as a near neighbour James Whistler, who was perpetually in and out of their house. Mitford was present on the famous occasion when the painter cut some of his own pictures to ribands in a frenzy of rage. He was also at this time in close relations with Carlyle, Leighton, Joachim, and Millais. During his twelve years at the Office of Works he was met by great difficulties. Disraeli, when Mitford was appointed, described the Office of Works as ‘an Augean stable, which must be swept clean’. Mitford carried out this labour satisfactorily, although it must be admitted that the ornamental and the antiquarian parts of the duty were most to his taste. Of the restorations which he directed at the Tower of London, he has given a fine account in A Tragedy in Stone (1882).
In May 1886 his cousin, John Thomas Freeman-Mitford, Earl of Redesdale [q.v.], died unmarried, and was found to have devised his very considerable fortune to Algernon Bertram. Both the earldom and the earlier barony became extinct, but the heir assumed the name and arms of Freeman, in addition to those of Mitford. He resigned his office, sold his house in Chelsea, and took possession of Batsford Park, his cousin's estate in Gloucestershire. The house was not to his liking; he pulled it down and built another of lordlier proportions, and he began to lay out the celebrated tropical garden. From 1892 to 1895 he was member of parliament for the Stratford-on-Avon division of Warwickshire. During these years literature was much neglected, but in 1896 Mitford published The Bamboo Garden, a charming and fantastic work which he called an ‘apologia pro Bambusis meis at Batsford’. In 1898 he visited the East again, exploring Ceylon. In 1902 he was raised to the peerage, as Baron Redesdale, of Redesdale in Northumberland; he became a constant attendant at the House of Lords, taking little part in the debates, but speaking sometimes effectively on subjects connected with the Far East. He began to suffer from a deafness, which was very painful to a man of such gay and gregarious habits. This threw him more and more upon the resources of his mind and pen, and he became an industrious writer. In 1906 he accompanied Prince Arthur of Connaught on the latter's visit to the Emperor of Japan, and published on his return The Garter Mission to Japan (1906), the best pages of which deal with the disconcerting changes which had taken place since he saw that country last. He further elaborated the same theme in A Tale of Old and New Japan (1906).
In the last decade of his life Lord Redesdale occupied himself by writing his autobiography, which appeared as Memories in 1915. He was also busy with translations, addresses, and pamphlets to such an extent that he seemed, after the age of sixty-five, to have turned from an amateur into a professional man of letters. In the first year of the War he had the misfortune to lose his eldest son, Clement, who fell in France after brilliantly distinguishing himself. Lord Redesdale, now almost stone-deaf, found companionship and consolation in literature; he began a book which was to be called Veluvana', and he threw himself ardently into the study of Dante. Having reached his eightieth year in full mental activity, he died at Batsford 17 August 1916. What he had written of 'Veluvana', and some other fragments, were edited by the present writer in 1917. He had five sons and four daughters and was succeeded as second baron by his second son, David Bertram Ogilvy (born 1878).
Lord Redesdale was an extremely lucky man, and deserved his good fortune. Few persons of our time have been accomplished in so many directions. He did many things, and most of them well; none of them, perhaps, superlatively well, since he lacked one gift, concentration. If he had devoted himself entirely to the diplomacy of his early years, to the arboriculture of his middle life, or to the literature of his old age, he might have made a more substantial impression on posterity. But, in spite of all his intelligence and his ardour, he remained an amateur—a very brilliant amateur indeed, but not a professional expert in anything. He reached his highest level as a writer, for his style was elegant, firm, and individual, though occasionally a little slip-shod. After the age of sixty-five, carefully and earnestly as a man may write without previous training, he lacks the craftsman's hand. As a human being, Lord Redesdale was a sort of Prince Charming; with his fine features, sparkling eyes, erect and elastic figure, and, in the last years, his burnished silver curls, he was a universal favourite, a gallant figure of a gentleman, solidly English in reality, but polished and sharpened by travel and foreign society. To see him stroll down Pall Mall, exquisitely dressed, his hat a little on one side, with a smile and a nod for every one, was to watch the survival of a type never frequent and now extinct. His autobiography, which will long be read and always be referred to, will preserve the memory of a man who was vivid and spirited beyond most of his fellows, and whose eighty years were brimful of vivacious experience.
Edinburgh Review, April 1913; Lord Redesdale, Memories, 1915 (portrait); personal knowledge. ]