Germany was favoured by M. Caillaux, Bertie understood at, once that the effect would be to subordinate France to Germany and to make of France, under German influence, an instrument of anti-British designs. He stood by France throughout the Agadir crisis of July 1911, and subsequently combated the French and German tendencies which sought to estrange France from England during the years 1912 and 1913. In so doing he made not a few enemies; but in all sections of French society—from the aristocratic Faubourg Saint-Germain to the Republican Left—his personal influence was such that succeeding French governments constantly sought his advice.
In the crisis of July 1914 Bertie’s apparent imperturbability was severely tested. As late as 27 July he felt confident that France would not go to war on account of Serbia, even if Russia did so. When war came, he hoped (3 August) that Great Britain would give naval aid to France without taking part in the land war. His dispatches show little trace of the ordeal through which he was passing. Down to his retirement in April 1918 he remained a fixed and constant element in the ebb and flow of the military and political intercourse that was carried on through other than diplomatic channels. For a long period he suffered from the subtle opposition of the semi-official British personages in Paris who supplied sundry British ministers with special information. He resigned, owing to ill-health, in April 1918, and left Paris in June. He died suddenly in London, after a short illness, 26 September 1919.
Few diplomatists of the first rank ever sought public recognition less than Bertie, or disliked it more. He respected neither persons nor reputations until personal experience had enabled him to judge of them. His mind was shrewd and his language blunt, his demeanour hearty without effusiveness, and his uprightness unfailing. Lord Grey of Fallodon, his chief from 1906 to 1916, wrote in the preface to Bertie’s Diary: ‘He had the gift of making himself trusted, and he had it in a rare degree.... The Foreign Office in London felt sure that a friendly policy with France would be carried out, with him as its intermediary, in the most efficient and wholesome manner.’ M. Clemenceau, who placed implicit trust in him, gave him, on his retirement, such proofs of esteem on behalf of France as a British ambassador can rarely have received.
Bertie was created K.C.B. in 1902, G.C.M.G. in 1904, G.C.B. in 1908, and a privy councillor in 1903. He also received the grand cordon of the French legion of honour. He was raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Bertie, of Thame, in 1915, and advanced to a viscounty on his retirement in 1918. He married in 1874 Lady Feodorowna Cecilia (died 1920), daughter of Henry Richard Charles Wellesley, first Earl Cowley [q.v.], by whom he had one son, Vere Frederick (born 1878), who succeeded his father as second viscount.
The diary which Lord Bertie kept in Paris during the years of the European War was edited by Lady Algernon Gordon Lennox under the title of The Diary of Lord Bertie of Thame, 1914-1918, 2 volumes (1924).
[Lord Bertie’s Diary; British Documents on the Origins of the War, vol. xi, ed. J. W. Headlam-Morley, 1926; personal knowledge.]
BETHAM-EDWARDS, MATILDA BARBARA (1836-1919), novelist and writer on French life. [See Edwards.]
BIDDULPH, Sir ROBERT (1835—1918), general, was born in London 26 August 1835, the second son of Robert Biddulph, M.P., J.P., of Ledbury, Herefordshire, by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of the philanthropist, George Palmer, M.P. [q.v.], of Nazing Park, Essex. He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1850, and passed into the Royal Artillery in 1853. In the following year he went to the Crimea and was engaged in the battles of Alma and Balaclava and the siege of Sebastopol. In the Indian Mutiny Biddulph was on the staff of Sir Colin Campbell as brigade major during the siege and capture of Lucknow. At this period he first met Garnet (afterwards Viscount) Wolseley, with whom he formed a life-long friendship. After Lucknow he joined the staff of Sir James Hope Grant [q.v.] as deputy assistant adjutant-general, Oudh field force, and, with the rank of captain, accompanied his chief to China in 1860. He was engaged in all the actions of the campaign which terminated in the fall of Peking. He subsequently returned to India, and was promoted major in 1861 and three years later lieutenant-colonel.
Biddulph returned to England in 1865 and served as assistant boundary commissioner for the Reform Act (1867). In 1871 he was summoned from the staff at Woolwich to be private secretary to Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Cardwell,
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