Henry Drummond Wolff

Not to be confused with Henry Drummond Wolff (Basingstoke MP).

Sir Henry Drummond Wolff

Sir Henry Drummond Charles Wolff GCB GCMG PC (12 October 1830 – 11 October 1908), known as Henry Drummond Wolff, was an English diplomat and Conservative Party politician, who started as a clerk in the Foreign Office.

Background

Wolff was born in Malta, the son of Joseph Wolff and Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole, daughter of Horatio Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford. His father was a missionary who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism and then Anglicanism, and his mother was the niece of Prime Minister Robert Walpole.

Wolff was educated at Rugby School.

Political and diplomatic career

Caricature from Punch, 1882

Caricature by Ape published in Vanity Fair in 1874.

Wolff sat in parliament for Christchurch from 1874 to 1880 and for Portsmouth from 1880 to 1885. Whilst MP for Christchurch he lived in Boscombe, where he developed the Boscombe Spa estate, and he played an active role in the public life of Bournemouth. In 1870 he presented Bournemouth Rowing Club with a four-oared racing boat. He was one of the group known as the Fourth Party.

In 1885 he went on a special mission to Constantinople and Egypt in connection with the Eastern Question, and as a result various awkward difficulties, hinging on the Sultan's suzerainty, were addressed. Wolff negotiated a settlement whereby Britain and Turkey would each appoint a commissioner to Egypt to help the khedive's government conduct reforms of the army and the government. Wolff then assumed the role of British high commissioner in Egypt from 1885 to 1887. He was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Teheran in 1888, a post he held until 1891, and was then Ambassador to Madrid from 1892 to 1900.

Wolff was a notable raconteur and aided the Conservative Party by helping to found the Primrose League. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1862 for various services abroad. He was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in 1878 and made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in 1889.

As the British Minister of Iran, he used his position to influence Nasir al-Din Shah to grant a concession of full monopoly over Iran's tobacco industry to his friend, Major G. F. Talbot (20 March 1890). This concession resulted in the Tobacco Protest of 1891 and is generally considered to mark the beginning of social unrest and clear Islamic clerical influence leading up to the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Personal life

Wolff's only daughter, Lucas Cleeve, was a novelist. Her son Algernon Kingscote was a notable tennis player. Wolff's grandson Henry Maxence Cavendish Drummond Wolff was briefly the Conservative Member of Parliament for Basingstoke.

He died at Brighton, one day before his 78th birthday.

In popular culture

Wolff was portrayed by Charles Lloyd-Pack in the 1974 Thames TV mini-series Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Wolff, Joseph". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 774–775.

External links

• Works by or about Henry Drummond Wolff at the Internet Archive
• Works by Henry Drummond Wolff at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by or about Henry Drummond Wolff at Wikisource
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Henry Drummond Wolff
• Sir Henry Drummond Wolff (1908). Rambling Recollections. Macmillan and co., limited. p. 1. Henry Drummond Wolff.
• Henry Drummond Wolff (1892). Some Notes of the Past. W. Clowes and Sons, Limited Printed for private circulation. p. 1. Henry Drummond Wolff.