23 December: Boreham on Laurence Oliphant

A Quick Change Artist
Laurence Oliphant, one of the most voluminous, vivacious, and versatile writers of the nineteenth century, was beyond the shadow of a doubt, the most famous jack-of-all-trades this period produced. Today is the anniversary of his death but, a century ago, he was just embarking on his amazing career.[1] He was a traveller, a barrister, a big-game hunter, a philosopher, a member of Parliament, a philanthropist, a diplomatist, a filibuster, a mystic conspirator, an author, a farmer, a war correspondent, a man about town, a rebel, and a hundred things besides. His friends regarded him as a most sensational surprise packet. Nobody knew what next he would say or do. They only knew that, whatever it was, it would be the thing that was least expected.

His boyhood struck the keynote of his life. The son of Sir Anthony Oliphant, the judge, the child spent his infancy in South Africa, his early school days in England, and his later school days in Ceylon. The overland and overseas journeys involved in these gipsyings were much more exciting and romantic in those days than they are in these. The process of knocking about on the craziest craft and mingling with the quaintest characters implanted in the lad his first cravings for a life of ceaseless movement and hectic adventure.

He was still in his teens when, in the middle of the nineteenth century the air of Europe became fevered with the spirit of revolt. All peoples were thrown into a seething ferment of unrest. Nations were trembling; governments were crumbling; thrones were tottering. Men breathlessly awaited the spark that should set the world ablaze. The youth and temperament of Laurence Oliphant rendered him singularly susceptible to the inflammatory influences that so quickly swept him off his feet.

Life In The Woods And The Wilds
If history teaches one thing more clearly than another, it is that adventure dogs the footsteps of adventurous spirits. Having spent a year or two in continental travel with Sir Anthony and Lady Oliphant, Laurence dutifully applied himself to legal studies and was called to the Bar. Sir Anthony being reappointed to Ceylon, Laurence agreed to accompany his father as private secretary and it really looked as if his days of agitation and ferment were over.
Just at that moment, however, the Bakers—Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Valentine Baker—went out and inaugurated that exciting expedition among elephants, buffalo, crocodiles, and the like which Sir Samuel has so vividly and thrillingly outlined in the volumes that have now become classics. Nothing, of course, would do but that the dashing young advocate must toss aside his wig and gown, his pens and parchment, in order to seize a gun and join the hunting party.

Returning to his father's roof, Laurence found Jung Bahadur there. The two men fell in love with each other at once, and when Jung prepared to leave on a perilous expedition to Nepal, he insisted that Laurence must accompany him. He did; and the elephant drives, the tiger hunts, and the skirmishes with bandits, head-hunters, and outlaws suggested to the young man a new idea. Why not commit these picturesque scenes to paper? No sooner said than done; and thus he found himself launched on yet another phase of his strangely variegated career.

During the next few years we catch glimpses of him in almost every latitude. He is attached to diplomatic missions, sent hither and thither by leading newspapers and by all kinds of people; appointed to undertake delicate and hazardous duties in all quarters of the globe. He represented "The Times," on the shores of the Black Sea; he served as private secretary to Lord Elgin in Washington, and as secretary to the Legation at Tokio. He acted as war correspondent through the inglorious hostilities in the Crimea, through the Indian Mutiny, through the Chinese War, through the operations under Garibaldi, through the Polish insurrection, and through the Franco-Prussian war.

Showed Skill In Handling Difficult Men
In 1865, at the age of 36, he introduced a spice of variety into the monotony of ceaseless excitement by offering himself as a candidate for Parliament. His striking appearance and colourful record won for him the coveted seat and he actually entered the House. But he found it an intolerable boredom, was seldom in his place, and never again wooed the suffrages of the electors. In spite of all this, however, Laurence Oliphant took life very seriously.

It has been the fashion to regard him as merely a harum-scarum, hot-blooded, ill-balanced, hare-brained adventurer. He was much more. Gifted with a swift and acute perception, a cool and steady judgment, and an extraordinary degree of tact in dealing with difficult people and intricate situations, he often rendered his country extremely valuable service.

Lord Elgin was one of the shrewdest and most able of Queen Victoria’s ambassadors, and Lord Elgin invariably displayed intense anxiety to have Laurence Oliphant somewhere handy at awkward moments. He relied implicitly on the younger man's penetrating insight, sound sense, and skilful diplomacy. The most eminent statesmen of the period sought Oliphant's counsel concerning international complications, and the most illustrious personages in the land revelled in his friendship. When Prince of Wales, King Edward the Seventh met Oliphant in Vienna, and from that moment until Oliphant’s death in 1888, complete confidence subsisted between the two.

Although he scoured all the continents and ranged all the oceans, he was never entirely satisfied with the things that met his outward eye. He used to say that the unseen was far more real to him than any material things. And, as the chimes were preparing to ring their Christmas peals in 1888, he quitted the shadows that had always intrigued him for the substances that lured him into the Great Unknown.

F W Boreham

Image: Laurence Oliphant

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on October 27, 1951.