Servants of Diplomacy: A Domestic History of the Victorian Foreign Office 9781350159167, 9781350159181, 9781350159150

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Servants of Diplomacy

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Servants of Diplomacy A Domestic History of the Victorian Foreign Office Keith Hamilton

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Keith Hamilton, 2021 Keith Hamilton has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Terry Woodley Cover image: Front view of the old Foreign Office on Downing Street, London, England, prior to its demolition in the 1860s. Granger Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permissions for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-5916-7 ePDF: 978-1-3501-5915-0 eBook: 978-1-3501-5917-4 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.



To Kathy for putting up with this and me

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Contents Preface List of abbreviations

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Introduction: An office of class and classification 1 1 Keepers of the Office: Accommodation and domestic staff, 1782–1868 13 2 Keepers of the papers: The Librarian’s Department, 1801–68 39 3 Carriers of the papers: The King’s/Queen’s Messengers, 1795–1858 77 4 Adjusting to the new: Accommodation and domestic staff, 1868–1914 115 5 Managing the past: The Librarian’s Department, 1868–1914 155 6 Delivering the message: The foreign service messengers, 1858–1914 193 Conclusion: An office of distinction and domesticity 217 Bibliography Index

223 232

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Preface This book is about the Foreign Office. It is not about foreign policy. Nor for that matter does it have much to say about such traditional diplomatic skills as negotiation, reporting and representation. Rather, it is concerned with individuals who, though they served the needs of diplomacy, were not generally accepted as part of the Office’s regular clerical establishment. Amongst these were the department’s domestic servants, its archivists and librarians, and its home and foreign service messengers. They were functionaries with whose histories I became more familiar when thirty years ago I left academe to join what was then the Historical Branch of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO’s) Library and Records Department (since renamed FCO Historians). A request for a brief history of the Librarian’s Department and my later involvement in editing and contributing to a collection of essays on the suppression of the slave trade further stimulated my interest in those who, like the clerks of the Slave Trade Department, enjoyed neither the grading nor the career prospects of their colleagues in the Office’s geopolitical divisions. There were also, it seemed, tales about accommodation and working conditions in Victorian Whitehall which deserved an airing. Retirement offered me the opportunity to explore these further. But what began as a recreational romp through the archives has since veered towards a more detailed examination of the impact of administrative reform, technological advances and an expanding diplomatic agenda upon the ranking, remuneration and responsibilities of specialist and subordinate staff. The result has been a sort of bottom-up history of those in the Foreign Office’s employ who lived and laboured not just below stairs, but upstairs, on the stairs and down the road. Much of what follows is based upon Crown Copyright documents available at the National Archives, Kew, which I have cited and quoted from in accordance with the Open Government Licence. With the kind cooperation of Professor Patrick Salmon, the FCO’s chief historian, I have likewise drawn upon the records of the Librarian’s Department of the Foreign Office. I am also grateful to the staff of the British Library for assisting my access to the Aberdeen, Canning, Ellis, Granville and Hardwicke Papers in its possession; to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for facilitating my use of the Clarendon Papers in its custody and possession; and to the London Metropolitan Archives, City of London, for granting permission to reference correspondence in its Willoughby Maycock Collection. My thanks are no less due to the Deputy Keeper of the Records, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, for permission to cite and quote from the Lenox-Conyngham and Pakenham Papers; to the archivists of the University of Southampton in respect of the Broadlands Papers; to the present Lord Malmesbury in respect of the papers of the 3rd Earl of Malmesbury in the custody of Hampshire Record Office; and to Elizabeth Dunn of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and

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Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, who responded so promptly to my request for a copy of correspondence in the John Backhouse Papers. Finally, I should like to thank my former colleagues at FCO Historians for their assistance and forbearance, particularly Richard Smith, on whom I have inflicted too many of my chapter drafts for comment and correction, and Nevil Hagon, who has sought out and retrieved printed works unavailable elsewhere. I am also indebted to Professor Geoff Berridge of the University of Leicester for his advice, and to Michael Kandiah of the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, Alastair Noble of the Ministry of Defence’s Air Historical Branch, and two other friends, Effie Pedaliu and Jimmy Athanassiou, for their encouragement and support. All errors of fact and interpretation are, of course, my own. Keith Hamilton St Vitus’s Day, 2020

Abbreviations BL DU FCO FO GER GPO HC HRO LD LMA PRO PRONI TNA UoS

British Library Duke University Foreign and Commonwealth Office Foreign Office Great Eastern Railway General Post Office House of Commons Hampshire Record Office Librarian’s Department (Foreign Office) London Metropolitan Archives Public Record Office Public Record Office of Northern Ireland The National Archives University of Southampton

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Introduction An office of class and classification

The staff of the Foreign Office consists of a Secretary of State, two Under-Secretaries of State, one of whom is a permanent officer, while the other is changeable with each successive Administration; an Assistant Under-Secretary of State, who is also a permanent officer; and Clerks in their several classes. Foreign Office memorandum, 11 December 18691 You have got three social classes apparently at the Foreign Office. Robert William Hanbury (Conservative MP), 13 November 18892 The secretary of state, his undersecretaries and their clerks were far from being the sole occupants of the nineteenth-century Foreign Office. As servants of the Crown they themselves were served by individuals, some whose duties were administrative and intellectual, and others whose labours were primarily domestic and mechanical. The department’s full establishment thus included librarians, who acted as archivists, publicists and researchers; translators of foreign languages; and bookbinders and printers of official correspondence and parliamentary papers. There were also porters and home and foreign service messengers; housekeepers, their maidservants, charladies and cooks; door- and office-keepers; coal porters and lamplighters; and in the latter half of the century these were joined by telegraph clerks, typists and telephonists. In the 1900s there must even have been a bartender, though he or she was not officially so designated. Two of the Office’s librarians, Lewis Hertslet and his son, Edward, are through their published works already well known to diplomatic historians, and the messengers, more especially those who braved the hazards of continental travel in times of war and revolution, have figured in memoirs and recollections and been the subject of at least two substantial monographs.3 Yet, despite there being no lack of documentary sources, little has been written about the Office’s domestic staff, who, while they functioned within a diplomatic milieu, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Librarian’s Department (LD), General (Gen.), Foreign Office (FO), Organisation, Discipline, etc., 1844-1932, memo. respecting the System under which the Business of the British Foreign Office is conducted, 11 December 1869. 2 Fourth Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Civil Establishments in the Different Offices of State at Home and Abroad (c 6172) (London, 1890), minutes, para. 26,660. 3 V. Wheeler-Holohan, The History of the King’s Messengers (New York, 1934); and P. Scott Cady, The English Royal Messengers Service, 1685–1750: An Institutional Study (Lewiston, 1999). 1

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seemed sometimes to belong more to the world fictionalized by Dickens than to that which Castlereagh and Canning helped shape. The department’s housekeeper and its senior officekeeper had managerial responsibilities and were by the standards of their day adequately accommodated and rewarded. They were, however, clearly a class apart from the undersecretaries and clerks. So likewise, the librarian and his assistants, though central to the business of the Office, were considered specialists with specific records-related duties, and they were never properly accepted as part of the regular clerical establishment. And the King’s (later Queen’s) Messengers, who until the 1850s fell under the librarian’s superintendence and upon whom two other secretaries of state also depended for the safe delivery of their correspondence, were frequently beset by disputes over their occupational and social status. Historians, foremost amongst them Valerie Cromwell, Ray Jones, C. R. Middleton, Keith Neilson, T. G. Otte and Zara Steiner, have already examined in detail the transformation of the Foreign Office from a coterie of scribes into a modern policymaking and managing elite. This work focuses not upon the higher echelons of the Office, but upon the librarians, the messengers and those more generally classed as the department’s subordinate staff. Their working lives cannot, however, be understood without first reviewing briefly the bureaucracy they served and its evolution in response to the expansion of diplomacy, the exigencies of war and peacemaking, and the requirements of a reform-minded Treasury and seemingly penny-pinching politicians. Like the Home Office, the Foreign Office only emerged as a separate government department in 1782. Throughout most of the eighteenth century the administration of Britain’s external relations was geographically divided between two secretaries of state, one each for the Northern and Southern Department, both of whom had additional domestic administrative responsibilities. King George III’s desire for greater efficiency in government, Parliament’s quest for economy, inter-ministerial rivalry, and the abolition of the office of secretary of state for the colonies in the wake of Britain’s defeat by French and American forces at Yorktown in October 1781 seem to have finally occasioned structural change.4 In any event, on 29 March 1782 the radical Whig politician Charles James Fox despatched a circular to British envoys abroad which announced that following the resignation of Lord Stormont, the secretary of state for the Northern Department, the king had appointed Fox as one of ‘His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State’, and at the same time had made a ‘new arrangement in the Departments by conferring that for Domestick Affairs and the Colonies on the Earl of Shelburne, and entrusting me with the sole Direction of the Department for Foreign Affairs’.5 His office, situated in the premises of the former Northern Department in Cleveland Row, St James’s, was by later standards a very small affair, made up of two undersecretaries, one of whom was Fox’s political ally, the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan; a chief clerk; seven senior and junior clerks; two chamber- or office-keepers;

C. R. Middleton, The Administration of British Foreign Policy, 1782–1846 (Durham, 1977), p. 10. British Library (BL), Hardwicke Papers, Add. MS 35525, Fox to Sir Robert M. Keith, despt. No. 1, 29 March 1782. R. R. Nelson, The Home Office, 1782–1801 (Durham, 1969), pp. 4–7.

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 Introduction 3 and a housekeeper and her maid- and man-servants. To these were added during the next four years two more clerks, a doorkeeper and an office porter.6 The Foreign Office was subsequently relocated, first in September 1786 to the site of the Old Cockpit in Whitehall and then in December 1793 to houses leased on, and adjoining, the south side of Downing Street. There it remained until 1861 when for seven years it was housed temporarily in Whitehall Gardens while awaiting the completion of the north-west corner of George Gilbert Scott’s new public offices in Whitehall, a multi-departmental entity the whole of which now constitutes the Main Building of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.7 Institutionally distinct from the country’s diplomatic service, the department’s business, as defined by Jeremy Sneyd, its first chief clerk, was that of conducting ‘correspondence with all Foreign Courts, negotiating with the Ambassadors or Ministers of all the Foreign Courts in Europe, as well as of the United States of America’, making and receiving applications and representations to and from them, and corresponding with other departments of state.8 The supervision of this work was the primary function of the undersecretaries. Usually there were two, but between 1783 and 1789 there was only one, and during two brief periods in the 1820s there were three. In time it became customary to replace just one of the undersecretaries on a change of ministry and the longest-serving was considered senior. Nevertheless, while senior undersecretaries, such as Joseph Planta (1817–27), assumed increasing responsibility for official arrangements, they were slow to claim permanence, and it was only following John Backhouse’s appointment in 1827 that the term ‘permanent under-secretary’ came gradually into use. Backhouse’s impermanent colleagues were political appointees, and as spokesmen for the Office in the Commons in an age when foreign secretaries sat almost exclusively in the Lords, they were eventually labelled ‘parliamentary’. Meanwhile, under Backhouse and his successor, a former envoy to Spain, Henry Unwin ‘Pumpy’ Addington (1842–54), the authority of the permanent undersecretary over senior staff in matters of departmental organization was clearly established.9 Addington, the nephew of the Tory statesman Lord Sidmouth, was unduly pessimistic when in December 1845 he questioned whether ‘as a Gentleman’ he could remain undersecretary if his friend, the foreign secretary Lord Aberdeen, were succeeded by his erstwhile critic, Lord Palmerston.10 But it was not until Edmund Hammond’s tenure (1854–73) that the permanent undersecretary began to assume more of an advisory function, with the incumbent very often singlehandedly directing the current business of the Office. Later appointees, Lord Tenterden J. M. Collinge (ed.), Office Holders in Modern Britain, vol. 8, Foreign Office Officials 1782–1870 (London, 1979), pp. 17–18, 50–4. 7 S. Foreman, From Palace to Power: An Illustrated History of Whitehall (Brighton, 1995), pp. 76–82. 8 V. Cromwell, ‘The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’, The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World (London, 1982), ed. Z. Steiner, pp. 541–73. 9 Middleton, Administration, pp. 123–50. See also: Middleton, ‘John Backhouse and the Origins of the Permanent Undersecretaryship for Foreign Affairs: 1828–1842’, Journal of British Studies, xiii/2 (1974), pp. 24–45. 10 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Pakenham Papers, MIC 537/4, T3763/H/15/19, Addington to R. Pakenham, letter, 2 December 1845. Palmerston had been particularly critical of Addington when he was previously British minister in Madrid. University of Southampton (UoS), Broadlands Papers., PP/GC/CA/259, Palmerston to Stratford Canning, letter, 24 May 1833. 6

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(1873–82), Sir Julian Pauncefote (1882–9), Sir Philip Currie (1889–93) and Sir Thomas Sanderson (1894–1906), made what they wanted of the post. The next two, Sir Charles Hardinge (1906–10 and 1916–20) and Sir Arthur Nicolson (1910–16), were career diplomats. The former gained credit from the implementation of reforms initiated by his predecessor, while the latter struggled with their consequences. They all presided over a continuing expansion in the workload of the Office and concomitant changes in its structure and procedures. Thus, in 1858 James Murray was promoted to the new post of assistant undersecretary, and in 1874, prior to his succeeding Tenterden, Pauncefote was appointed legal assistant undersecretary. By 1895 the Office had three assistant undersecretaries, each exercising a supervisory role over the clerks in their administrative and political departments.11 Those who made up the clerical staff of ‘Mr Fox’s Office’ were for the most part little more than amanuenses. Only the first of their number, the chief clerk, had duties which allowed him to play a significant role in the overall administration of the Office. He was responsible for the department’s finances: he oversaw its accounts, initially collecting revenues from fees levied for the signing of warrants and the securing of commissions for diplomats and consuls, and from these paying the personnel. But in this capacity, Sneyd’s successors, though often instrumental in domestic and disciplinary matters, became increasingly remote from the political business of the Office, heading a division whose clerical employees were specially recruited and more skilled in bookkeeping than diplomacy.12 The adoption of new Treasury auditing procedures in 1866 led to a thorough reorganization of its staffing, and by 1881 the then chief clerk, Francis Alston, had under him no less than ten designated clerks.13 As for the other clerks, those of the regular establishment, their work was largely confined to managing the Office’s correspondence: copying, ciphering, registering, seeking out and making fair drafts of despatches and other papers. Their formal hours of employment were hardly onerous. In the 1790s their presence was required from 11.00 am till 4.00 pm (put back in 1822 to 12.00 noon to 5.00 pm) daily, and on foreign-post nights till 8.00 pm or until business was complete. They could, nevertheless, be kept at their desks late into the evening, especially during Palmerston’s tenure as foreign secretary in the 1830s and 1840s, and they could not escape the need to work at home before the Office opened. Indeed, a considerable increase in paperwork during the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars resulted in the appointment of more of their number and a reordering of the establishment, so that, despite parliamentary appeals for retrenchment, in 1822 the Office included four senior clerks, four second-class clerks, six third-class or junior clerks, and three supernumeraries.14 Even then the Office was clearly understaffed to

V. Cromwell and Z. Steiner, ‘The Foreign Office before 1914: A Study in Resistance’, Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth-Century Government (London, 1972), ed. G. Sutherland, pp. 167–94. On the office of permanent undersecretary and its holders see: Keith Neilson and T. G. Otte, The Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1854–1946 (Abingdon, 2009). 12 Middleton, Administration, pp. 154–7. J. Tilley, London to Tokyo (London, 1942), pp. 79–80. 13 R. Jones, The Nineteenth-Century Foreign Office: An Administrative History (London, 1971), pp. 95–101. 14 Middleton, Administration, pp. 179–81. 11

 Introduction 5 cope with a trebling in consular and diplomatic correspondence between 1825 and 1840.15 The clerks, whose promotion was most usually, though not invariably, on the basis of seniority rather than merit, gradually began to work under one or other of the undersecretaries, and then only on correspondence relating to specific countries or groups of countries. Thus, by the 1850s the Office already had five geopolitical departments, headed by senior clerks and with four of them under the supervision of the permanent undersecretary. In 1882 these were reduced to three: the Western (Europe), the Eastern (Europe) and the American and Asiatic Departments. The first recognizable divisions were, however, like the Chief Clerk’s Department, administrative rather than political.16 They also tended to draw their employees from outside the regular establishment. The Librarian’s Department, essentially the Office’s records division, might be said to have come into existence with the appointment in 1801 of Richard Ancell, formerly a clerk in the State Paper Office, as librarian. But since the department then consisted of no more than Ancell and his teenage assistant, it was in the first instance hardly a department at all. Even in 1839 there were, besides the librarian, only his deputy and a clerk. Likewise, the Slave Trade Department, which managed the correspondence relating to British efforts to suppress the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans, emerged in piecemeal fashion under James Bandinel. He was promoted to a senior clerkship in 1822, but his department, which by 1830 was the largest single division of the Office under a senior clerk, was considered a temporary expedient, and until 1854 its staff were, along with those in the Librarian’s Department, recruited on inferior pay scales and with poorer prospects of promotion than their established colleagues.17 Another branch, the Treaty and Royal Letter Department, which was formally created in 1825 and which prepared treaties for ratification and presentation to Parliament, was similarly headed by a senior clerk, aided until 1841 by a non-established assistant. By contrast, the Consular Department, which was formed following Parliament’s reorganization of the consular service in 1825, was headed by the first of the senior clerks, John Bidwell Sr., with a clerk of the regular establishment as his assistant. Four decades later, in 1866, the department, which had by then acquired what the Treasury termed a supplemental or supplementary clerk for the registering and keeping of its papers, was merged with the newly established Commercial Department. Further administrative permutations would see it united with the Slave Trade Department and included in 1883 in a renamed Consular and African Department.18 K. Bourne, ‘The Foreign Office under Palmerston’, The Foreign Office 1782–1982 (Frederick, MD, 1984), ed. R. Bullen, pp. 19–45. 16 Z. Steiner, ‘The Old Foreign Office: From Secretarial Office to Modern Department of State’, Publications de l’Ecole Française de Rome (1981), pp. 177–95. 17 K. Hamilton, ‘Zealots and Helots: The Slave Trade Department of the Nineteenth-Century Foreign Office’, Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807–1975 (Brighton, 2009), eds. K. Hamilton and P. Salmon, pp. 20–41. 18 Middleton, Administration, pp. 193–201. Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 84–94. Hamilton, ‘Zealots and Helots’, pp. 30–6. T. G. Otte, ‘“A Kind of Black Hole”? Commercial Diplomacy before 1914’, The Foreign Office: Commerce and British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (London, 2016), eds. J. Fisher, E. G. H. Pedaliu and R. Smith, pp. 25–68. 15

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During the first half-century of its existence, reforms instituted at the Foreign Office may, as Charles Middleton has argued, have been ‘almost always the direct result of pressures within the department’.19 Yet, developments in other government departments were bound to affect those in the Foreign Office’s employ. In 1782 the King’s Messengers served the home and foreign secretaries. War with France led in 1794 to the appointment of a third secretary of state, and from 1795 the messengers attended all three of their respective offices. Then in 1801 the War Office assumed responsibility for Britain’s overseas possessions and, following the restoration of peace in 1814–15 and the consequential shift in the department’s administrative focus, it was as colonial secretary rather than as secretary of state for war that in 1824 Lord Bathurst participated in the restructuring of the messenger corps. Located in adjacent houses at the western end of Downing Street, the occupants of the Colonial Office shared with their close neighbours the deficiencies of shoddily built properties, designed for family rather than official life.20 However, of far greater significance for the staff of both offices was the rise of the Treasury as the department through which Parliament oversaw government expenditure and which emerged as a primary instrument of change and restraint in the management and organization of public services. Through its participation in interdepartmental committees of enquiry, the Treasury sought to influence the composition and workings of other offices, promoting conformity in matters such as pay, pensions and recruitment. Perhaps the best known of these Treasury-inspired interventions were those associated with the report completed in November 1853 by Sir Stafford Northcote, a former legal secretary to the Board of Trade, and Sir Charles Trevelyan, the Treasury’s assistant secretary. A reformist manifesto, it advocated recruitment by open examination, the establishment of a unified home civil service, promotion by merit and the introduction of a hierarchy of grades separating mechanical from intellectual endeavour.21 While such ideas had little immediate impact on the Foreign Office’s domestic servants, their application worked to the disadvantage of a messenger service still adjusting to the pressures of the railway age, and eventually furnished the under-appreciated clerks of the Librarian’s Department with grounds for pressing, albeit with only limited success, for redress and promotion. Prior to the publication of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report and the introduction of competitive examinations for entrants to the Foreign Office, appointments were usually determined more by patronage than proven ability. Thereafter, candidates for examination still had to be nominated by the foreign secretary, and the successful ones joined a tight-knit clerical establishment drawn in large part from the upper ranks of society.22 Yet, despite John Bright’s oft-cited jibe that the British foreign policy was Middleton, Administration, p. 154. D. M. Young, The Colonial Office in the Early Nineteenth Century (London, 1961), pp. 8–22, 124–7. 21 HC. Report on the Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service (London, 1854). M. Wright, Treasury Control of the Civil Service 1854-1874 (Oxford, 1969), pp. xii–xvii; ‘Treasury Control 1854-1914’, Sutherland (ed.), Studies, pp. 195–226. 22 Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 41–64; and ‘The Social Structure of the British Diplomatic Service, 18151914’, Histoire Sociale-Social History, xiv/27 (1981), pp. 49–66. Z. Steiner, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898-1914 (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 16–20; and ‘Elitism and Foreign Policy: The Foreign Office before the Great War’, Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy, 1895-1939 19 20

 Introduction 7 ‘neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy’, some of the key figures in the early nineteenth-century Office came from families which were not so much landed as moneyed and/or well connected.23 They were what one historian has aptly described as of the ‘middling sort’.24 Backhouse, the son of a Liverpool merchant, was already in George Canning’s service when Canning was for a second time appointed foreign secretary in 1822; Bandinel, whose family was of Italian origin, was the son of a clergyman and brother of the librarian at the Bodleian in Oxford; Thomas Bidwell Sr., his son Thomas and his nephew and great-nephew, all four of whom rose to prominent positions, had filial links with a Norfolk brewing family; and Lewis Hertslet, the first of another Office dynasty, was the son of a Swiss migrant who had gained employment as a King’s Messenger. Others were of more elevated pedigree. Edward Schencker Scheener, who transferred to the Foreign Office from the government’s Audit Office in 1807, was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Kent and therefore a nephew of Kings George IV and William IV and a half-brother to Queen Victoria.25 His career in the Office was marred by a long-standing dispute over his pay and grading, and much to the distress of his colleagues, he proved to be both literally and metaphorically a right royal bastard.26 In February 1826, having claimed to be the victim of an intrigue to oust him from his post, he clashed openly with a future chief clerk, George Lenox-Conyngham. The latter, a one-legged and fiery Ulsterman, had been crippled some years earlier when, after mounting a coach at Charing Cross, his loaded gun had slipped and discharged its shot into his left thigh.27 His disability did not, however, prevent him from offering an impetuous Scheener ‘satisfaction at a moment’s notice’. Scheener responded by spitting in his challenger’s face, and the ensuing affray ended with Scheener seizing Lenox-Conyngham’s cane, breaking it across his knee, and tossing it in the fire. Canning subsequently directed that Scheener abstain from attending the Foreign Office until further notice, and in 1830, despite the best efforts of his uncle, the heir to the throne, to save him from further ruin, he was compulsorily retired.28



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(Edmonton, Alberta, 1984), eds. B. J. C. McKercher and D. J. Moss, pp. 19–55. T. G. Otte, ‘“Outdoor Relief for the Aristocracy”? European Nobility and Diplomacy, 1850-1914’, The Diplomats’ World: A Cultural History of Diplomacy, 1815-1914 (Oxford, 2008), eds. Markus Mösslang and Torsten Riotte, pp. 23–57. Speech by Bright on 29 October 1858. Speeches on Questions of Public Policy of John Bright, M.P. (2 vols, London, 1869), ed. James E. Thorold Rogers, vol. 2, p. 382. J. Mori, The Culture of Diplomacy: Britain in Europe, c. 1750-1830 (Manchester, 2011), p. 3. In a letter which begins with the salutation ‘My Dear Lord’ and which was probably addressed to the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, the Duke of Clarence, the future King William IV, wrote that he was ‘anxious for the welfare of that Mr Scheener as he is the natural son of the Duke of Kent’. BL, Ellis Papers, Add. Ms 41315, letter from Clarence, 12 August 1823. On one occasion Canning declared that ‘he would rather write and copy every despatch in the Office in his own hand, than employ any longer in confidential services an Individual so wrong-headed, of a nature so suspicious, and of a temper so ungovernable, as Mr. Scheener’s whole correspondence and conduct . . . has shewn him to be’. J. Tilley and S. Gaselee, The Foreign Office (London, 1933), p. 45. E. Hertslet, Recollections of the Old Foreign Office (London, 1901), p. 143. E. Scheener, Statement of Facts Most Respectfully Submitted to His Majesty’s Government 3rd Nov. 1830 (London, 1830). TNA, FO 366/672, depositions at Bow St. Magistrates’ Court of LenoxConyngham and Scheener, 21 February 1826; minute by Canning, 22 February 1826. FO 366/673, Aberdeen to Treasury, letter, 29 March 1830.

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Lenox-Conyngham denounced his assailant as a ‘damned scoundrel and a disgrace to the Office and the character of a Gentleman’.29 Being a gentleman mattered. When in October 1823 an unsatisfactory junior clerk sought transfer to a consulate, Planta urged Canning to ‘give us a real good Gentleman to fill his place in the office’.30 Planta, himself the son of the British Museum’s principal librarian, may possibly have hoped for someone of noble lineage. Yet, by the 1820s the status of ‘gentleman’ had been generally extended to all those above the rank of common tradesmen whose intelligence, manners and refinement allowed them to enjoy the company of educated society. No less important was the possession of means with which to support a lifestyle commensurate with one’s social standing.31 Even those of the Foreign Office’s subordinate staff, who were considered the equivalent of servants of gentlemen and who clearly ranked above the coal porters, charladies and their like, were expected to maintain a certain decorum. The graduated salaries, first introduced in 1795, were not, however, reckoned in themselves sufficiently generous to meet this purpose, and employees of the Office boosted their incomes from a variety of supplementary sources, taking on additional paid duties and responsibilities.32 Lewis Hertslet turned such jobbing into a fine art, thereby expanding his own and his family’s fortune. He thus profited considerably from acting as a financial agent for the messengers he subsequently superintended, and in 1824 he was able to transfer his agency work and accompanying benefits to his brother James, who on retirement passed them on to Lewis’s son Edward. Other clerks collaborated in a similar fashion, acting as private agents for British diplomats, consuls and other representatives of the Office overseas. Thomas Staveley, an otherwise impecunious official, joined with Lenox-Conyngham in what he dubbed ‘our firm’, and during the 1830s he was thereby able to negotiate a £500 bank loan on the security of his prospective agency receipts.33 The system, which involved home-based staff managing the accounts of those serving abroad in return for a fee of one per cent of the salaries and outfit allowances of diplomatic clients and a flat annual charge for other customers, was much criticized in Parliament and the press, and under Treasury pressure was abolished in 1870.34 That it was open to abuse was made only too apparent when, in September 1853, it was discovered that over a period of eighteen months two clerks in the Slave Ibid. H. Temperley, The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822-1827: England, the Neo-Holy Alliance and the New World (London, 1925), pp. 262–3. 30 BL, Canning Papers, Add. Ms 89143/2/7/2, Planta to Canning, letter, 23 October 1823. Emphasis in original. Hammond likewise required his clerks to be ‘gentlemen by birth and habits and feelings’. M. Anderson, ‘Edmund Hammond, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 18541873’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1955, p. 190. 31 As one author argues, ‘It was in the 19th century that the concept [of gentleman] came to be so all-embracing and so demanding and took on with much greater strength its moral overtones.’ P. Mason, The English Gentleman: The Rise and Fall of an Ideal (London, 1993), p. 12. 32 Middleton, Administration, pp. 161–4. 33 PRONI, Lenox-Conyngham Papers, T3161/5/1, Staveley to Lenox-Conyngham, letters, 7 August 1831 and 14 February 1837; Lenox-Conyngham to Staveley, letter, 12 March 1837. 34 Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 26 and 95–9. On the life and misfortunes of one of the most virulent critics of the agency system, see: G. R. Berridge, A Diplomatic Whistleblower in the Victorian Era: The Life and Writings of E. C. Grenville-Murray (Istanbul, 2017), particularly pp. 47–8. 29

 Introduction 9 Trade Department, Charles Parnther and Henry Scott, had misappropriated more than £1,500 from accounts for which they were responsible. Parnther, though dishonest, certainly had the credentials of a gentleman. His father, a barrister, was a friend of Palmerston; he had been educated at Eton and Cambridge; he had played cricket for the MCC; and he had been Bandinel’s principal assistant. However, he had lately been in poor health, and it had taken him ten years to achieve regrading and a very modest improvement in his income. Ironically, in the aftermath of the scandal and the absconding of Parnther and Scott, the Slave Trade Department was, with the Treasury’s concurrence, assimilated into the Office’s regular establishment.35 The reconstitution of the Slave Trade Department was but one of several reforms introduced during Lord Clarendon’s first term as foreign secretary (1853–8). These followed from a Treasury enquiry into the workings of the Foreign Office, but were instigated partly in response to an increase in departmental business, particularly during the Crimean War. They resulted in an expansion in the number of clerks and the Treasury’s reluctant acceptance of a separate class of assistant clerks immediately below that of the senior clerks. By 1858 there were in all some forty-three clerks of the regular establishment, almost the same number as that at the beginning of the twentieth century. But the Foreign Office resisted Treasury efforts to achieve economies through the employment of copyists, or what would later be described as lower- or, from 1890, second-division clerks, to undertake non-intellectual duties. The work of the Foreign Office was, so the argument ran, of such a confidential and so important a nature that it could only be done by clerks who were absolutely trustworthy and therefore gentlemen known to the foreign secretary and properly rewarded according to their class.36 This was not entirely specious. Had Parnther and Scott been better paid, they might not have yielded to temptation. Moreover, the dangers inherent in recruiting copyists seemed adequately demonstrated when on the eve of the Berlin Congress of 1878, Charles Marvin, a journalist employed as a ‘temporary writer’ in the Treaty Department, revealed to the press the substance of an accord secretly negotiated between the foreign secretary Lord Salisbury and the Russian ambassador in London. Tenterden, for one, hoped that in future they would ‘not have to depend on this cheap and untrustworthy class of people’.37 The Office, nevertheless, continued to employ the supplemental clerks of the non-political departments on salary scales inferior to those of the regular establishment. Those in the Librarian’s Department had ready access to confidential papers, and in the early 1870s the Office tried unsuccessfully to win Treasury consent to their upgrading. Indeed, following the Office’s acquiescence in their appointment to the Chief Clerk’s Department and the Commercial and Consular Department, in 1888 four lower-division clerks were recruited to the Librarian’s Department to help cope with its staff shortage. Two years later the Royal Commission on the Civil Establishments (the Ridley Commission) recommended, and the Foreign Office

Hamilton, ‘Zealots and Helots’, pp. 26–30. Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 37–40. 37 Ibid., pp. 24–5 and 104–5. A. Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (London, 1999), pp. 193–4. TNA, FO 363/5, Tenterden to Salisbury, letter, 15 June 1878. 35 36

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eventually accepted, the progressive replacement of the supplemental clerks by those of the second division. The recommendations of the Ridley Commission were very much in line with the Treasury’s endeavour to achieve economies and greater uniformity in the grading and remuneration of civil servants across Whitehall. This affected not only clerks of the Foreign Office but also its foreign and home service messengers. The Office responded with similar arguments about its special needs and responsibilities and the confidentiality of its work. As foreign secretary in the 1830s, Palmerston embarked on what was later regarded as an ill-judged gentrification of the queen’s foreign service messengers. But technological advances, the advent of railways, steamships and the electric telegraph, reduced the Office’s dependence on the messengers’ equestrian skills. The gentlemen may have preferred their horse-drawn chaises, but both the Office and the Treasury looked to make savings from shorter journey times and the consolidation and reduction of messenger allowances. Meanwhile, efforts were made to reduce expenditure on home service messengers, who, though they were employed almost wholly in delivering correspondence within the British Isles, enjoyed the same privileged status as their foreign service colleagues. This again meant challenging Foreign Office exceptionalism, though it might be better understood as the continuation of a process of rationalizing and reorganizing the department’s subordinate staff. The gradual substitution of second-division clerks for those previously classed as supplemental did little to ease a problem which had long beset the Librarian’s Department. Faced with an ever-expanding inflow of correspondence, the department had in its role as the Office’s records division struggled to cope with mounting arrears in its indexing and final registration of documents. The establishment in 1906 of a general registry, staffed by second-division clerks and separate from the library, was intended by over-optimistic reformers to resolve this issue. It was also a key element in a radical restructuring package which allowed for a greater devolution of business and by which, as Sir John Tilley later recalled, ‘the “Office”, as distinct from the Secretary of State, became a body with a highly influential opinion’.38 The bright young men recruited as junior clerks, an increasing number of whom had university degrees, were thereby spared some of those tedious chores which had so preoccupied their predecessors. Instead, they were offered the opportunity to develop their own specialist talents and to take a more active interest in policy-related matters. Those in the Office who served beneath the clerical grades were not so obviously affected by these changes. They, be they officekeepers, doorkeepers, maidservants or porters, belonged to domestic hierarchies whose duties were less clearly defined. For some of them the Foreign Office was both a home and a workplace, and whole families of servants were raised on Downing Street. Their stories are possibly of only marginal interest to diplomatic and political historians. They, nevertheless, offer fresh insights into the administrative and social history of Whitehall. Almost a century ago, in an essay on the Foreign Office, Algernon Cecil described the early and midVictorian age of diplomacy as ‘just easy enough to be agreeable, just ceremonious

Tilley and Gaselee, Foreign Office, p. 161.

38

 Introduction 11 enough to possess distinction, and just industrious enough to do its work’.39 What follows offers a view of life in the Office as seen from a rather different perspective, one in which the more decorative aspects of diplomacy were tempered by dilapidated buildings, malodorous kitchens, malfunctioning lifts and sewers, smoking chimneys and disease-ridden basement apartments. It was one too in which, even amongst gentlemen and their servants, industry, obedience and sobriety were interspersed with bouts of indolence, insolence and intoxication.

A. Cecil, ‘The Foreign Office’, The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783-1919 (3 vols, New York, 1923), eds. A. Ward and G. P. Gooch, vol. 3, p. 599.

39

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1

Keepers of the Office Accommodation and domestic staff, 1782–1868

[T]he buildings now occupied by the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office . . . are inadequate to the present extent of public business, in parts unsafe, and generally in such a state of dilapidation as to render it inexpedient to expend any large sum in their substantial repair. Report from the Select Committee on the Public Offices (Downing Street), 29 July 18391 [T]he office-keepers are absolutely worn out . . . from the straggling state of the office they cannot perform their labour, from the immense length from one end of the office to the other. Thomas Bidwell Jr., chief clerk, 11 July 18392 The early Victorian Foreign Office occupied a less than stately edifice. Following its relocation in December 1793 to Lord Sheffield’s former home on the south side of Downing Street, other neighbouring properties were leased and later purchased from Sir Samuel Fludyer, a wealthy merchant. Then in 1825 the government bought, initially with the object of providing an official residence for the foreign secretary, an adjoining mansion from a shipowner and marine insurance broker, Sir Robert ‘Floating Bob’ Preston.3 It, along with houses accommodating the Colonial Office, formed part of a small square closing off the western end of Downing Street.4 Soon after this addition, the architect Sir John Soane was engaged to oversee necessary structural changes and the construction of a new ground-floor façade, including the replacement of external gas lamps originally fitted in 1817. The building contained some fine rooms: one overlooking St James’s Park in which formal dinners and receptions were hosted and a first-floor salon which until 1856 was used regularly for Cabinet meetings. But there was no disguising the fact that the Office was made up of what had once House of Commons (HC), Report from the Select Committee on Public Offices (Downing Street) with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Plans (London, 1839), p. iii. 2 Ibid., minutes, para. 161. 3 FO 366/672, Planta to Arbuthnot, letters, 22 August and 9 November 1820; Planta to Lushington, letter, 9 June 1825; Herries to Planta, letter, 6 July 1825; Planta to Herries, letter, 5 October 1825. 4 Young, Colonial Office, p. 125. 1

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been six private residences, thrown together and crammed between Downing and Fludyer Streets in a ‘nest of squalid slums’.5 Party walls were knocked through and gloomy chambers were linked by labyrinthine passageways and winding staircases. As one veteran diplomat recalled, it was ‘a thorough picture of disorder, penury and meanness’.6 It was also a building subject to subsidence and decay. The houses, the oldest of which dated from the late seventeenth century, had been built on piles sunk into marshy ground alongside what a government surveyor termed an ‘ancient sewer’. As a result, properties at the eastern extremity of Downing and Fludyer Streets, a dirty public house, the Rose and Crown and a row of third-rate lodging houses used chiefly by Irish and Scottish MPs, were so near collapse that in 1839 they were demolished and the Office’s exposed brickwork shored up with unsightly timber supports.7 The weight of reference books and ever-accumulating volumes of bound despatches and memoranda only added to the problem. Moreover, the Office’s commitment to the circulation of selections of its own and other government correspondence in the form of parliamentary papers and what from 1827 became known as the Confidential Print, plus the desire of foreign secretaries to weed out more easily from any subsequent publication such material as might be considered ‘prejudicial to the public service’, required the in-house employment of a firm of printers, Thomas Harrison and his sons. The vibrations of their presses, installed until the early 1840s in one of the upper storeys, placed a further strain upon the frail fabric of the rickety establishment.8

Residents The sad state of the building was a great inconvenience for those employed there. Surprisingly, Thomas Bidwell Jr., a chief clerk whose management of the Office’s accounts left much to be desired, told a parliamentary select committee in July 1839 that he did not reckon it an impediment to business.9 Walls cracked, while floors sank, doors jammed and ceilings bowed. Wooden presses cluttered corridors, and rooms intended for clerical endeavour served as thoroughfares along which officekeepers scurried, conveying correspondence, attending to the needs of visiting diplomats and Cabinet ministers, and answering the bells of distant senior staff.10 Nevertheless, for the undersecretaries and most of the clerks, Downing Street was solely a place of work Ian Toplis, The Foreign Office: An Architectural History (London, 1987), pp. 10–11. Lord Redesdale, Memories (2 vols, London, 1915), 1, p. 108. FO 366/378, Gas Light and Coke Co. to T. Bidwell Jr., letter, 5 December 1825; T. Edge (Gas Light Co.) to Palmerston, letter, 21 July 1832. 6 H. Rumbold, Recollections of a Diplomatist (2 vols, London, 1902), 1, p. 109. 7 HC, Select Committee on Public Offices (1839), minutes, paras. 1–59. John Thomas Smith, An Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London, with Anecdotes of their more Celebrated Residents (2 vols, London, 1846), I, pp. 180–1. 8 FO 366/673, report by T. Chawner, 17 April 1839, with minute by Palmerston, 22 April 1839. HC, Select Committee on Public Offices (1839), paras. 154–7; Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure (1848), minutes, p. 155; Report of the Select Committee on Foreign Office Re-Construction (1858), minutes, para. 23. 9 HC, Select Committee on Public Offices (1839), minutes, paras. 161–6. PRONI, Lenox-Conyngham Papers, T3161/5/1, Staveley to Lenox-Conyngham, letter, 6 March 1837. 10 FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 14 July 1868. 5

 Keepers of the Office 15 where they rarely gathered before late morning or midday. For others, it was a home or temporary residence. These included two foreign secretaries, George Canning and his successor, Lord Dudley. The former had no central London home of his own and, having found Preston’s house inadequate for his needs, in July 1825 he appropriated for himself and his family eight large rooms, along with basements and attics, in what had been the Foreign Office’s principal building. Their previous occupants, including the chief clerk, the librarian and the printer, were then forced to take refuge in two less than commodious properties which the Office rented on Fludyer Street. By contrast, Dudley was in no need of an official residence and only in January 1828 did he lodge briefly in the Office. But to the dismay of his officials, he then put his park-side apartments at the disposal of his friend, the war and colonial secretary, William Huskisson.11 The same rooms thereafter reverted to clerical use, for as another foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, noted in May 1836, there would otherwise have been ‘insufficient space for the transaction of public business’.12 Palmerston was, however, of the opinion that the Office should have reception rooms capable of taking nearly fifty guests for dinner parties, and his successors were reluctant to relinquish their right to residence since it implied that there should be space available for the entertainment of the wider diplomatic community.13 Meanwhile, the resident clerks, younger men of the establishment who were responsible for opening mail received outside office hours, were accorded bedrooms and a sitting room on the second floor. Other more or less permanent residents, mostly the Office’s domestic staff, were allocated what must have been very cramped quarters extending from the attics to the basement. According to records for the years 1830–1, Mary Urquhart, the housekeeper, shared a room with her servant on the second floor along with three additional attic rooms; Conrath Stahl, the first of the by then three officekeepers, and his servant had a sitting room and bedrooms; and John Venfield, the second officekeeper, had an attic ‘sleeping room’. James Talbot, the office porter (sometimes designated office messenger), his assistant and their families and servants had five ‘apartments’ in the basement and six attics; Andrew Gracewood, the doorkeeper (or door porter), his wife and six children had five attics and a kitchen; and James Kingsbury, who since 1817 had been employed as lamplighter and coal porter, his two children and a ‘female assistant’ had two attics and one room in the basement.14 Domestic staff were usually provided with accommodation when their continuous presence in the Office was considered essential. It was also offered in part payment for their services, and in this respect they were treated in much the same way as servants W. Hinde, George Canning (London, 1973), p. 429. FO 95/9/5, unsigned FO memo, 16 June 1828. FO 366/673, Palmerston to Treasury, letter, 25 May 1836. 13 Toplis, Foreign Office, p. 13. Hampshire Record Office (HRO), Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/55, Malmesbury to J. Manners, letter, 11 February 1859. 14 FO 366/378, return of persons living in the Office by Urquhart, n.d., 1830. HC, Finance Accounts of the United Kingdom in Eight Classes for the Year 1831, Ended 5 January 1832, ‘Royal Palaces and Buildings’, returns, p. 15. An increase in Office business had led to the appointment of a third officekeeper in 1826. FO 366/393, unsigned memo., 13 April 1839. The doorkeeper’s duty, as summarized by a later chief clerk, were to sit all day by the door, ‘pay attention to the people that [went] in and out; to summon Cabinets, and keep an address book’. HC, Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure (1848), minutes, para. 2252. 11 12

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in any private establishment. The housekeeper or ‘necessary woman’, one of the senior figures in the domestic hierarchy, was thus responsible for the general upkeep of the building and for the servants she herself employed. In a return, probably completed at some point during the 1790s, Ann Cheese, who was housekeeper from 1783 to 1805, listed amongst her services the provision of board and wages for one manservant and three maidservants, as well as the buying of cleaning materials and paper for the Office and the hire of extra assistance (outgoings totalling about £50); and in return she received an annual salary of £100. She was paid separately ‘for pumping water to the printing room and eight water closets & cleaning the cistens [sic]’ (£15 4s.), and further supplemented her income from the sale of ‘old pens and bits of tallow candles’ (£19 10s.) and sums received from the ‘Secretarys [sic] and the rest of the gentlemen in the office’ (£13 17s. 6d.).15 The position was an attractive one for a single woman and was on at least two occasions filled by women with personal connections to the foreign secretary. Mary Dassonville, who was housekeeper from 1806 to 1814, was a former maidservant of the courtesan and royal mistress, Elizabeth Armistead. Indeed, she was one of the two witnesses to Armistead’s marriage to Charles James Fox in September 1795.16 It would, therefore, seem no coincidence that it was during Fox’s final brief term as foreign secretary in 1806 that at his direction Dassonville paid Ann Mallet, Cheese’s immediate successor, £350 for relinquishing her appointment.17 Thirty years later, on Mary Urquhart’s death, Ann Watson, the widow of Palmerston’s gardener on his Broadlands estate in Hampshire, was chosen to fill her place.18 As in the country’s diplomatic service, so in the Office’s domestic service, the extended family and its ties counted for much. There were servant dynasties in the making. Gracewood, who was doorkeeper from 1815 to 1851 and whose six children were raised in the Office, had previously served for twelve years as valet and butler to the family of Charles William Stewart, a diplomat and younger half-brother of the foreign secretary, Lord Castlereagh.19 Henry Valentine Cocking and James Samways, both of whom were appointed officekeepers during the 1830s, seem likewise to have owed their positions to they or their friends having been in Palmerston’s domestic service.20 In some instances more than one member of a family were thus employed and their duties shared amongst relatives and personal friends. Thomas Talbot was office porter from 1802 to 1825, and his younger brother, James, who was in the Office’s employ from 1795 to 1843, was, prior to succeeding Thomas, understood to be his deputy. Neither was paid a salary, and only the senior of the two could be regarded as directly answerable to the foreign secretary or his subordinates. But they had rooms in the Office and derived their income from the profits made on the hire of coaches for official use and from perquisites, such as those earned from the sale of certain copies FO 95/591/1, undated return by A. Cheese. FO 366/380, account of monies received and paid by T. Bidwell Sr, 5 January 1796–5 January 1797. 16 I. M. Davis, The Harlot and the Statesman: The Story of Elizabeth Armistead and Charles James Fox (London, 1986), pp. 120–1. 17 FO 366/671, declaration by Mallet and Dassonville, n.d., 1806. 18 K. Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years, 1784-1841 (London, 1982), p. 445. 19 FO 366/393, memorial by Gracewood for Aberdeen, n.d., c. 1829. 20 Bourne, ‘The Foreign Office under Palmerston’, Bullen (ed.), Foreign Office, pp. 26 and n. 43. 15

 Keepers of the Office 17 of the London Gazette, the government’s official newspaper. They were also aided by Edward Spyer, the son of a deceased deputy porter. He, and at some point, his wife, lodged with the Talbots, and he received between £1 and 30s. a week for his services. When Thomas Talbot retired in October 1825 Talbot’s total emoluments were stated as amounting to £300 per annum, on the basis of which he was awarded an annual pension of £150. Thereafter, Spyer continued to work with James Talbot, and a younger man who had been brought up as a member of the Talbot family provided additional assistance.21 In later years, as James Talbot’s health declined, much of the Office’s regular porterage work fell to Spyer and William Greenall, a new recruit to the family enterprise. Gracewood too felt himself in need of extra help. A considerable increase in business and changes in the arrangement of rooms meant that by March 1832 he found his duties ‘multiplying and waring [sic]’. His situation required his constant attendance at the door and, he complained to Palmerston, he was ‘deprived of any comfortable meal with his Family by Day, and of rest by Night; being frequently under the necessity of rising from his bed to attend to the Door’. Backhouse, the permanent undersecretary, was sympathetic to Gracewood’s plight, but reluctant to contemplate hiring a night porter at £25–30 per annum, not least because he felt it undesirable to have yet another person sleeping in the Office. Finally, it was agreed that in return for an additional £14 12s. a year, Kingsbury would share Gracewood’s night duties and stand in for him during his dinner hour. Kingsbury, who, besides being responsible for lighting the Office’s candles, gaslights and oil lamps, had to haul during cold weather each working day by yoke and scuttles approximately half a ton of coal upstairs to fuel some eighty-three fire places, was doubtless pleased at this increase in earnings. His annual salary had previously been £80, and Palmerston thought that with the extra pay he must now ‘have a good Thing of it’.22 He would, however, also be on call for three to four nights a week. Those Office servants who were entitled to accommodation, but who either chose or were compelled to live elsewhere were usually compensated with an annual payment. In 1831 Henry Aspain, an officekeeper, was thus in receipt of £39 a year ‘for loss of Apartments’.23 A more telling case was, however, that of the Talbots, whose temporary removal from the premises was necessitated when in the summer of 1825, building work was undertaken with a view to providing Canning with the space he FO 366/673, Canning to Treasury, letter, 6 November 1826; W. Hill to Planta, letter, 15 December 1826. FO 366/393, ‘Memorandum respecting the Situation of the “Office Messenger” in the Foreign Office’, September 1824 (updated and amended April 1843); statement of Spyer’s duty, n.d. Edward Spyer seems to have been the son of Anthony Spire, the deputy to the Office porter, who died in September 1802. FO 366/671, memorial of Esther Spire, with minute by Hawkesbury, 22 April 1803. 22 FO 366/393, memorial by Gracewood, n.d., 1832; minutes by Backhouse and Palmerston, 3 April 1832. Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 51–2. At a later date Thomas Farmer, one of Kingsbury’s successors as lamplighter and coal porter, also received 1s. a day during the six winter months to enable him to pay for assistance in carrying coals to the different rooms. A decision in 1858 to begin the Office’s working day at 11.00 am, rather than at 12 noon, meant that rooms had to be ready earlier and Farmer had to accomplish in four hours what he had previously done in five. It was agreed that from January 1859 he should be paid 2s. a day for the six winter months and 1s. a day for two more months when the fires were ‘less kept up’. FO 366/675, minutes by Hammond and Malmesbury, 14 January 1859. 23 FO 366/393, return of salaries and emoluments of office-keepers, February 1831. 21

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wanted and the uniting of newly acquired properties with the rest of the Office. In order to remain close by, James Talbot felt compelled to rent, ‘at very considerable cost’, a neighbouring house on Fludyer Street. Yet, as he explained in a memorial, submitted on 8 October in support of his claim for reimbursement, during his near thirty-one years of employment he had been allowed ‘furnished apartments in the Office, together with Coals, Candles and other necessities, it being considered important that the office messenger should be in constant attendance’.24 Canning sympathized with Talbot’s plight. But it was not until 28 April 1827, on the eve of his departure from the Foreign Office, that he wrote to the Treasury urging, albeit unsuccessfully, that it concur in the payment to Talbot of £100 per annum from the Office’s contingent fund, backdated to July 1825.25 The Treasury reckoned £75 per annum ‘very ample remuneration’.26 Meanwhile, consideration had already been given to ending the anomalous status of the Talbots. An unsigned memorandum of September 1824, probably the work of Thomas Bidwell Jr, argued that since it had been determined to abolish the charges made by the King’s Messengers for coach hire, it was questionable whether the ‘Office Messenger’ should ‘alone be permitted to retain this nominal and irregular species of Emolument’. Instead, the memorandum proposed that two ‘efficient persons might be salaried and employed as in and out door Porters . . . whose separate duties might be defined and rendered more useful to the business of the Office generally’, one receiving £150 per annum and the other £100 per annum, thus effecting an annual saving of £150 to the Office.27 No progress appears to have been made towards implementing this proposed reform until the spring of 1843 by which time James Talbot’s total annual emoluments amounted to £660 (out of which he had to pay two assistants). Talbot’s pursuit of compensation for lost rooms may have hindered its consideration. However, in April 1843, perhaps with Talbot’s prospective retirement in mind, the memorandum of 1824 was amended and updated.28 Addington had by then succeeded Backhouse as permanent undersecretary, and Talbot’s death in July 1843 afforded him the opportunity, with the backing of the foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, to place the Office’s porterage ‘on a new and more efficient and economical footing’. For the most part porters’ duties then consisted of the receipt and delivery of mail bags, the handling of other correspondence and papers (more particularly those not countersigned by secretaries of state or their undersecretaries), and assistance to clerks with the transport of their work boxes to and from their homes. This, Addington recognized, required a minimum of two porters. He, therefore, decided to appoint as head porter John Catchpole, who since December 1841 had been Gracewood’s assistant, with a salary of £200 per annum plus an annual payment of £30 in lieu of all extra allowances or incidental charges; and 26 27 28 24 25

FO 366/378, memorial by James Talbot for G. Canning, 8 October 1825. FO 366/673, G. Canning to Treasury, letter, 28 April 1827. Ibid., Hill to Howard de Walden, letter, 5 July 1827. FO 366/393, unsigned memo., n.d. September 1824 (updated and amended April 1843). Ibid., and memo., 3 August 1843. When the co-executor of James Talbot’s will requested a pension for his widow, the chief clerk informed him in no uncertain terms that Talbot had enjoyed a ‘very considerable Income’ and had possessed ‘ample means of providing adequately for the necessary comfort of the widow of a Person in his Station of life’. FO 366/434, Lenox-Conyngham to T. Clarke, letter, 29 April 1844.

 Keepers of the Office 19 he retained Spyer as under-porter with a salary of £100 per annum plus a further £20 in place of previous allowances. The new terms of their employment were intended to put an end to a system whereby porters had previously been dependent for their income on gratuities and perquisites. Indeed, receipt of the former was henceforward strictly forbidden on pain of dismissal, though, as Addington noted, this was not intended to affect the porters receiving tips ‘from their private friends and employers in the Office for occasionally brushing their hats or shoes or doing any other little private matter’. More strictly defined residential rights were also offered to one of the porters. He was thus to have a ‘sleeping room in the Office’ and would be entitled to the ‘usual allowance of candles and coals’. But he would be required to sleep ‘constantly in the Office’, and neither his wife nor his family was to be allowed a lodging there.29 There were other anomalies in servants’ conditions of employment, some of which persisted. A report of a Treasury committee enquiring into fees and emoluments in public offices revealed in March 1837 that, in addition to his annual salary, Gracewood received one guinea a year from each Cabinet minister (a sum totalling £12 12s. in 1836) for summoning them to Cabinet meetings, as well as £25 4s. from the ‘gentlemen of the office’. He and the officekeepers also derived part of their income from allocated copies of the London Gazette. In all thirty-five copies of the newspaper were ordered by the Office, but only two were delivered, and the publisher instead paid 8d. a sheet to the nominated recipients. Even more extraordinary was the fact that the officekeepers’ earnings included a proportion of the fees paid to the War Office for military commissions, and 2s. 6d. from the Signet Office for every appointment passing under the Great Seal relating to the Foreign Office. They, along with the doorkeeper, also received regular Christmas boxes from foreign diplomatic missions in London. These were collected each January by the head officekeeper or one of his colleagues from the residences of ambassadors and ministers, where they were occasionally received by the head of mission but more usually by the butler, and the gifts amounted to between five and eight guineas per embassy or legation. The money was then shared with the porter, the doorkeeper and the officekeepers of the Home Office. It was a custom which members of the Treasury committee found all the more objectionable in that it involved ‘personal application’: ‘a practice which is very discreditable for reasons which are obvious, and must necessarily produce an impression on the minds of those who are not aware of the liberal scale of the salaries of our establishments, that the servants of the public departments are inadequately remunerated’.30 The committee BL, Aberdeen Papers, Add. Ms 43238, Addington to Aberdeen, letter, 16 January 1842. FO 366/674, minutes by Addington, 31 August and 21 September 1843; memo. by Lenox-Conyngham on duties of FO porters, 20 December 1843; Addington to E. Hammond, minute, 3 January 1844. FO 366/496, memo. by Alston, n.d. June 1867. FO 366/674, minute by C. Canning, 27 December 1841; Venfield to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 27 December 1841. FO 366/393, Spyer and Greenall to Aberdeen, minute, 19 July 1843; returns of Spyer and Greenall, n.d., c. 1843. 30 HC, First Report of the Committee Appointed by the Lords Commissioners of H.M.’s Treasury to Inquire into the Fees and Emoluments of Public Offices (1837), pp. 17–19, 52–4. An undated and unsigned paper, ‘Mem: respecting the Services and Emoluments of Andrew Gracewood’, put the average of Gracewood’s annual emoluments for the three years 1833–35, including those derived from the sale of copies of the London Gazette and various gratuities, at £197 1s. 8d. His salary was then £94 12s. per annum. In 1843 the amount returned by Gracewood as salary and emoluments for 29

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was indeed critical of all gratuities which might secure more favourable treatment from the recipient.31 Already in December 1831 Palmerston had been instrumental in abolishing the payment by the Office of New Year ‘gifts’, averaging about one guinea per recipient, to the domestic staff of his and other government departments, and he was shocked to learn of the continuation of ‘such Brigandage’. Measures were, therefore, introduced to end the collection of Christmas boxes from foreign envoys, including the payment of further compensatory allowances for gratuities forgone.32 But when Venfield, who was promoted to head officekeeper in 1837, was forced by ill health to retire early in December 1845, the total declared income upon which his pension was calculated amounted to £273 9s. and included ‘Gazettes’, earnings from the sale of old newspapers, old leather bags, waste paper and wax ends, as well as an allowance of £15 9s. for the ‘Loss of Christmas Gratuities’.33 Venfield’s successor, George Coxhead, was, by contrast, paid a fixed salary of £200 a year instead of a fluctuating sum of emoluments and this, a farsighted Aberdeen informed the Treasury, must mean a ‘prospective saving’ upon his retirement.34 The reform was likewise applied to William Greenall, who, since James Talbot’s death, had been appointed third officekeeper. He was thus offered an annual salary of £150 ‘in lieu of all Perquisites, Emoluments, Extra Allowances or incidental charges of any description’.35 These arrangements may well have been welcomed by the new appointees. Officekeeper emoluments, more especially those from the sale of old newspapers, had been in sharp decline, and in July 1843 Venfield and the second and third officekeepers had petitioned the chief clerk for a rise in their fixed salaries to make up for the shortfall in their incomes.36 The provisions relating to gratuities and extra payments were in any case not nearly as definitive as they might at first appear. After informing both Coxhead and Greenall that their salaries were to be ‘considered as constituting the whole of [their] official and acknowledged income[s]’, Lenox-Conyngham, the chief clerk since April 1841, added that this was not intended ‘to debar [them] from sharing with the other office keepers the small ordinary perquisites of the situation’.37 There was, in other words, always a little more to be made on the side. Moreover, staff still in service continued to enjoy the benefits of compensatory allowances. At the time of his death in January 1851, Gracewood was in annual receipt of £100 salary, £31 15s. 3d. compensation for the abolition of Christmas gratuities, and £90 15s. 9d. ‘in lieu of a certain number of copies of the London Gazette’. His successor was, however, to receive

income tax assessment totalled £251 15s. 3d., of which £151 15s. 3d. was reckoned as emoluments. FO 366/393, unsigned memo., 3 August 1843. Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 171–2. 31 HC, Fees and Emoluments, p. 16. 32 UoS, Broadlands Papers, PP/FO/B/4, note by Palmerston, 18 December 1836. FO 366/673, minute by Backhouse, 19 December 1831 and attached list. C. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830-41: Britain, the Liberal Movement and the Eastern Question (2 vols, London, 1951), 1, p. 72. 33 FO 366/674, Aberdeen to Treasury, letter, 12 December 1845; minutes by Addington, 12 December 1845. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., minute by Addington, 12 December 1845. 36 FO 366/393, Venfield et al. to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 5 July 1843. 37 FO 366/674, memos by Lenox-Conyngham, 17 December 1845.

 Keepers of the Office 21 no more than £100 a year and his responsibility for preparing summonses for ministers to attend Cabinet meetings passed to the head officekeeper.38 Gracewood’s demise probably freed up space in an overcrowded building. When Ann Watson succeeded Mary Urquhart as housekeeper in March 1836, she brought with her four daughters. She also employed five maidservants, and within three years she had acquired for accommodation and work a kitchen, a laundry and scullery in the basement, a sitting room and small store room on the second floor, and four attic bedrooms. As head officekeeper, Venfield was by then the occupant of three rooms and a kitchen on Fludyer Street; Gracewood had been allotted a kitchen and two sitting rooms in the basement and four bedrooms in the attic; and the Talbots and Kingsburys retained other attic and basement rooms.39 Yet, there seems still to have been some laxity on the part of officials when it came to allocating accommodation. When in 1843 Spyer opted to be the live-in porter, he was provided with two rooms rather than the specified one. These he was offered on the express understanding that they were for his sole occupancy. Nonetheless, when in March 1846 he approached Lenox-Conyngham with the request that he might add to these a recently vacated room on the same floor, it became apparent that he had reintroduced his wife into the Office, claiming falsely that permission had been granted. And despite the chief clerk’s insistence that Mrs Spyer be out of the building by 24 March, the lady remained in residence.40 Aberdeen was consulted and Mrs Spyer ordered to leave. The foreign secretary also directed that ‘in future the Housekeeper be held responsible for any similar intrusion of any unauthorized person into the office; and that in case of need the Head Office Keeper be called to assist her in forthwith expelling such a person’. Thereafter, anyone connected with the Office would also be obliged to inform the chief clerk of any future irregularity contrary to this order.41 There was a further indication of the Office adopting a perhaps less altruistic attitude towards its domestic staff. In 1821, 1831 and 1838 dinners were provided for the officekeepers and the messengers to celebrate the coronations of George IV, William IV and Victoria. Likewise, at the time of the queen’s marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg in February 1840, the servants were entertained: not only was a dinner organized, but fourteen guineas were spent on ‘wedding cakes’. When, however, in the following year they requested a ‘similar festival in honour of the Christening of the Princess Royal’, Palmerston declined, albeit with regret, to sanction the necessary public expenditure. For the time being, at least, the lower orders had to forgo such state-sponsored ‘jollifications’.42

FO 366/393, Lenox-Conyngham to Palmerston, minute, 6 January 1851, and note by Palmerston, 9 January 1851. 39 FO 366/378, return of number of persons resident in the FO, by T. Bidwell Jr., 25 July 1839. Bourne, Palmerston, p. 445. 40 FO 366/674, Lenox-Conyngham to Addington, minute, 31 March 1846. 41 Ibid., Addington to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 1 April 1846. 42 FO 366/496, memo. by Backhouse, 8 February 1841, with minute by Palmerston, 10 February 1841. 38

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Pets, pests and other miscreants The regular overnight presence in the Office of more than twenty people might have seemed to help guarantee the security of the building and its contents. But increased demands upon the time of the doorkeeper and the three officekeepers meant that insufficient attention and guidance could be given to visitors, and strangers were sometimes discovered wandering lost and bewildered in the official maze.43 Moreover, guests of residents were not limited to family and friends. During the early hours of Saturday, 22 October 1831, a police constable on duty in Downing Street was surprised to see a gentleman introduce a known prostitute into the Foreign Office. Two-anda-half hours later, at 6.00 am, she re-emerged carrying two wax candles. When approached by the policeman, she claimed that these were a gift, and a subsequent enquiry revealed that her benefactor and presumed client had been none other than the head officekeeper, Conrath Stahl. The story was in part confirmed by Spyer, who as acting doorkeeper had been made aware of the constable’s intervention.44 A contrite Stahl admitted the accuracy of the police report. He had, he pleaded, been out drinking with friends on Friday evening and his ‘accidental intoxication’ had contributed to an ‘unconsciousness’ of what he was doing. Palmerston was not wholly unsympathetic. Stahl’s previous good conduct was taken into account, and the foreign secretary directed that his punishment should be limited to his forfeiting the apartments he then enjoyed in the Foreign Office, and that he instead provide himself, at his own cost, with a lodging in the immediate vicinity of the Office so that he might ‘continue to bear his full share of the duties of his situation equally with the other two Office Keepers’.45 Six months later, Palmerston relented. In May 1832 at the height of the political crisis over the passage of the third parliamentary reform bill, when it seemed quite likely that he, along with the rest of Lord Grey’s Whig administration, would be replaced, he minuted that Stahl should be ‘reinstated’. Unfortunately for Stahl, not only did the government survive, but soon afterwards he himself was reported as having ‘behaved saucily’ towards John Walpole, Palmerston’s private secretary, with the result that Palmerston decided to delay implementing his decision.46 Nonetheless, when in 1837 Stahl was forced to seek retirement owing to a hernia, the result of an injury sustained at work, Palmerston was instrumental in securing Treasury consent to his receiving a pension of £100 per annum.47 Stahl’s successor, Venfield, was also threatened with expulsion. Very early on the morning of 22 October 1838, a police constable on Fludyer Street discovered that one of the Foreign Office’s basement windows was open.48 It subsequently emerged that Venfield’s privately engaged maidservant had, after cooking his evening meal, FO 366/393, memos by Gracewood, 19 April 1838, and Lenox-Conyngham, 13 April 1839. FO 366/563, report by PC G. Bailey, 22 October 1831; record of statement by Spyer, 24 October 1831. 45 Ibid., minute by T. Bidwell Jr., 24 October 1831. FO 366/673, minute by Palmerston, 3 November 1831. 46 FO 366/393, minutes by Palmerston, 9 and 10 May 1832, and T. Bidwell Jr., 10 May 1832, and subsequent undated annotation by Bidwell. 47 FO 366/673, Palmerston to Treasury, letter, 13 November 1837. 48 FO 366/378, police reports by PC Walker and Inspt. William Haining, 22 October 1838. 43 44

 Keepers of the Office 23 neglected to fasten shut the kitchen window, and as punishment Palmerston ordered that the officekeeper be deprived of his apartment. Venfield protested that when Stahl had suffered the same penalty, ‘it was for a much greater offence’. But Palmerston would have none of this. ‘There cannot’, he noted, ‘be a greater official offence on the Part of an office Keeper than leaving open during the night a window which leaves exposed to every Depredator that office which the servant is appointed to assist in keeping secure; and I can draw little Distinction between the act of the man & that of his Cook.’49 It was not the first occasion in recent times when the Office’s security had been compromised in this way. Almost two years earlier a policeman on night duty had found a Downing Square door wide open to the elements, the result, it would seem, of high wind and a failure on the part of the domestic staff to check and report on a defective lock.50 But Venfield’s case was probably not helped by his insinuating that the police, who, having been unable to rouse anyone, had entered the Office via the open window and misappropriated items from the premises.51 Only after Backhouse entered a plea of leniency on Venfield’s behalf, stressing his previous good conduct, did Palmerston agree that he might keep his rooms. Venfield was nonetheless fined his salary for the quarter in which the offence took place, and Palmerston insisted on the immediate dismissal of his maid.52 He also instructed that iron bars be fitted to the lower windows of the Office properties on Fludyer Street.53 It was in this same decade that the country came close to losing a substantial portion of its diplomatic archive. This was in large part due to the state of the office buildings. In January 1830 Sydney Smirke, the architect and clerk of works, had reported on an alarming rate of subsidence in the premises on Fludyer Street, then occupied by the Librarian’s Department and the bookbinder responsible for binding official papers. Where possible, Smirke had shores fixed to the internal walls and cracks plastered over. But fearful, lest beams be loosened from walls and floors collapse under the weight of manuscript volumes, he recommended the removal of shelving and heavy presses to a more secure accommodation in Downing Street.54 This, however, was no guarantee of the safety of either lives or records. Indeed, a fire in the library reference room on the afternoon of Friday, 22 January 1836 threatened the destruction of the volumes of diplomatic correspondence which were shelved there. The story, as related and misdated by Edward Hertslet, the librarian’s son and successor, is that following a chimney fire a small climbing boy was sent to clean the flues. The young lad unfortunately overlooked an accumulation of smouldering soot in a side flue and

Ibid., Venfield to T. Bidwell Jr., minute, 30 October 1838; Backhouse to Palmerston, minute, 31 October 1838; minute by Palmerston, 1 November 1838. Emphasis in original. 50 Ibid., reports by Inspt. S. Hughes, 28 November 1836, and T. Bidwell Jr., 29 November 1836. 51 Ibid., police report with Venfield’s comments, 22 October 1838. 52 Ibid., Backhouse to Palmerston, minute, 31 October 1838; minute by Palmerston, 1 November 1838; Venfield to Palmerston, 5 January 1839; minute by Palmerston, 6 January 1839. 53 Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 26 November 1838; minutes by Backhouse, 26 and 28 November 1838. 54 Ibid., Backhouse to surveyor general (Board of Works), letters, 8 and 26 January 1830; T. Bidwell Jr. to Lieut. Col. Stephenson, letter, 12 January 1830; Smirke to Backhouse, letters, 11 and 22 January 1830; Backhouse to Smirke, letter, 23 January 1830. 49

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the next day, during working hours, a large piece of wall near the fireplace came down and flames burst into the room.55 The tale is questionable in two respects: in 1829, under pressure from the Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys, the Office had abandoned the employment of sweeps who used children to clean chimneys in favour of those equipped with Joseph Glass’s new extended-cane machine; and, according to a contemporary record, once burning was smelt on the morning of the 22nd, a sweep had been summoned to the Office not to clean, but examine the suspect chimney. There, nevertheless, seems little reason to doubt Edward Hertslet’s account of how a clerk, Adolphus Turner, held the blaze at bay by leaping onto a dwarf press and pouring into the flames pails of water repeatedly supplied by one of Mary Urquart’s energetic maids. Life Guards were summoned to their assistance; manuscript volumes were flung into Fludyer Street; and eventually fire engines arrived to extinguish the conflagration. Palmerston was furious at not having been apprised of the poor state of the flues.56 Johann Christian Hüttner, the Office’s translator, was driven nearly to distraction. Warned by Palmerston that the building was ablaze, the elderly German, who forty-three years earlier had accompanied Lord Macartney on his diplomatic mission to China, was left anxiously pacing his attic room, beseeching the Almighty for salvation.57 Damage to the building was limited to two rooms in Fludyer Street.58 The poor state of the chimney flues, nevertheless, remained a problem, and seven years later on 2 February 1843 there was another fire in the lower part of the Office. Fortunately, it was promptly extinguished, and no one suffered serious injury. But, as Aberdeen reported to the queen, had it happened at night ‘in all probability the building would have been destroyed’.59 Business seems otherwise to have continued much as usual, though civil disturbances did occasionally appear to put lives and property at risk. Already on the evening of 8 November 1830, a disorderly crowd, demanding parliamentary reform, had ventured into Downing Street only to be halted by a sentry and outflanked by the police.60 Then in 1848, the year of revolution in continental Europe, the Chartist campaign for political change threatened to generate mob violence. The dangers were exaggerated, but the summoning for 10 April of a mass meeting of working men and women on Kennington Common and the prospect of a large body of petitioners marching on Westminster necessitated the taking of precautions. Edward Hertslet, by then a library clerk, and five of his companions were sworn in as special constables and provided with police truncheons; the windows of the Foreign Office’s manuscript room were filled with books, loopholes being left to pass guns through; Brown Bess muskets were brought up from the Tower of London, though no ammunition was supplied and Without giving a specific date, Edward Hertslet incorrectly implied that the fire had taken place late in 1839. Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 33–6. FO 366/280, minute by Palmerston, 24 January 1836; minute by Backhouse, 25 January 1836. 56 Ibid. FO 366/673, Backhouse to S. M. Phillipps, letter, 30 March 1830, with return by T. Bidwell Jr. 57 Ibid. See: J. C. Hüttner, Nachricht von der britischen Gesandtschafts Reise durch China und einen Teil der Tartarei (Sigmaringen, 1996). 58 FO 366/673, Backhouse to A. Milne, letter, 12 March 1836. 59 BL, Aberdeen Papers, Add. Ms 43042, Aberdeen to Victoria, letter, 2 February 1843. 60 C. C. F. Greville, The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV, King William IV and Queen Victoria (8 vols, London, 1904–11), ed. Henry Reeve, 2, p. 36. 55

 Keepers of the Office 25 none of the staff seems to have known how to fire one; and naval cutlasses, which bore a striking resemblance to theatrical props, were delivered to the Office. Fortunately for diplomacy and its historians, heavy rain appears to have dampened Chartist spirits, Westminster was spared a bloody revolution, and the courage of the Office’s would-be defenders was never tested. But farce turned briefly into high drama. The permanent undersecretary and the chief clerk were not on good terms and had squabbled previously when the former had refused to enforce Aberdeen’s ban on smoking in the Office. Now, while awaiting the feared Chartist offensive, the two officials quarrelled openly over their respective responsibilities for safeguarding the building and its residents. Excitable and often suffering great pain in the stump of his amputated leg, especially in changeable weather, Lenox-Conyngham resented Addington’s dictatorial manner and was said to have threatened to shoot his colleague if he continued to meddle in what he regarded as his own administrative sphere. It took another week, an angry exchange of letters, and an appeal to Palmerston for arbitration before the two settled on an uneasy truce.61 In quieter times there were opportunities for greater conviviality amongst staff, especially in the Downing Street attic where a room was set aside for the recreation of the ‘young Gentlemen’ of the Office. The ‘Nursery’, as it was popularly known, was equipped with a piano, foils, single sticks (cudgels), boxing gloves and other playthings for their amusement during the slack hours of the day, and was fondly remembered by Edward Hertslet as a ‘juvenile abode of bliss’. From dusty upstairs windows, the same junior clerks stared down upon their unfortunate neighbours. They drew the attention of pretty dressmakers in rooms on the opposite side of Fludyer Street, engaging them in raucous conversation, and let down strings of red tape to haul up baskets of strawberries from local traders below. Armed with pea shooters and pails of water, they also inflicted pain and injury on anyone who came within their range.62 Mrs Justin, who lived at No. 8 on the south side of Fludyer Street, was so upset by the menace posed to visitors to her house and the damage done to the liveries of her servants that in April 1847 she protested to the Office, with understandable vehemence, about the conduct of its ‘Pea Shooting and Water Spouting Department’.63 An internal inquiry was launched and in this instance blame fell upon the library clerks, three of whom, though they denied pea shooting, admitted water throwing.64 But the main target of these overgrown schoolboys appears to have been the organ grinders of the neighbourhood, whose unmelodious tones inhibited concentration on the copying, Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 67–71 and 143. V. Cromwell, ‘An Incident in the Development of the Permanent Under-Secretaryship at the Foreign Office’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxiii (May 1960), pp. 99–113. Middleton, Administration, pp. 134–5. 62 Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 23–6. A. West, Recollections, 1832 to 1886 (New York, 1900), p. 15. Maria Weston Chapman (ed.), Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography (2 vols, Boston, 1877), i, p. 414. The ‘nursery’ might have been so named, not because it was a haven for the younger men of the Office, but because it was once occupied by the children of George Canning. Sir H. Drummond Wolff, Rambling Recollections (2 vols, London, 1908), 1, p. 67. 63 Addington was no doubt relieved that the offence was not committed by one of the clerks of the regular establishment as he thought the offender was ‘probably of a very low class’. FO 366/280, E. E. Justin to Staveley, letter, 22 April 1847, with minute by Addington, 23 April 1847. 64 FO 366/280, memo. by L. Hertslet, 26 April 1847, with minute by Addington, 27 April 1847. 61

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registering and indexing of despatches. Hot coppers (candle-heated pennies) were sometimes thrown at the would-be entertainers, and these and other assaults doubtless resulted in heated exchanges. On one occasion when an organ grinder was drenched with water, he put down his organ, picked up a large stone and flung it through an Office window, forcing his undiplomatic assailants to seek shelter beneath a desk.65 Edward Hertslet thought that this incident had had the effect of halting attacks on grinders. The Office had, in any event, already had recourse to negotiation. So irritated had Aberdeen been by the street musicians that in August 1843 he had his political undersecretary, Charles Canning, request Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Rowan, the first joint commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, whether a policeman in the neighbourhood of Fludyer Street might not keep the street ‘free from Itinerant Musicians, Beggars &c’, the noise from whom was interrupting business. But Canning’s plea and an assurance from the police that necessary guidance would be given were not sufficient to remove the problem.66 Indeed, when two years later Lenox-Conyngham once more raised the matter, this time with Rowan’s colleague, the second joint commissioner and former barrister, Richard Mayne, he was informed that the police had no authority to prevent people playing musical instruments in the streets except when magistrates ruled that the musicians constituted a nuisance. Rowan was quite ready to have one of the musicians ‘taken up’ by the police if Lenox-Conyngham wished and the Foreign Office took responsibility for the action. This, Lenox-Conyngham ‘respectfully declined’, both in his ‘character as Chief Clerk and as a Lover of the Liberties of the Subject’. He was, however, ready to consent to a diplomatic fudge. Instructions were to be given in his presence to an Inspector May to turn musicians out of Fludyer Street ‘if they should come into it with Hurdy-Gurdies, Psalteries, and Sackbuts, and such like Abominations, provided the Player should not demur but go about his business elsewhere like a peaceable Gent. and obedient subject’.67 During the late 1840s other residents of Fludyer Street were hardly less disturbed by noises emanating from the Foreign Office itself. The culprit this time was Ann Watson’s pet dog. Had the animal been better trained and less confined, it might have given rise to fewer problems. But the dog, which accompanied the housekeeper on her daily progress through the rooms, was anything but well behaved. During the mornings Mrs Watson would place it in the balcony on the park side of Fludyer Street, and there, much to the annoyance of those in the vicinity, it would bark incessantly for an hour or more. The long-suffering Mrs Justin complained on several occasions about the noise, particularly the animal’s barking at breakfast time. In February 1849 she again took up cudgels with the Office, writing to the chief clerk urging that an end be put to the nuisance caused by the dog. Lenox-Conyngham obliged by having a word with Ann Watson about her noisy ‘Beastie’.68 The neighbours were not, however, alone in suffering from the miscreant animal, and its noisy protests were not the sole source of nuisance. Addington was particularly upset to find in his room ‘several times unequivocal marks Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 26–7. FO 366/563, C. Canning to Rowan, draft letter, 12 August 1843; Metropolitan Police Office to C. Canning, letter, 14 August 1843. 67 Ibid., minute by Lenox-Conyngham, 4 July 1845. Emphasis in original. 68 Ibid., Justin to Lenox-Conyngham, letter, 20 February 1849, and minute by Lenox-Conyngham. 65 66

 Keepers of the Office 27 of the beast’s ill-trained and foul propensities’, and threatened, in January 1852, to have the dog ‘instantly killed’ if he found further trace of its filth again.69 The chief clerk seems not to have been impressed by the serious nature of the complaint. He may even have relished the discomfort of his high-handed superior. ‘Why’, Lenox-Conyngham asked the housekeeper, ‘do you let the Dogs [sic] shite in Addington’s room? Naughty Dogs?’70 Finally, on 25 March Addington’s patience snapped. In a minute for LenoxConyngham’s attention, he made plain his objections to the dog’s continued presence in the Office. This little brute [he recalled] has several times left in my room evidences of his presence; and I have more than once told Coxhead to inform the House-Keeper that if the nuisance occurred again I would give orders for the execution of the offender. I have just put my foot once more in the droppings of the dirty and ill-trained little beast, and it has taken me some minutes to rid myself of the filth. Be so good therefore to order the House-Keeper peremptorily to get rid of the dog without a day’s delay.71

Addington’s mishap suggests that the mid-Victorian Foreign Office was hardly a salubrious establishment. The housekeeper’s beastie was only part of the problem. Inadequate sanitary arrangements also made for clerical discomfort. During his time as foreign secretary, Canning had ordered the construction of a new water closet and the upgrading of another, but the clerks still kept individual chamber pots in their rooms which the maids were expected to empty daily. However, this latter duty was sometimes neglected. Francis Alston, a second-class clerk who would end his career as chief clerk, was particularly upset by this, and on Monday 15 April 1850 he wrote to Lenox-Conyngham to protest at the inefficacy of his previous representations on the subject. Not only had the contents of his pot not been emptied, but nor had those of the pot belonging to George Elliot, the official with whom he shared a room. Indeed, as he explained, ‘a considerable portion of what [was] within them [had] been there since Friday’. Sorry as Alston was to bother Lenox-Conyngham with this matter, his experience had left him ‘quite sick’ and, as he reminded the chief clerk, it was ‘asparagus time’ – a reference to the pungent odour that the vegetable’s consumption was known to impart to urine.72 Nearly nine years later, the ‘menial servants’ were again held responsible for what Lord Malmesbury, then in his second term as foreign secretary, described as the ‘filthy state of the building and rooms of the office’.73 Subsequent enquiries revealed that the housekeeper then had in her employ five maidservants, one of whom was a cook and three of whom were boarded out. In addition, possibly for reasons of economy, she had since 1852 come to rely increasingly on the casual, and not altogether satisfactory, services of charwomen. By 1859 there were five of 71 72 73 69 70

FO 366/391, Addington to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 26 January 1852. Ibid., undated note by Lenox-Conyngham. FO 366/563, minute by Addington, 25 March 1852. FO 366/393, Alston to Lenox-Conyngham, 15 April 1850, and attachment. Ibid., Hammond to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 14 February 1859.

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these: one specifically for the department’s Passport Office and another who cooked for the resident clerks. The maids received £12 a year in pay and 12s. a week in board wages, and the charwomen between 12s. and £1 a week, and for these meagre returns they endeavoured to keep clean a building whose open fireplaces were a constant source of smoke-laden grime, and in whose nooks and crannies there settled the airborne dust of one of the most polluted capitals of Europe.74 Other servants were judged to have failed to live up to Office standards, not only in consequence of their negligence at work, but also because of their extramural activities. The officekeeper Aspain seems to have been an individual of questionable integrity, and in January 1830 he was severely reprimanded for his failure to ensure the correct delivery of urgent correspondence and subsequent denial of any knowledge of the letters in question.75 But it was following his appointment in September 1834 as a home service messenger that it was discovered that he had been borrowing heavily and had taken on loans which were almost certainly well beyond his means to repay in order to invest in Greek and other bonds. Unfortunately for Aspain, neither he nor his companions profited from their speculation, and in March 1835 the Office learnt that the financially embarrassed King’s Messenger was a prisoner of the King’s Bench and therefore unavailable for duty. He was, nevertheless, able to return to full-time employment after it was agreed in the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debts that £100 would be paid annually from his salary and emoluments towards the liquidation of his debts. Meanwhile, the Duke of Wellington, who was then briefly foreign secretary, seized the opportunity to admonish the ‘Messengers in general, as well as the Office Keepers’ that it was expected that they ‘conduct themselves with that prudence and circumspection in their pecuniary affairs, as in all other respects, which [was] necessary to show that they [were] not unworthy of the trust reposed in them’.76 That trust was sometimes in short supply. On a number of occasions domestic staff were either suspected of, or held in part responsible for, relatively minor acts of criminality. One of the most serious of these was the robbery in August 1839 of between forty-five and fifty gold sovereigns from the private box of an acting resident clerk, Bridges Taylor, during his absence in the country. Scotland Yard was contacted and the housemaids were subjected to ‘rigorous examination’. Suspicion eventually fell upon extra printers recently employed in the Office, but there seems to have been insufficient evidence to bring anyone to trial.77 Similarly, no prosecution followed the disappearance in October 1851 of a large portion of printed treaties from the bookbinder’s storeroom. Lewis Hertslet, who was charged with reporting on the matter, was evidently keen to draw attention to the unsatisfactory location of the store, situated as it was in what had formerly been a basement kitchen. But, as Palmerston was to point out, the real problem lay in the fact that there were two street entrances to the store, neither of which was locked.78 It was perhaps not surprising, therefore, that in 76 77 78 74 75

Ibid., undated and unsigned notes. FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 24 April 1869. FO 366/673, memo. by Backhouse, 4 January 1830. Ibid., court order, 10 March 1835. FO 366/521, memo. by Backhouse, 25 March 1835. FO 366/563, minutes by Staveley, T. Bidwell Jr., Bridges Taylor and Palmerston, 8–9 August 1839. Ibid., report by J. Collins (bookbinder), 31 October 1851; minute by Addington, 4 November 1851; minutes by L. Hertslet and Palmerston, 5 and 6 November 1851.

 Keepers of the Office 29 the spring of 1857, following a spate of petty thefts, Edmund Hammond, Addington’s successor as permanent undersecretary, sought to improve Office security by calling again upon the services of the police. The chief officer appointed to assist was none other than the indomitable Inspector Stephen Thornton, a detective whom Charles Dickens described as ‘famous for steadily pursuing the inductive process and, from small beginnings, working from clue to clue until he bags his man’. In this instance Thornton focused upon the Office messengers and their friends who, according to Hammond, were said ‘to meet at the Foreign Office at night and play Cards, smoke and drink until a very late hour’. Nevertheless, the ‘confidential Constable’, whom Thornton instructed to observe these servants at play, found that their ‘irregularities’ amounted to little else. The constable’s special report entry for 25 April read simply: ‘Card playing, and drinks fetched from “Garwoods” [the Anchor and Crown public house in nearby King Street] from 10 to 11.15 pm, lights out at 12.’ The other nine entries were no more exciting, and in September Hammond decided that since the gaming had ceased, no further action was required.79 This, however, was not the end of Thornton’s dealings with the Office, for in the following year he was, more by chance than design, to find himself at the centre of a hunt for a missing employee when the head of the recently established Passport Office absconded with his section’s cash in hand. The preparation and issue of passports was the responsibility of the Chief Clerk’s Department. But in January 1854, as part of the reforms initiated by Lord Clarendon during his first term as foreign secretary, the senior clerks recommended the appointment of one man, plus a summer assistant, specifically to oversee the passport business. There was an ever-increasing demand for passports and this seemed likely to grow even further once a projected reduction of the fee charged from 7s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. was introduced. The work generated was already something of a nuisance, and the senior clerks recommended that it should henceforth be conducted in separate rooms specifically fitted up for the purpose in the east angle of Fludyer Street.80 The new Passport Office, which opened with Treasury consent in July 1855, remained under the auspices of the chief clerk, and a speaking tube was installed, linking him to the room where the documents were manufactured. A fourteen-year-old boy, George Catchpole, the son of the Office’s head porter, was also hired for 1s. 6d. a day (or 10s. 6d. a week) to answer ‘ordinary questions’ from passport applicants. He was to explain to them how to complete the necessary paperwork and to carry messages to the chief clerk’s office on such points of difficulty as required special reference.81 Yet, the work of the new section was, in the first instance, afflicted by incompetence and managerial neglect. George Alsbury, who was appointed to the Passport Office in July 1855, had previously been in the Treasury’s employ as controller of customs in the West Indies. He was, according to Lenox-Conyngham, ‘a very quiet good sort of man’ and ‘very Ibid., reports by Thornton, 16 April and 28 August 1857; minute by Hammond, 4 September 1857. Thornton was one of a select band of six police officers appointed in 1842 specifically for detective duties. K. Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or Murder at Road Hill House (London, 2008), pp. 50–1. 80 Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 29 and 32. FO 366/449, memo. by senior clerks, 6 January 1854. 81 Ibid., minutes by Lenox-Conyngham and Clarendon, 13 and 14 July 1855. 79

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civil’ in his handling of passport applicants. But by March 1857 the chief clerk had concluded that Alsbury was simply not up to the job. He was critical both of his ‘slow, slovenly and illegible manner in writing out the Passports’, and of ‘his mistakes in spelling names, resulting from his general ignorance of matters of official and social intercourse’. Alsbury also seemed ‘incapable of any expanding energy upon urgent and pressing occasions’ such as frequently arose in periods of great demand for passports, and had taken to promoting the interests of private and competing stationers who undertook what was called a ‘Passport Agency’ for those seeking documentation.82 No wonder then that it was decided to appoint a superintendent of passports to oversee Alsbury and his work. Unfortunately, the candidate selected, the Waterfordborn journalist Edward Wellington Boate, was no more up to the job than Alsbury. Appointed in February 1858 for a probationary period of six months, his salary of £300 a year, paid from the Office’s ‘Passport Fund’, was anything but meagre. However, after less than five months in post, Lenox-Conyngham had to confess that he found him always ‘more or less confused and incomprehensible and unbusinesslike’ in his conduct.83 This explains why Lenox-Conyngham was not surprised by Boate’s behaviour when on entering the Office on Friday 23 July 1858, he learnt that one of his clerks, Thomas Grey, had been summoned to assist in the Passport Office ‘in consequence of Mr. Boate being unable, apparently from intoxication, to attend to work’. From the smell of Boate’s breath it was obvious that he had been drinking, but the chief clerk, who spent two hours in his room, otherwise thought things to be proceeding much as usual. The next day, Saturday, matters were anything but usual. Boate did not appear during the regular office hours, and from subsequent enquiries it emerged that he had been seen in the Foreign Office at 8.15 that morning. Lenox-Conyngham, whose suspicions were first aroused by a letter he received from Henrietta Boate saying that her husband had not returned home on Friday evening, concluded that the disorderly superintendent had ‘gone off ’. When the office closet was opened, it was discovered that all that remained of the fee money received for passports was £5 11s. 6d. in silver along with Post Office orders and stamps, and it appeared that Boate could well have departed with £40 or more. The Passport Office accounts should have been submitted to the Chief Clerk’s Department for checking on the previous two evenings, but because of Boate’s chaotic working habits this had been postponed until the 24th. Indeed, it may well be that the inability of Boate to account for money entrusted to him and the prospect of this being reported to his superiors explained his decision to decamp.84 Given that Boate was owed about £21 in salary, which could be deducted from the sum he had taken, Lenox-Conyngham was not overly concerned about either his departure or the consequent cost incurred. The Office, he observed, ‘will be well rid of him at a loss of £18.16.6; and I earnestly hope I may never see him again’. But Boate was soon under arrest, thanks in large part to the unexpected and, from the Office’s standpoint, possibly unwelcome intervention of the police. As it happened, Boate Ibid., memo. by Lenox-Conyngham, 27 March 1857. FO 366/675, minute by Clarendon, 20 February 1858; memo. by Lenox-Conyngham, 25 July 1858. 84 Ibid. 82 83

 Keepers of the Office 31 and his wife resided nearby the Foreign Office in Great College Street in the house of Stephen Thornton. The detective was thus quickly alerted to his tenant’s disappearance; in little or no time Thornton and his colleagues discovered where Boate had spent Friday night; and on Saturday afternoon he was spotted on Hungerford Pier.85 Indicted on 19 August at the Central Criminal Court on a charge of ‘feloniously applying to his own use certain sums of money which had been entrusted to him by virtue of his employment in the public service of Her Majesty the Queen’, he was granted bail.86 He was dismissed from the Foreign Office, but he was nonetheless able to avoid a prison sentence. He pleaded that he was innocent of any fraudulent intent and began making repayments, so that by the time his case came to trial no more than £8 was owing to the Office.87 Lenox-Conyngham appears to have had no wish to pursue the matter, William Henry Bodkin, the counsel for the Crown, offered no evidence, and on 20 September Boate was acquitted of his crime.88 Hammond doubted whether restoring the ‘poor devil . . . to his beloved wife’ could really be classed as mercy, and Boate’s troubles were in any case far from over.89 After emigrating with his family to the United States, then in the midst of Civil War, he enlisted in the 42nd New York Volunteers and, following his capture by Confederate forces at the battle of Bristoe Station, he ended his brief military career in the notorious Andersonville prison-of-war camp. A survivor, he later wrote a detailed account of the horrors he witnessed there. But as the result of his spirited defence of the camp’s commanding officer and his criticism of the late President Lincoln and the Union blockade of Confederate ports, he spent the last years of his life a journalistic and social pariah.90 Boate had been an overpaid embarrassment to the Foreign Office. Frédéric de Bernhardt, who eventually took over the management of the Passport Office, was an underpaid asset. A former employee of the Colonial Land and Emigration Office, de Bernhardt was a graduate of the Académie de Paris and an occasional contributor to French historical and literary reviews. Within a week of Boate’s arrest he took up his appointment as assistant passport clerk on a salary of £100 per annum, under the temporary supervision of Thomas Grey.91 But the new superintendent of passports was Hugh Mallet, a former cavalry officer, who arrived in post in January 1859 and remained there until 1865 when he left to become secretary of the anti-slave trade Mixed Commission Court at Cape Town. Mallet was sometimes assisted by clerks attached to the Chief Clerk’s Department, and by 1861 he had a staff of three, including Alsbury, who was formally appointed a clerk in July 1858 and who stayed on until 1863 when he returned to Anguilla as chief magistrate on the island. A subsequent relaxation by foreign governments of regulations relating to travel documents led to Ibid. London Morning News, 19 August 1858, p. 1. 87 FO 366/675, letter from Boate communicated by Bodkin to Lenox-Conyngham, 22 September 1858. 88 http:​//www​.oldb​ailey​onlin​e.org​/brow​se.js​p?div​=t185​80920​-881.​ 89 HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/20, Hammond to Malmesbury, letter, 18 August 1858. 90 http:​ / /iri​ s hame​ r ican​ c ivil​ w ar.c​ om/20​ 1 5/05​ / 06/e​ dward ​ - well ​ i ngto​ n -boa​ te-th ​ e -and ​ e rson​ v ille​ -pow-​who-c​ame-t​o-the​-defe​nce-o​f-hen​ry-wi​rz/. J. H. Segars (ed.), Andersonville: The Southern Perspective (Gretna, 2001), pp. 69–78. 91 FO 366/675, minute by Malmesbury, 29 July 1858; memo. by Lenox-Conyngham, 17 June 1859. 85 86

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a reduction in staff, and following Mallet’s departure de Bernhardt was left solely in charge. Then on a salary of £200 per annum, payment of which was initially drawn from passport fees but after March 1866 from estimates voted by Parliament, de Bernhardt was led to understand that he might look forward to receiving the £300 previously earned by Boate and Mallet. A quadrupling in demand for passports during the summer of 1870, in part the result of the Franco-Prussian War, and a massive and sustained increase in his workload afforded de Bernhardt the opportunity to press for a pay rise.92 He had the backing of the foreign secretary, and there followed a longdrawn-out squabble with the Treasury which refused to consider anything more than the offer of gratuities, or a salary based on the payment of 4d. per passport issued with an upper limit of £250. By then, however, de Bernhardt had a new purpose-built office. He also had his own doorkeeper, William Rice, who for the princely sum of one guinea a week controlled admission and kept a wary eye on an often impatient crowd of would-be applicants.93

Riot and debauchery In March 1852 Lord Malmesbury, the foreign secretary in the 14th Earl of Derby’s newly formed Conservative administration, had a lucky escape. He was absent from his room when its ceiling collapsed onto his writing table, and he thereby avoided what might well have been a fatal accident. Two months later, prior to a party his wife was hosting at the Office, rumours began circulating that an unsafe staircase would put her guests at risk.94 These were but further reminders, if any were needed, of how precarious was the fabric of the building, parts of which were in the words of a subsequent architects’ survey only rendered habitable by ‘extensive Iron ties, Suspension rods and Shoring’.95 Already, in 1836 the architect Decimus Burton had put forward proposals for the demolition of the existing buildings and the construction of new government offices around a revamped Downing Square, and three years later the Commons Select Committee on the Public Offices recommended the replacement of the Foreign Office and the adjacent Colonial Office with more extensive structures.96 Such works were not Lord Granville, the foreign secretary, favoured appointing de Bernhardt to the position of secondclass clerk in the Chief Clerk’s Department. In 1870 this would have immediately raised his salary to £250, and with annual incremental rises it would eventually have reached £360. FO 366/676, minute by Hammond, 3 June 1865; Hamilton to Hammond, 29 March 1866. FO 366/432, Hammond to Treasury, letters, 28 October and 8 December 1870, 19 January and 1 October 1871, 26 March and 13 May 1872; J. Stansfeld (Treasury) to Hammond, letters, 21 November 1870, 13 January and 8 February 1871; Lingen to Hammond, letters, 21 October 1871 and 15 April 1872. Between July 1869 and July 1871 there was a sixfold increase in the number of passports issued. FO 366/437, Enfield to Treasury, letter, 29 July 1871. 93 During the summers of 1870 and 1871 de Bernhardt also received temporary assistance from George Rowland, an indexer of the London Gazette. Ibid. 94 Lord Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister: An Autobiography (London, 1885), p. 253. 95 TNA, WORK 12-84/1, survey by W. S. Inman and J. Phipps, 19 October 1854. 96 Cecil Denny Highton & Partners, The Old Public Office, Whitehall: A History of the Building Containing the India Office, the Foreign and Colonial Office and the Home Office (bound typescript in the FCO Library, London, 1985), pp. 16–19. HC, Select Committee on Public Offices (1839), p. iii. 92

 Keepers of the Office 33 high on any government’s agenda at a time when funds had to be found to cover the cost of rebuilding the Houses of Parliament, which had been destroyed by fire in 1834. But the committee’s advice was endorsed in an Office of Works report of November 1854 and, despite opposition in Parliament to the idea of spending taxpayers’ money on spaces for diplomatic and ministerial entertainment, in 1855 £30,000 was voted for site purchase. Architects, official and unofficial, began preparing plans, and in 1856 it was settled that the design of new government offices, or what some termed a ‘Palace of Administration’, would be put out to public tender by open competition. As a result, after much deliberation, George Gilbert Scott was finally selected to design a block which would incorporate the Foreign Office and other government departments. A devotee of the Gothic cause in secular architecture, Scott met with robust resistance to his initial plans. Palmerston, who was prime minister during 1855–8 and 1859–65, favoured a classical design, and the ensuing ‘battle of the styles’ meant that not until 1861 was agreement reached on the construction of the Italianate structure which now graces the western side of Whitehall.97 Long before then, Hammond had made plain his preferences with regard to the new building. In July 1858 he told a parliamentary select committee that he wanted sufficient space to accommodate the Office’s expanding business, as well as reception rooms and a kitchen so that foreign secretaries could entertain upwards of 1,200 guests. He was, however, opposed to the idea of having more sleeping accommodation than was absolutely necessary because spare rooms had a ‘tendency to be occupied by messengers and other people’, and he did not wish to have more than a ‘certain number of servants in the office’. He was also reluctant to contemplate the Office leaving Downing Street before a new building was complete.98 Malmesbury, whose second term as foreign secretary began in February 1858, was naturally worried lest the poor state of the premises result in death or injury. But Hammond rejected as ‘altogether unsuitable for our occupation’ the office of the former India Board of Control in nearby Cannon Row which was suggested as alternative accommodation. ‘In fact’, Hammond informed Malmesbury in January 1859, ‘it is a wretched cavern and I would rather establish the office under canvas, even if we could get into the building.’ There was insufficient space for clerks and documents, the basement was ‘miserable and damp’, and the rooms of the upper storey ‘low, gloomy and . . . [apparently] . . . ill-ventilated’.99 It was, therefore, only in July 1861, three months before work began on the demolition of the houses in Downing and Fludyer Streets, that staff, books, papers and presses were relocated to Pembroke House and a neighbouring property which had previously been Malmesbury’s London home. These were Nos. 7 and 8 Whitehall Gardens, residences close by the Thames, whose remnants have long since disappeared beneath the modern Ministry of Defence.100 WORK 12-84/1, report by W. Molesworth (first commissioner of works), 15 November 1854. B. Porter, The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and the Design of a New Foreign Office, 1855-61 (London, 2011), pp. 1–16. Toplis, Foreign Office, pp. 23–135. 98 HC, Report from the Select Committee on Foreign Office Re-construction (1858), minutes, paras. 11, 13, 43–4, 58, 76. 99 HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/20, Hammond to Malmesbury, minutes, 1 and 4 January 1859. 100 Cecil Denny Highton, Old Public Office, p. 74. Toplis, Foreign Office, pp. 136–7. 97

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It was unfortunate that the move came close to coinciding with the commencement of work on Joseph Bazalgette’s Thames embankment. The project, which was sanctioned in the wake of the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858 when effluent in the Thames had forced the evacuation of Parliament, was intended to cleanse the river and carry the capital’s waste to outfalls east of London.101 However, besides altering tidal flows, its implementation disrupted sewers and their ventilation shafts, and during 1865 the resulting ‘offensive smells’ were readily associated with an outbreak of fever amongst the by then four resident clerks. One of their number, Francis Bertie, even took the precaution of having letters from his sickbed copied before their eventual despatch in order to avoid spreading the disease.102 That said, Bertie and his resident colleagues were well quartered, with separate rooms provided for their personal servants.103 Other employees also enjoyed a marked improvement in their accommodation. The Office printers had long laboured in the unhealthiest of conditions. In April 1839, following an architect’s report on the significance of a crack which had appeared in a ceiling immediately below their workshop in Fludyer Street, Palmerston had ordered their removal to a ground-floor room. But no such space had been available and in consequence the compositors, their presses and their type ended up in a cellar with no natural light and little access to fresh air. Their removal to Whitehall Gardens allowed them spacious ground-level accommodation to the left of a passage leading to the main building from the gateway to Pembroke House.104 There were also changes in the servant establishment, though these owed more to the persistence of dubious practices than to the relocation of the Office. It was thus discovered in December 1861 that John Tyler, an elderly officekeeper, was in the habit of indicating to visitors that for a gratuity he could arrange to have their Office visit reported in the press. He had, it was said, been offered 2s. by someone who had just met Austen Henry Layard, the excavator of Nineveh and then political undersecretary. But Tyler had responded that this was less than he was accustomed to receiving and had then been given half a crown (2s. 6d.). Moreover, he had not been acting alone as Greenall was complicit in the enterprise. The charge was reckoned ‘very serious’, and Lord John Russell, the foreign secretary in Palmerston’s administration, demanded a ‘severe reprimand’ for the two malefactors. In the event, Tyler, who at seventy-two, Hammond already reckoned ‘worn out’, was retired on a pension of £68 11s. 6d. a year.105 This opened the way to new appointments. Henry Johnson, who since October 1861 had been assistant doorkeeper, replaced Tyler as officekeeper, and he in his turn was succeeded by the newly recruited Charles Dalbertanson.106 Soon after, the latter’s R. Ashton, One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli and the Great Stink of 1858 (New Haven, 2017), pp. 17–19, 121–30, 179–87, 283–4. 102 FO 366/415, Hammond to A. Austin (Office of Works), letter, 5 June 1865; Bertie to LenoxConyngham, letter, 22 June 1865. 103 Reginald, 12th Earl of Meath, Memories of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1923), p. 67. 104 Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 10–11 and 45–8. FO 366/674, minute by Lenox-Conyngham, 12 August 1842. FO 366/675, G. Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 23 January 1862. FO 366/764, memo. on the bookbinder’s representation, 18 April 1857. 105 Ibid., minutes by Hammond, Russell and Lenox-Conyngham, 16–19 December 1861; Hammond to Treasury, letter, 27 December 1861; Russell to Hammond, letter, 17 January 1862. 106 Ibid., minutes by Russell, 17 January 1862. 101

 Keepers of the Office 35 salary was increased from £80 to £100.107 Meanwhile, George Catchpole, who was now nearing his twenty-first birthday, and who had of late assisted the officekeepers after his work was done at the Passport Office, was rewarded with a rise. Lenox-Conyngham thought him a ‘very well behaved and rather well educated modest young man’, and urged that his pay be increased to 15s. a week. Russell thought better and decided that from the end of 1862 the 15s. recommended should be raised to 18s.108 Johnson and Dalbertanson were naturally pleased at their good fortune. It was their misfortune that they chose to celebrate it in the Office. They hit upon the idea of holding a supper in one of the main rooms in Whitehall Gardens to which officekeepers, doorkeepers, porters and home service messengers were all to be invited. John Catchpole negotiated with Ann Watson to put a room at their disposal on the evening of Saturday, 6 April 1862, and Coxhead arranged with Thomas Farmer, the lamplighter and coal porter, that the latter would not extinguish the candles, gaslights and oil lamps before leaving the Office that day. The subsequent revelry appears to have been noisy and well attended, with guests issuing into the street at a late hour of the night. Russell, who on learning of the ‘transaction’ instituted an enquiry, was outraged at what, in a rather prim minute, he dubbed a ‘scene of riot and debauchery’. All those from the Office, including messengers, who were known to have been there, were reprimanded. Ann Watson, who was already in her mid-seventies, was found guilty of dereliction of duty in permitting an Office room to be so used, and her salary was suspended for a month. Coxhead was considered even more culpable as he must have known that such a gathering could not be allowed, and that the ‘burning of lights and candles the property of the public at such a scene, was a waste which was not to be sanctioned’, and he was, therefore, deprived of his apartments in the Office. John Catchpole and Joseph Weller, the doorkeeper, had also to forgo fifteen days’ pay, the latter because he had, as was his habit, delegated his duties to a lad and taken so little care as to allow ‘numerous persons to congregate in the hall at an unreasonable hour’. And Farmer, whose negligence was reckoned to have put the safety of the Office in peril, was informed that he would now not receive a pay increase which had been in contemplation for the more extensive work he had had to do since the Office’s relocation.109 The home service messengers who had been guests at the supper protested that they had not been aware that proper permission had not been granted for use of the room, and that, perhaps regrettably, they had left before there was any ‘scene of riot and debauchery’. While, however, Russell accepted this last disclaimer, he insisted the reprimand must stand.110 The late hours kept by some of the Office’s domestic staff remained a problem. In October 1862 Hussey Vivian, one of the resident clerks, complained to LenoxConyngham that he had heard his manservant come in very late that night and that on enquiry he had discovered that, while there was an order that servants should be in by Ibid., Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 25 February 1862. Ibid., memo. by Lenox-Conyngham, with minutes by Hammond and Russell, 22–23 January 1862. 109 Ibid., minute by Russell, 15 April 1862. None of this seems to have harmed the careers of Henry Johnson and Charles Dalbertanson. In July 1863 the former was appointed a home service messenger and the latter became an officekeeper. George Catchpole replaced Dalbertanson as assistant doorkeeper. Ibid., minutes by Russell, 31 July 1863. 110 Ibid., minute by queen’s home service messengers, 22 April 1862, with note by Russell. 107 108

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11.00 pm, the rule was frequently transgressed. ‘With such irregularities going on, no one’, Vivian observed, ‘can answer for the safety of the Office.’ His advice was followed, and instructions were thereafter issued to the effect that Weller was to admit no one to the Office after 11.00 pm, save messengers and servants acting on instructions from the resident clerks.111 But some laxity persisted. Early in 1868 [Elizabeth] Mary Langcake, Ann Watson’s formidable successor as Office housekeeper, clashed with Weller’s wife over the late return of one of the maidservants. It was the festive season, and in the knowledge that the maidservant wished to attend a party which would in all probability go on well beyond the established curfew, Mary Langcake lent her the Office key. The maid returned at 12.45 on the morning of 7 January, and according to the ever-vigilant Mrs Weller, who was then standing in for her husband, she was escorted by a policeman to Pembroke House. This aspect of the tale was disputed by the maid and in the presence of Mary Langcake, already an established sparring partner of Mrs Weller, she denounced the latter as a liar. For all but the ladies themselves this was a trivial matter. Francis Alston, who had succeeded Lenox-Conyngham as chief clerk in 1866, was dismissive of a complaint from Mrs Weller that she had been subjected to ‘low abuse’. He felt ‘that the several women concerned might be left to fight it out’: this was not so much women in diplomacy as women at war. Nonetheless, Hammond added a rider. He kept a close eye on the Office’s domestic staff and disapproved of keys being lent to maidservants. ‘If maids are allowed out after reasonable hours’, he noted, ‘another maid ought to sit up and let them in.’112 Keys or no keys, Mary Langcake was not a woman to be trifled with. She had been appointed housekeeper on Ann Watson’s retirement in September 1863, but before she could take up her position Hammond had learnt from the Treasury that, according to the Superannuation Act of 1859, she would, if she were to be pensionable, have to be examined by the newly established Civil Service commissioners.113 The regulations for her examination were not especially taxing: she had to be under fifty years of age and of good general character and health, and had to demonstrate that she was able to read and write from dictation, and had ‘such a knowledge of arithmetic as [would]

FO 366/393, Vivian to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 27 October 1862. Shortly before the Office’s removal to Whitehall Gardens its working hours were changed. Palmerston had fixed these in August 1851 at 12.00 noon to 6.00 pm, but in 1858 Malmesbury changed them to 11.00 am to 5.00 pm. In March 1861, following a representation from Hammond and the political undersecretary, Lord Wodehouse, who argued that clerks rarely came to work before noon and that the Office was inconvenienced by some divisions closing at 5.00 pm, Lord John Russell decided to return to the previous times. FO 366/675, memo. by Hammond, 9 July 1858; minute by Malmesbury, 10 July 1858; minute by Hammond and Wodehouse, 13 May 1861; minute by Russell, 14 May 1861. 112 FO 366/676, Weller to Alston, letter, n.d.; Langcake to Alston, letter, 25 January 1868; report by Alston, 27 January 1868, with minutes by Hammond and Alston, 27–28 January 1868. Alston was appointed chief clerk in December 1866 following the death in office of Lenox-Conyngham. FO 366/676, minute by Lord Stanley, 1 December 1866. 113 Ann Watson was seventy-seven when she retired on grounds of age and ill health. She received a pension of £81 1s. 9d. per annum. FO 366/675, memorial by Watson, 5 August 1863; Russell to Treasury, letter, 16 August 1863; G. Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 12 September 1863; FO 366/764, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 25 September 1863; Treasury to Hammond, letter, 30 September 1863. 111

 Keepers of the Office 37 enable her to make out her accounts in the simplest form’.114 She was, nevertheless, the first woman to take up employment in the Office with a Civil Service Commission certificate of qualification, albeit one transmitted to her by Lenox-Conyngham under cover of a pre-printed note from which he took care to strike out from above his signature the words ‘Your most humble, obedient Servant’.115 Domestic staff had to be reminded of their place within the hierarchy of the Office. This ‘necessary woman’ knew hers. She also knew her needs and was reluctant to accept changes in domestic arrangements inherited from Ann Watson. She was particularly obstinate when it came to planning a reformed servant establishment for the new and more spacious Downing Street building into which the Office eventually moved in the summer of 1868.116 In April that year she had under her management three maidservants and eight charwomen, and these included women of whose services Langcake was clearly reluctant to dispose.117 Hammond had little time for such casual labourers as the charwomen. Both he and Alston had been depressed by their filthy attire and had made sure money was available to engage instead ‘respectable and hard-working females’ as resident maids. The permanent undersecretary wanted: (1) a good cook and a kitchen maid to clean the kitchen and scullery, the housekeeper’s rooms up- and downstairs and the room of the newly appointed telegraph clerk; (2) an upper housemaid and three other housemaids to clean all the rooms, including those of the resident clerks; and (3) three underhousemaids and four charwomen to clean the corridors and lobbies and the rooms of the resident clerks’ servants. But Alston found Mary Langcake unamenable to reason. She thought the accommodation in the new building ‘radically faulty’ and expressed a preference for a continuation of the present arrangements on an enlarged scale. She had a point. The India Office, whose recently completed building was adjacent to the new Foreign Office, employed an assistant housekeeper as well as a housekeeper, twentyfour housemaids, six charwomen and six men as sweepers. Nevertheless, Langcake’s objections meant, in Alston’s words, ‘we are to multiply to a considerable extent the number of charwomen whose dirty appearance is so very discreditable to the office’. The housekeeper also preferred to be without a cook and declined outright the suggestion that she should revive an earlier custom and provide luncheons for the clerks. She would, she told Alston, ‘rather go and keep a lodging house’.118 Hammond, at first, seemed to accept this grudgingly, though he insisted that Langcake would be expected, if required, to provide luncheons for the foreign secretary and the undersecretaries, and that she must understand that there would be no more charwomen.119 Three of the latter were discharged without prospect of alternative employment, their only shortcomings being those of age and appearance. The oldest of them, Mary Ann Davis, Ibid., Hammond to Langcake, minute, 3 October 1863; regulations for the examination of a candidate for the situation of housekeeper as approved by Earl Russell, 2 October 1863. 115 Ibid., Lenox-Conyngham to Langcake, letter, 26 November 1863. 116 FO 366/676, minute by Stanley, 7 July 1868. FO 366/378, Hammond to Office of Works, draft letter, 28 July 1868. 117 FO 366/435, statement showing the numbers of charwomen, maidservants &c. employed in the Foreign Office on 1 April 1868. 118 FO 366/676, minute by Alston, 17 June 1868; Hammond to Treasury, letter, 24 April 1869. 119 Ibid., minute by Hammond, 17 June 1868. 114

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was an impoverished widow who had worked for the Office for sixteen years and who had been in regular receipt of gratuities from one of the resident clerks. By January 1869 she was lodged in a garret with neither food nor heating. Another, Mary Ann Connor, having failed in an attempt to establish a greengrocer’s shop, was only slightly less distressed; and the third, Eliza Cayford, was left struggling to support her crippled husband. News of their plight eventually moved Clarendon, after his return to the Foreign Office in December 1868, to offer each a miserly £5 in compensation. Yet, as Hammond later recalled, when coming up early from the country, he had not been confronted by ‘filthy women wandering about the rooms’, but by ‘as clean and tidy a looking set of maids as in a gentleman’s house’.120 George Gilbert Scott’s palatial edifice was intended for a new era in diplomacy. Its servants had to satisfy the sensitivities, as well as the needs, of a new generation of gentlemen.

FO 366/393, Mary Ann Davis to Stanley, letter, 6 November 1868; minutes by Alston, 14 November 1868 and 3 February 1869; minute by Hammond, 19 November 1868. FO 366/431, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 1 September 1869.

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Mr Hertslet is himself a man of merit. . . . But his position is entirely different, as Librarian and Keeper of the Papers, from that of the other Senior Clerks; and the two situations can not well be compared with each other either for work or for emoluments. Henry Unwin Addington, 4 January 18541 Then under the appellation of ‘librarian’ you have an officer rather different from that you would ordinarily suppose that to signify? Alexander Beresford Hope (Conservative MP), 13 June 18582 Why Lewis Hertzlett chose to take his own life remains a mystery. Born near Lignerolle in the Swiss canton of Vaud, Jean Louis Pierre Hiertzelett, as he was first known, may possibly have served as a mercenary cavalryman before settling in England towards the end of the eighteenth century. In May 1797 he gained employment as a King’s Messenger, joining that prestigious band of couriers who carried by horse and horsedrawn carriage correspondence between government departments, their agents and missions overseas.3 The work was demanding, sometimes dangerous, and inevitably stressful, especially in time of war.4 It also required Hertzlett to live within easy reach of the principal offices of state, and to that end he set up home with his wife, Hannah, and four children in Crown Court, Westminster, a yard which, were it still in existence, would bisect the south wing of the present-day Foreign and Commonwealth Office. But on the morning of 19 June 1802, just eight days since his fifty-third birthday, Hertzlett left his house, walked to the Foreign Office and delivered his resignation. Shortly after 1.00 pm he returned home and retired to the back parlour. There, seated at a table, he loaded a pistol and fired into his skull. The gun’s report so alarmed his wife and daughter that they ran quickly to the scene and, on their entering the room, Hertzlett slumped bleeding to the floor. It was clearly a case of suicide. That charge would, however, have FO 366/392, Addington to Clarendon, minute, 4 January 1854. HC, Report of the Select Committee on Foreign Office Re-Construction (1858), minutes, para. 79. 3 FO 366/671, memo. by Grenville, 24 May 1797. 4 J. Black, British Diplomats and Diplomacy, 1688-1800 (Exeter, 2001), pp. 84–5. 1 2

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denied Hertzlett a Christian burial and, given that he had previously been heard to say that he might shoot himself, a jury ruled that his death was due to lunacy. Fortunately for his widow, his other dependants, and ultimately British diplomacy, in the previous year his thirteen-year-old son, another Lewis, had secured appointment as assistant to the librarian of the Foreign Office.5

Arranging, methodizing and digesting The Foreign Office which the young Lewis joined on 5 February 1801 was still in its formative years. A nascent bureaucracy, it had until then been singularly deficient in an area of administration that would nowadays be considered vital to any knowledge-based institution. There was no individual or section within the Office charged specifically with the systematic organization of records. In the words of Sir James Bland Burgess, who was appointed undersecretary in 1789 and who aspired to reform, despatches to and from foreign courts were ‘piled up in large presses’ without note or index, and if anything were wanted ‘the whole year’s accumulation must be rummaged over before it [could] be found, and frequently material concerns must be forgotten for want of a memorandum to preserve their memory’.6 Ten years later, papers were still subject to a ‘sort of round-up’ every three months before being restored to their proper places for eventual binding.7 Government archives were otherwise the responsibility of the State Paper Office, a repository which had originated in the reign of Henry VIII, but whose management was by the mid-eighteenth century badly in need of reform. When in 1764 it was decided to demolish the Old Gateway in Whitehall, the building in which manuscripts, ancient and modern, had long been stored, it was discovered that many of them were in a state of serious decay. According to one report, ‘the Windows were broken, pidgeon [sic] Nests found in the Shelves, and the whole in danger of being lost and destroyed’. A commission was subsequently appointed to ‘arrange and methodize the Papers’, and such of them as were in danger of perishing were bound and secured, and calendars and indexes made of their contents. Researches were also conducted from time to time to find such information as the secretaries of state might require for the prosecution of their business.8 Lord Grenville, who was appointed foreign secretary in June 1791, evidently felt it more convenient to have recent diplomatic correspondence more closely at hand, and shortly before his departure from office in February 1801 he sought and gained permission to make Richard Ancell his librarian and keeper of the papers.9 Ancell was The Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1802, p. 688. FO 366/671, minute by Hawkesbury, 28 November 1803. 6 J. Hutton (ed.), Selections from the Letters and Correspondence of Sir James Bland Burgess, Bart., Sometimes Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with Notices of His Life (London, 1885), pp. 131–2. 7 Tilley and Gaselee, Foreign Office, p. 41. FCO, FO General, Librarian’s Dept., Correspondence and Memoranda (hereafter cited LD, Corresp.), vol. 2, memo. by Grenville, 7 April 1799. 8 FO 95/635, ‘Sketch of the Origins and Present Situation of the State Paper Office’, attached to memo. by R. Ancell, 27 September 1806 9 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, Grenville to Chatham, draft letter, n.d. January 1801. 5

 Keepers of the Papers 41 familiar with the work: since November 1776 he had been employed in the State Paper Office, and as first clerk there he had been closely associated with its reorganization. He also had familial and occupational links with the Foreign Office. His father, Thomas Ancell, was from 1782 first deputy, and then from 1787 head officekeeper there; and for some forty-five years he was also private agent to the King’s Messengers. Richard Ancell assisted Thomas in handling the messengers’ accounts, succeeding him as agent on his death in 1795.10 Indeed, it is quite likely that this was how he first came to know Lewis Hertzlett, and this, in turn, helps explain why on his transfer to the Foreign Office he took the latter’s son as his assistant. Unfortunately, Richard Ancell left few personal records and his name seems to have featured rarely in official correspondence. Yet, his appointment marked the beginning of a knowledge management revolution in the Foreign Office and the broader diplomatic service. Few human activities generate more documents than diplomacy, and few others are so dependent for their success upon the efficient administration and utilization of archives. Full and accurate records provide information on past developments and precedents for future conduct; and the ease and speed with which reference can be made to relevant correspondence, memoranda and treaties is of advantage in negotiation and may be vital in times of international crisis. Ancell was quick to grasp the needs of the Office. He began by probing out, ‘arranging, methodizing and digesting’ all correspondence and other documents pertinent to foreign relations from the previous twenty years. These were manuscript papers which he later represented as being ‘in such a state of disorganization as to require a considerable degree of attention to render them easy of reference and permanently useful’.11 In order to facilitate access to their contents, he also assembled in two large volumes a compendium of printed diplomatic records entitled A Collection of Printed Treaties, Conventions, &c. The volumes, which were completed in 1802 and whose documents Ancell arranged ‘in order of Countries and Dates with an accurate Table of Contents’, were the forerunner of more extensive publications by what was already known as the Librarian’s Department.12 Ancell’s contribution to the running of the Foreign Office was fully appreciated by his superiors and when, aged fifty-six, he requested retirement because of the ‘very fluctuating state of his health’, he was amply rewarded. Richard, Lord Wellesley, brother to the Duke of Wellington and foreign secretary during 1809–12, assented to his leaving the Office in January 1810 on an annual allowance equal to his salary of £200 a year, a sum then in line with the earnings of a minor office-holder.13 If Ancell had assured diplomacy’s past, then diplomacy would surely ensure his future. In 1812 he moved to Gifford Lodge, Twickenham, a house previously used by Dorothea Jordan, the actress and mistress of the Duke of Clarence (later King William IV), to accommodate three of her illegitimate daughters. Six years later, in September 1818, Ancell married the 32-year-old Eliza Speller, a lady more than thirty years his junior. Thereafter his health HC, Sixteenth Report from the Select Committee on Finance, &c, Expenditure of the Public Revenue (1797), Appendix M, Richard Ancell, Report concerning HM’s Messengers, 15 July 1797. 11 FO 366/672, memorial by Ancell, n.d. 12 Now in the custody of the FCO’s Legal Directorate. 13 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, minute by Wellesley, 5 January 1810. Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846 (Oxford, 2006) pp. 127–8. 10

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fluctuated very much in the right direction. Before his death in January 1844 he spent another quarter of a century drawing his pension and combining the pleasures of marital bliss with the delights of rural Middlesex.14

Quite de Jack in office Ancell’s successor as librarian and keeper of the papers was the son of the deceased messenger, Lewis Hertzlett.15 This was not as obvious a choice as it might at first seem. The young Hertzlett, who, at some point after his father’s suicide, further anglicized the family name to Hertslet, was after all only twenty-two years of age. He had doubtless ably assisted Ancell and learnt much from him: he had helped prepare the catalogues and digests of diplomatic correspondence and, having acquired a thorough grasp of the contents and whereabouts of manuscript and printed volumes, had deputized for Ancell whenever he was absent. However, his promotion from librarian’s assistant to head of what was effectively the Foreign Office’s records department may well have been due to a mistake on Wellesley’s part. According to James Bandinel, Wellesley had wrongly assumed Hertslet also to be a clerk of the regular establishment and had believed that his elevation would provide him with a vacancy he was anxious to fill. As a result, in Bandinel’s words, ‘that choice youth Hertzlett’ was appointed in Ancell’s place. Bandinel was not alone in being astonished by Wellesley’s decision. Even the officekeeper, Francis Coral, a servant possibly of Irish descent, found it difficult to comprehend. He complained to Bandinel that Hertslet had ‘put on the great man’ (emphasis in original). He had, Coral said, admonished Hertslet for not recollecting ‘who he was a week ago, dat he was only de messengers’ Clerk – I not understand dat sort of conduct, he is quite de Jack in office’.16 Hertslet had every reason to feel elated at his good fortune, just as Bandinel and his colleagues had grounds for expressing their consternation. Bandinel had been sixteen years old when he was appointed a clerk in the Foreign Office in April 1799, and he had been eager to advance his career and thereby enlarge his income. Fortune had smiled on him and in May 1809 he had benefited from a general augmentation of establishment pay and, in consequence, his salary had risen from £140 to £340 per annum.17 But until the autumn of 1809 the young Hertslet had not been in receipt of any salary paid directly by the Foreign Office. Although he had helped the librarian with the management of the departmental archive, even substituting for him during his absences from the Office, Hertslet’s sole income, amounting to upward of no more than £80 a year, had been derived from what Ancell had paid him for preparing messengers’ bills of service and from ‘casual sums for Extra Business’.18 Only in November 1809, after The Gentleman’s Magazine, January–June 1844, p. 444. Claire Tomalin, Mrs Jordan’s Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and Future King (London, 1995), p. 162. 15 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, minute by Wellesley, 6 January 1810. 16 FO 95/8/14, Bandinel to J. Bidwell Sr. (Constantinople), letter, 14 March 1810. 17 Hamilton, ‘Zealots and Helots’, pp. 20–41. FO 366/671, ‘Establishment of the Secretary of State’s Office for Foreign Affairs’, attached to minute by G. Canning, 5 July 1809. 18 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, memorial by L. Hertslet, n.d. September 1809. 14

 Keepers of the Papers 43 Hertslet had petitioned the then foreign secretary, George Canning, on the subject, was he acknowledged formally as sub-librarian and rewarded with an additional annual allowance of £50 from the Office’s contingent fund.19 His promotion a year later to the post of librarian meant an immediate quadrupling of this allowance to £200 a year.20 Moreover, Hertslet received an extra £189 per annum as payment for taking over Ancell’s responsibilities with regard to the King’s Messengers, thus giving him a gross income of £389. Within the space of only two months the messenger’s boy turned messengers’ clerk had thus prospered mightily. The Hertslet family also benefited from the appointment in March 1811, almost certainly at Lewis’s instigation, of the librarian’s sixteen-year-old brother James as sublibrarian on an allowance of £50 a year.21 Assurances were offered that this small salary would be increased ‘from the first favourable opportunity’, and in the autumn of 1813 it was doubled, both in fulfilment of this understanding and in consideration of James Hertslet ‘being constantly employed in the discharge of his duty’.22 Meanwhile, Lewis Hertslet pressed successfully for the extension to himself of the provisions of an order in council of 10 May 1809 which gave ‘special Augmentations [of salary] to several of the Clerks, in proportion to the length of their respective Services’.23 It was thus agreed in January 1812 that the principle would be so applied as to cover the years since Hertslet had joined Ancell as his assistant in February 1801, and on that basis he received an extra £100 per annum. There were arrears too which had to be made up. However, no sooner had Hertslet been paid £183 6s. 8d, money owed to him for his service since February 1811 (the anniversary of his tenth year in the Office), than he claimed and received an additional £146 13s. 4d., which he reckoned due to him since the order first came into force.24 This he secured, and following his application, just eighteen months later, Lord Castlereagh, Wellesley’s immediate successor, won for Hertslet Treasury consent to a further rise of £100 in his regular annual salary. Within a week of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo, Lewis Hertslet was therefore earning as librarian, exclusive of income from his messengers’ agent duties, £500 per annum, and in 1821, after twenty years’ service, this rose by another £200.25 As Hertslet was to demonstrate time and again, he was ever vigilant where his financial interests were concerned, and was determined to take every advantage of Ibid., minute by Lord Bathurst, 11 October–6 December 1809), 9 November 1809. In 1811 Francis Coral, the officekeeper who had been so critical of Hertslet’s promotion, enjoyed an income, made up of his salary and emoluments, of about £300 per annum. FO 366/672, Wellesley to Treasury, letter, 4 November 1811. 21 Ibid., minute by Wellesley, 29 March 1811. 22 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, J. Hertslet to Castlereagh, minute, 3 December 1812. FO 366/672, W. Hamilton to G. Harrison (Treasury), letter, 15 October 1813; Harrison to Hamilton, letter, 2 November 1813. 23 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, memo. by L. Hertslet and R. Bartlett, 5 September 1811. According to a plan put forward by George Canning, the then foreign secretary, clerks with five years’ service were to receive £80 per annum in augmentation. Those with ten, fifteen and twenty years’ service were to have their salaries increased respectively by £200, £300 and £400 per annum. FO 366/671, order in council, 10 May 1809. 24 FO 366/672, Wellesley to Treasury, letter, 20 December 1811; Treasury to Wellesley, letter, 6 January 1812; L. Hertslet to W. Hamilton, minute, 1 November 1813, with minute by Hamilton, 2 November 1813. 25 Ibid., Castlereagh to Treasury, letter, 19 May 1815; Lushington (Treasury) to Hamilton, letter, 16 June 1815. 19 20

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whatever opportunities might arise for personal advancement. Moreover, in granting recognition of his entitlement to the augmented allowance of 1809 on a footing with the Foreign Office clerks, the Treasury had set a precedent. When in 1822 the establishment of the Office was reformed, the ‘appointment of Librarian was prospectively placed upon a footing with the Clerks of the Second Class and that of the Sub-Librarian upon that of those of the Third Class’. Five years later James Hertslet was promoted and, like his elder brother, was given the rank equivalent to a second-class clerk. These changes involved no increase in Lewis Hertslet’s income as librarian. That remained fixed at £700 per annum.26 And for all his later pretensions and much to his evident disappointment, he was never regarded as a clerk of the regular establishment. Planta would later recall that during his time in Downing Street ‘the Office of Librarian was a Place by itself & not of the different classes of the Establishment’.27 Hertslet, nonetheless, had grounds for claiming that he deserved to be rewarded on a scale commensurate with that of other clerks and that he should receive similar preferment when it came to ascending the professional ladder. Rapid though Hertslet’s salary rises were, they served only to bring his regular earnings into line with those of the librarians of the Home and War and Colonial Offices. In 1815 the basic annual income of the former was £300 and of the latter £335, and both benefited from additional augmentations.28 But the readiness of Wellesley and Castlereagh to support Hertslet’s claims also reflected their satisfaction with his work. On succeeding Ancell, Hertslet had found himself the custodian of some thirty large presses containing the diplomatic and domestic correspondence of the Office dating from about 1780, bound in volumes and for the most part arranged by country. In another twenty presses were stored printed books, including parliamentary papers, ancient treaties, public instruments, diplomatic lists and ‘many valuable Dictionaries’.29 The binding of manuscript volumes, like the printing of papers for Parliament, was done in-house by individuals employed specifically for the purpose. Located first on Downing Street, and then from 1825 until 1844 on Fludyer Street, Hertslet was responsible for superintending both the binding and the orderly presentation of documents. He and his brother had also to supply the Cabinet, Parliament and the undersecretaries with records needed for the everyday conduct of business. It was primarily with the object of facilitating this task that Hertslet devised a system for registering and indexing correspondence, variations of which were later adopted by other foreign ministries. Each document, whether despatch, letter, memorandum or note, was registered according to country or government department, and every entry LD, Corresp., vol. 2, G. Canning to T. Bidwell Jr., minute, 28 April 1827. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, Hertslet to Palmerston, minute, 19 December 1836. The reform of 1822 was undertaken in response to Treasury pressure for retrenchment. As a result, the clerks of the establishment, in addition to the chief clerk, were organized into four grades: four first-class or senior clerks; four second-class clerks; six third-class or junior clerks; and six supernumaries, later called ‘assistant junior clerks’. Middleton, Administration, p. 180. 27 David M. Rubenstein Rare Books & Manuscript Library, Duke University (DU), Backhouse Papers, Box 13, Planta to Backhouse, letter, 11 December 1843. 28 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, comparative statement of the allowances received by the librarians of the three secretaries of state, 11 May 1815. 29 Ibid., draft memo. on the librarian’s establishment for Wellesley, n.d. 26

 Keepers of the Papers 45 was analytically indexed with due reference to the persons and subjects to which the document related.30 Much of the work on making up the register and its index was delegated to James Hertslet.31 This allowed Lewis time in which to initiate the first of what he would later term his ‘extra’ duties or services. Impressed by the vast array of political information published in the British and continental press as a result of the military reverses suffered by Napoleon and the prospects of a negotiated peace, in 1813 he proposed the compilation of a Public Documents Book – essentially an indexed scrapbook of intelligence garnered from leading newspapers and other periodicals bearing on foreign relations. Not only did the Office endorse the project, it rewarded the librarian with an extra £100 per annum for the additional labour it involved, and the bound volumes of the series continued in production until 1873.32 Another such enterprise for which Lewis Hertslet was responsible was the assembly and publication of the multiple volumes of what would later be better known as Hertslet’s Commercial Treaties.33 A request in December 1819 from William À Court, Britain’s minister at Naples, for printed copies of British commercial treaties then in force led Hertslet to propose that in his own time he should compile for publication a complete and concise collection of all such engagements, including those relating to the suppression of the slave trade. Ancell’s Printed Treaties afforded a less ambitious precedent, and William Richard Hamilton, one of the two undersecretaries, backed the idea. Hamilton further agreed that, providing the work was produced in an inexpensive style, the Office would purchase 300 copies to defray the costs of publication. Two volumes appeared in 1820, and of those purchased by the Office, eighty were sent to the Admiralty and thirty to the Colonial Office. In an era when British trade was rapidly expanding and when the Royal Navy had assumed the lead in combating the transatlantic trafficking of slaves, the publication was of obvious value to consuls, colonial administrators and naval officers, and in April 1827 it was agreed that the volumes should continue as a series. But, despite their bearing the Office’s imprimatur, they remained a private undertaking, and such personal profit as Hertslet derived from their sale seems largely to have depended on regular purchases from the Admiralty for distribution to naval stations abroad.34

Ibid., plan proposed for a register or digest to the whole of the correspondence of the Foreign Dept. and for the forming of an index thereto by L. Hertslet, n.d. 1810. C. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh (2 vols, London, 1931 and 1958), vol. 2, p. 38. 31 LD, Corresp., vol. 2, memo. by L. Hertslet, n.d. 1828. 32 S. Hall, ‘Sir Edward Hertslet and His Work as Librarian and Keeper of the Papers of the Foreign Office from 1857–1896’, MA thesis, University of London (1958), p. 7. 33 The original title of the series was A Complete Collection of the Treaties and Conventions and Reciprocal Regulations at Present Subsisting between Great Britain and Foreign Powers, and of the Laws, Decrees, and Orders in Council Concerning the Same; so far as They Relate to Commerce and Navigation; to the Repression and Abolition of the Slave Trade and to the Privileges and Interests of the Subjects of the High Contracting Parties. 34 FO 83/636, William à Court to W. Hamilton, letter, 20 December 1819; memo. by L. Hertslet, 15 January 1820, with minute by W. Hamilton; Staveley to L. Hertslet, minute, 12 April 1820; Planta to L. Hertslet, minute, 5 April 1827; memo. probably by Hertslet, 24 August 1855. Hall, ‘Hertslet’, pp. 9–11. 30

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Hertslet probably gained more satisfaction from another of his documentary collections, the British and Foreign State Papers. First proposed in 1822, the work drew upon experience already gained by Hertslet in putting together the Public Document Book and the editing of his Commercial Treaties, combining the broad scope of the former with the precise focus of the latter. Hertslet thus set out to provide in print the principal treaties concluded since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, along with selections of the most important despatches laid by the British and foreign governments before their various legislatures. George Canning encouraged the venture, and in 1826 Hertslet completed the first volumes of what was to become a monumental assemblage of international transactions. The tomes were initially intended for the use of government ministers and their officials, including diplomats and consuls posted overseas. But in 1831 Palmerston sanctioned the sale of current volumes to the public, and thereafter they continued as an official publication until the series was discontinued in 1968.35 Hertslet, who received £150 for each volume completed, also had the part-time assistance of Robert Wilson. Recruited in April 1826 on a salary of £100 per annum, Wilson served as an assistant under the librarian’s personal direction, devoting the first half of his working day to the State Papers and the second half to helping James Hertslet with the register. Although the pressure of business meant that Wilson was subsequently drawn more into the general business of the Librarian’s Department, he remained committed to the preparation of the State Papers, two volumes of which could be compiled annually. But a plea from Wilson for a pay increase was for too long neglected, and when in July 1839 he fell dangerously ill, Lewis Hertslet found him ‘destitute of the means of providing the Medical and other aid which [were] indispensable to his recovery’.36 At Hertslet’s request, Palmerston intervened to secure him an immediate salary increase of £50, backdated to April 1838.37 This, however, was of no advantage to Wilson as he died on 11 August aged just thirty-eight, leaving his elderly mother, his only dependant, to beg assistance from the Office.38 Wilson’s death left the Librarian’s Department seriously undermanned. During the 1820s and 1830s the Hertslet brothers found themselves having to cope with ever greater demands upon their limited resources. The emergence of new states in the Americas; the transfer to the Foreign Office of responsibility for representation in China, Persia and the Barbary states; the progressive extension of Britain’s commercial and consular relations; and the country’s continued involvement in the suppression of the slave trade, all contributed to a vast expansion of official correspondence. As a result, the register of papers fell into ever-increasing arrear. In 1826 the number of unregistered volumes of correspondence amounted to 629, but by 1840 this had risen to

FCO Historians (LRD), History Notes, issue 8, FCO Library and Records, 1782–1995 (London, 1995), p. 3. A final volume, published in 1977, was the general index to the substantive volumes covering the years 1961–68. 36 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, Wilson to Backhouse, minute, 24 April 1839; L. Hertslet to Palmerston, minute, 29 July 1839. 37 Ibid., minute by W. Fox-Strangways, 29 July 1839. 38 Ibid., memorial of Eleanor Wilson attached to minute by L. Hertslet, 22 August 1839. Palmerston ordered that Wilson’s mother be allowed a gratuity of £50. Minute by Palmerston, 31 August 1839. 35

 Keepers of the Papers 47 1,884, and these did not include papers dated later than 1837.39 In the meantime Lewis Hertslet had assumed a fresh obligation, that of researching and drafting archive-based memoranda or reports providing historical and legal data on matters relating to current policy issues. Hertslet later claimed that this began in April 1823 when he prepared for Canning a ‘descriptive account of the origins of the British Alliance with Portugal, and of the progress and the existing State of that Alliance’. The memorandum was drafted following France’s military intervention in Spain and when the British government was contemplating an expedition to Portugal. Canning was well pleased with the paper, ordering ‘a handsome Present to be given to Mr. Hertslet’, and it was doubtless for this reason that Hertslet long remembered the occasion.40 He had, however, produced two earlier memoranda, both dating from February 1823 and both referring to earlier French involvement in the internal affairs of Spain. Other papers were to follow, and between February 1823 and May 1845, Hertslet completed 107 memoranda in which he combined narrative with legal and political analysis.41 The memoranda were prepared mainly to meet the needs of foreign secretaries, and they covered subjects as varied as the United States’ attitude towards the newly independent states of Latin America, the presence of Russian forces on Ottoman territory, the protection of Sardinian nationals in Tunis, and the employment of the English language in diplomatic communications with the German federal diet at Frankfurt. Hertslet’s familiarity with the Foreign Office archive was vital to his work on the memoranda. So too was that intimate knowledge of diplomacy which he gained through the compiling of his Commercial Treaties and the State Papers. As Edward Hertslet later recalled, so valuable were his father’s ‘reports considered that he was dubbed by one Secretary of State the “Walking State Paper”’.42 His role might be better described as that of a one-man research department, his and subsequently Edward’s pronouncements and interpretations acquiring what K. Theodore Hoppen has termed ‘almost oracular power’.43 But, while Hertslet insisted that the drafting of memoranda did not interfere with the performance of his other duties, it was a burden that he found difficult to undertake within the confines of the Office. Moreover, as related in Chapter 3, in 1824 Hertslet added to his responsibilities and earnings by accepting the new office of superintendent of the King’s Messengers. To avoid the inevitable distractions of official life, he preferred to work at home in nearby Great College Street both on the memoranda and on the messengers’ accounts and, though he could be easily summoned from there, this inevitably meant that he was frequently absent from the Office when others would have preferred him to be there. It was, in any case, apparent that by the end of the 1830s, and more especially after Robert Wilson’s

L. Hertslet estimated that ‘it would occupy the whole Office time of three persons for four years, to complete the Register of those Volumes of correspondence which remained unregistered on the 31st of December 1837’. FO 366/673, Palmerston to Treasury, letter, 9 May 1840; minute by Palmerston, 24 August 1841. 40 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, memo. relative to Hertslet’s extra services, 6 January 1850. 41 Ibid., list of memos., 1823–45. 42 Hertslet, Recollections, p. 147. 43 K. T. Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846-1886 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 154–5. 39

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demise, that the Librarian’s Department was insufficiently staffed to respond efficiently to the requirements of the clerical establishment.

Much irregularity Palmerston first sought to remedy the situation in the library by placing one of the junior clerks of the establishment under Hertslet’s direction. None, however, was available for transfer, and Hertslet had from March 1840 to rely on the help of his sixteen-year-old son, Edward. This was no more than a short-term solution. Arrears in the register continued to accumulate, work on the State Papers slowed, and, Hertslet protested to Backhouse in December 1839, without additional hands ‘considerable delay, inconvenience and embarrassment to the whole office must inevitably arise’.44 Hertslet would like to have regularized Edward’s position and had him as his ‘personal assistant’, editing the State Papers at home and there subservient to parental instruction and control.45 But Palmerston had other ideas, and in the spring of 1840, he won Treasury consent to the appointment of two permanent and three temporary clerks, albeit with ranking and salaries inferior to those of the Office’s regular establishment.46 Moreover, the appointees, who did not begin work until August 1841, proved less than satisfactory. At least three of them, Robert Berwick Seale and William Fortescue Quick, who became respectively first and second library clerks, and Henry Rich, one of the temporary clerks, owed their positions to Palmerston’s personal favour. Seale was the fourth son of Sir John Seale, the loyal Whig MP for Dartmouth; the 38-year-old Quick was apparently one of Palmerston’s parliamentary constituents at Tiverton; and Rich’s father, William Rich, was a clerk in the War Office, for whom Palmerston had earlier found employment.47 That said, neither Seale nor Quick seemed ill-qualified for their posts. Seale, who was twenty-six when he joined the Foreign Office, had been admitted to the Middle Temple, was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and had served in the State Paper Office, the Audit Office and the London Custom House. Quick had likewise had a place in the Customs, though after four years there, and with a wife and two children to support, he had felt his prospects ‘truly deplorable’. Only later was he shocked to discover that his career change entailed a £10 reduction in his annual salary.48 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Backhouse, minute, 28 December 1839; L. Hertslet to Aberdeen, letter, 22 December 1841. 45 Ibid., L. Hertslet to Palmerston, letter, 15 April 1841. UoS, Broadlands Papers, PP/MPC/1366, L. Hertslet to Palmerston, letter, 17 May 1841. FO 366/392, L. Hertslet to Clarendon, letter, 31 December 1853. Lewis Hertslet also sought unsuccessfully to have Edward appointed to a vacant clerkship in the Slave Trade Department. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, L. Hertslet to Palmerston, letters, 27 August 1840 and 17 August 1841. 46 FO 366/673, Palmerston to Treasury, letter, 9 May 1840; minute by Palmerston, 24 August 1841. 47 UoS, Broadlands Papers., PP/MPC/1419, 1444, 1450 and 1453, J. Seale to Palmerston, letters, 10 July and 6 and 12 August 1841; Palmerston to J. Seale, letter, 10 August 1841; R. B. Seale to Palmerston, letter, 14 August 1841. Middleton, Administration, pp. 303 and 307. Bourne, Palmerston, pp. 124 and 445–6. 48 Quick later claimed that he had expected that his position in the Foreign Office would provide him with a salary of £100 per annum, £10 more than he was receiving in the Customs. FCO, FO General, 44

 Keepers of the Papers 49 Progress with the register was further delayed by Palmerston’s departure from office in September 1841. It was customary for outgoing foreign secretaries to be provided with précis of their official correspondence and the new recruits were burdened with the task of preparing one for Palmerston. Then in November one of the temporary clerks, John Savile Lumley, embarked on a diplomatic career and was appointed attaché to the British legation in Berlin.49 The library clerks’ duties were in any event monotonous. The only intellectual effort required in keeping and bringing the register up to date was that of drafting brief summaries of the contents of letters and despatches. Their salaries of £100 a year for the first permanent clerk and £80 a year for the second, rising by annual increments to £300 and £250, were on scales lower than those of clerks in the political divisions. Yet, if the prospects of Seale and Quick were far from brilliant, they were at any rate assured.50 What was less certain was their competence and reliability, and within a year of their recruitment Hertslet, who, very much to his chagrin, had not been consulted on their terms of employment, felt compelled to remonstrate repeatedly with them over their lax approach to the task in hand.51 He had not, however, anticipated what he would later describe as a ‘simultaneous attack’ launched against him by Quick and Seale.52 Hostilities commenced on Saturday 3 June 1842. That afternoon, Quick, after receiving a visit from one of his friends from Tiverton, left the Office and did not return for some time. Meanwhile, Seale arrived late for work, accompanied by his brother. Hertslet, whose patience was all too easily exhausted, was clearly irritated at finding the two seated together and chatting. He ordered the brother to leave, and then, if Seale is to be believed, turned on the errant clerk, attacking his ‘character as a Gentleman’ and using such ‘gross language’ as Seale dared not repeat. Soon afterwards Hertslet also vented his ill-humour on Quick, berating him for his want of application. According to Quick, who complained the next day about the incident to the political undersecretary Charles Canning, the librarian called him ‘a d-d Scoundrel, a d-d impertinent Fellow, and a d-d lazy Fellow’.53 Seale also lodged a formal protest against his treatment by Hertslet. In a letter of 6 June to Aberdeen, Palmerston’s successor as foreign secretary, he portrayed himself as the undeserving victim of Hertslet’s constant abuse. ‘My Lord’, he observed, ‘I have studied Three Years in the University of Cambridge, where I took my BA Degree, and I have therefore not been accustomed to such treatment, nor do I resist it, having always endeavoured since I have been in the FO to do my Duty, as well as to be regular in my attendance.’54 And when pressed by Canning for further clarification of what had actually been said on 3 June, he declared that, while he could not recall in detail all of Librarian’s Dept. Correspondence, Cases of Mr Seale, Mr Quick, & Mr Rich, 1841–45 (henceforth cited as LD, Cases), Quick to L. Hertslet, letter, 4 March 1843. 49 LD, Corresp., vol. 2, minute by Palmerston, 28 August 1842. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Aberdeen, letter, 22 Dec. 1841. FO 363/1, minute by Tenterden, 30 July 1880. 50 FO 366/674, minutes by Lenox-Conyngham, 1 and 2 September 1841; and Palmerston, 2 September 1841. 51 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Lord Aberdeen, 9 June 1843. FO 366/392, L. Hertslet to Clarendon, letter, 31 December 1853. 52 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to J. Russell, letter, 30 April 1853. 53 LD, Cases, Quick to C. Canning, letter, 4 June 1842; Seale to Aberdeen, letter, 6 June 1842. 54 Ibid.

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Hertslet’s ‘tirade of abuse’, he believed Hertslet to have called him a ‘Damned Scamp’, a ‘Damned Scoundrel’, a ‘Damned lazy Fellow’ and a ‘Damned idle Fellow’.55 Hertslet subsequently admitted that in dealing with Quick he had used epithets otherwise ‘foreign to his taste’, though he denied labelling Quick a ‘Scoundrel’ and insisted that he had been provoked by the latter’s assertion that his accusations were false.56 He was adamant too that he had not addressed Seale in the manner attributed to him, and he later dismissed Seale’s allegations as containing ‘scarcely one word of truth’. Indeed, there was no doubt in Hertslet’s mind that if anyone had to answer for his behaviour, it was Seale himself. ‘Mr Seale’, he noted, ‘betrays his aversion to Business every Hour of the Day; and even if he had the inclination, he does not possess the requisite energy and intelligence to qualify him for any one of the various Duties of the Department.’57 Cambridge graduate he might be, but Seale did not meet the standards required by the one-time messengers’ clerk. Charles Canning did not question the veracity of Hertslet’s account and saw no reason for taking further action with regard to Seale’s complaint. Nor, however, did he think that Hertslet’s admitted response to Quick’s ‘provocation’ was justified. Fearful lest ‘the harmony, the Efficiency, & the Character of a Public Department should suffer’ if its senior members forgot what was due to their own positions and that of their subordinates, he suggested that Hertslet write him a letter expressing his regret, the substance of which could then be communicated to Quick.58 It was a request with which Hertslet had to comply reluctantly, though the blow to his professional pride may have been softened by the apology which Quick readily made to him through Canning.59 Nonetheless, his rows with Quick and Seale, their poor timekeeping and other clerical shortcomings, which Hertslet revealed in his defence, and the consequent slow progress in making up arrears in the register exposed his administration to criticism. Addington, the new permanent undersecretary, was far from impressed by the prevailing state of affairs. In a minute of 21 July 1842 he warned Hertslet that Aberdeen had been informed that ‘much irregularity ha[d] prevailed in the Librarian’s Department’ both with regard to the attendance of clerks and the manner in which they conducted themselves. He further stipulated that the library staff be reminded of the regulations governing Office hours, and ruled that if future exhortations were ignored or treated with ‘unbecoming levity’, their conduct should be immediately reported in writing.60 Seale, for his part, continued to voice his resentment of Hertslet’s censure. He hoped, he later wrote, ‘Lord Aberdeen would see the Justice and propriety after what had occurred of my exchanging into some other Department or Office, where I might not be completely at the mercy of an Enemy’.61 Seale also took every possible opportunity 57 58 59

Ibid., Seale to Canning, letter (pencil copy), 20 June 1842. Ibid., undated pencil draft minute by L. Hertslet. Ibid., undated pencil note by L. Hertslet. Ibid., C. Canning to L. Hertslet, letter, 24 June 1842. Ibid., L. Hertslet to C. Canning, letter, 28 June 1842; Quick to C. Canning, letter (pencil copy), 29 June 1842; C. Canning to L. Hertslet, letter, 1 July 1842. 60 Ibid., Addington to L. Hertslet, minute, 21 July 1842. 61 Ibid., Seale to Addington, minute, 2 March 1843. 55 56

 Keepers of the Papers 51 to stay away from the Office. He took six weeks’ official leave in the autumn of 1842 and then succeeded in persuading Aberdeen to permit him to spend a further month in the country, returning to the Office on 21 December. But, Hertslet recalled, he did no work then or on the next day, and soon afterwards took prolonged sick leave, suffering, Seale said, from a ‘very violent rush of blood to the head’. That, however, did not prevent him from turning up to collect his quarterly salary on 6 January 1843. Seale’s subsequent attendance was at best spasmodic, and on 20 February Hertslet reported to Addington, that Seale had ‘relapsed into all the irregularities’ of which he had complained some eight months before. Then, after detailing Seale’s numerous failings, including his apparent reluctance to read any of the correspondence he was meant to be registering, his confounding of letters with their enclosures, and the poor construction and orthography of his entries which rendered them ‘quite unintelligible’, Hertslet concluded that the only way to make useful the work that he had previously done ‘would be to put it into the hands of another Clerk for revisal and correction’. Yet, such a proceeding would take more time than would be occupied by the same clerk doing the work over again.62 So damning was Hertslet’s report on Seale that Aberdeen had Lenox-Conyngham and two senior clerks investigate the facts of the case.63 Their enquiry led Addington to conclude that Hertslet’s complaints were indeed ‘well-founded’. Not only had Seale been irregular in his attendance and remiss in the performance of his duties (since January he had registered 959 despatches, while a colleague had registered 3,873 in three weeks less time), he had also ‘occasionally exhibited great want of respect and deference towards his superiors’. Nevertheless, while Addington felt ‘in the rigorous discharge of [his] duty’ bound to recommend Seale’s dismissal, he still thought that it might be possible to bring to him a ‘sense of his duty’ by administering to him a severe reprimand and ‘admonition to amend his conduct’ under pain of instant dismissal in the event of repetition of the offence.64 Aberdeen agreed, but he also insisted on the adoption of fixed regulations for Hertslet’s department, including provisions for hours of attendance and a commitment to the submission of quarterly reports both on progress made in making up arrears in the register and on the work of individuals so employed.65 It was thus that in October 1843 Aberdeen learnt from a requisition by Hertslet that in the previous quarter Seale, despite his full-time commitment to the register, had done at least six times less work on it than one of his colleagues only partially engaged on the task, and three to four times less than two other clerks. Such ‘gross carelessness and inattention’ were in Aberdeen’s opinion ‘entirely incompatible with the good of the public service and unfair towards Mr. Seale’s companions’. In James Hertslet’s opinion, Seale proved himself ‘not only a great Humbug but a great Fool’. Yet, Ibid, L. Hertslet to Addington, 23 February 1843. Ibid., Addington to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 6 March 1843. 64 Ibid., Addington to Aberdeen, minute, 1 June 1843. It is remarkable that only four days after Addington delivered this damning report to Aberdeen, Seale, then on holiday, wrote to Hertslet: ‘I have been pressed to remain to day with a party at Richmond, and the weather looks so fine and the country so gay that I cannot refuse the temptation. I hope consequently you will have the kindness to excuse my absence from the F.O.’ Ibid., Seale to L. Hertslet, letter, 5 June 1843. 65 FO 366/674, minute by Aberdeen, 10 June 1843. 62 63

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both Aberdeen and Addington were clearly reluctant to remove him immediately from the Office. Rather, he was to be ‘once more, and finally, admonished that on the first well grounded complaint hereafter prepared against him, he [would] be forthwith and, without failure, dismissed from the Office’.66 The warning did little to improve the situation. Within a year Seale was again in trouble with his superiors. During the late summer and early autumn of 1844 he was absent from the Office for long periods and while there he showed little inclination to attend to his duties. Medical certificates, which he supplied, attested to his being unwell with severe bilious attacks, and these, he himself suggested, resulted from his being ‘naturally of a nervous habit’.67 He was also distressed by the death in August of his younger sister, Jane. Others believed his indisposition to be caused by bouts of heavy drinking. As Lewis Hertslet reported on 8 October, ‘that which has long been matter of vehement suspicion, had of late become matter of moral certainty, viz. that his incapacity has arisen from habitual inebriety’. Seale’s appearance and general demeanour had given him away and, according to Hertslet, he had on several occasions arrived at work intoxicated ‘when he ha[d] talked very incoherently, and conducted himself in a manner quite inconsistent with the station of a Gentleman’.68 This was further substantiated by George Mason, the Office bookbinder’s foreman, who declared in a statement of 19 October: I have often observed Mr. Seale very tipsy and particularly so on Saturday the 14th of September when he reeled to the Bow-Press and made a long slit in his Coat and looked very wild, and that on the following Thursday was very tipsy, and was throwing a small Book across the room, and talking and conducting himself in a strange way, and said ‘Come I will shake hands with you,’ which he did. One of the Gentlemen in the Room asked Mr. Seale if he should dine at 9 o’clock to which he replied that he should ‘be jolly drunk by that time’ after which he left the office. I have had frequent opportunities of seeing him since the above, and have several times found him much in liquor, and upon one occasion he requested me to get him a volume to Register from, after which he said that I should open it before him, but he could not do anything, he was in fact not sober at the time.69

Seale was given the opportunity to defend himself against such criticism, and in a letter to Addington of 14 October, he offered to repay his salary for those days on which he had not attended the Office. But while he insisted that his illness was not due to intoxication and that Hertslet’s report, a copy of which he received, was ‘very much like fabrication’, he also expressed his ‘firm determination of abstaining in future almost

Ibid., minute by Addington, 18 November 1843. LD, Cases, J. Hertslet to L. Hertslet, letter, 5 October 843. Emphasis in original. 67 FO 366/674, L. Hertslet to Addington, minute, 7 October 1844; Seale to Addington, letter, 14 October 1844. 68 Ibid. Another of Robert Seale’s sisters, Harriet Ann, was the subject of John Hoppner’s popular childhood portrait of her as Bo-Peep. 69 Ibid., statement by Mason, 19 October 1844. 66

 Keepers of the Papers 53 entirely from any intoxicating drink’.70 His case was not aided by his absence from both his father’s house in Cadogan Place, Chelsea, and the lodgings he had taken on King Street, St. James’s. Indeed, his landlady, who had repaired his torn coat and who had yet to receive her rent, spoke openly of his drunkenness, telling the messenger Aspain, who had been sent to find Seale, of how she had remonstrated with him about the disgrace he presented to his family and the Office.71 When Aspain visited a public house in Pont Street which Seale was known to frequent, he was told by the landlord that he had not been there for a long time but that he had a £5 parlour bill that needed to be settled.72 By then Seale’s fate had already been decided. In a letter to him of 24 October, Addington informed him that Aberdeen was aware of the ‘habits of negligence and hopeless listlessness which resulted from’ Seale’s intemperance, and that from that day he would cease to be in the Office’s employ.73 William Quick, the other rebellious clerk, had hoped to profit from Seale’s dismissal. On 4 March 1843, after reading Hertslet’s report on Seale’s misdemeanours, he wrote to the librarian proposing that if Seale were sacked then he should replace him as first library clerk.74 But at that time Quick was himself recovering from one of several Victorian ailments which prevented him from leaving his home in Walworth. A sad and sickly individual, his attendance record was almost as poor as that of Seale. In July 1842 he had been unable to work because of ‘Spasms’ accompanied by ‘violent Diarrhoea’ and in mid-August his doctor concluded that he was suffering from a ‘severe attack of English Cholera’.75 In September backache kept him away from Downing Street; in November he was incapacitated by head pains for a week; and in February 1843 he was laid low by a ‘functional disease of the Stomach’.76 This was followed in the spring of 1843 by a bilious attack, sciatica and influenza.77 In July an ‘Attack of Colic’, which he feared would lead to ‘inflamation in [the] Bowels’, led Quick to press unsuccessfully for an extension of his annual leave so that his ill health should not be allowed to interfere with his planned holiday in Devon.78 Country air did little to improve either his condition or his attendance at the Office.79 During the autumn of 1843 ‘violent vomiting’ resulted from a ‘functional derangement of the stomach’. This was followed by gout, and in January 1844 he was reported as having ‘Dropsy of the Abdomen’.80 By then it was apparent that Quick, though sometimes prone to exaggeration, was seriously ill. His limbs were vastly swollen and he was diagnosed with ‘ossification of the Heart’. Neither mercury treatment nor efforts 72 73 74 75 70 71



76

79 80 77 78

Ibid., Seale to Addington, letter, 14 October 1844. Ibid., Aspain to Addington, minute, 8 October 1844. Ibid., Aspain to Addington, minute, 24 October 1844. Ibid., Addington to Seale, letter, 24 October 1844. Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letter, 4 March 1843. Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letter, 1 July 1842; medical certificate, 14 August 1842. Emphasis in original. Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letter, 5 September 1842; Quick to L. Hertslet, letter, 18 November 1842, with pencil note by L. Hertslet; medical cert., 13 February 1843. Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letters, 22 May and 6 June 1843. Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letter, 13 July 1843; L. Hertslet to Quick, letter, 14 July 1843. Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letter, 18 August 1843. Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letters, 15 and 24 November 1843 and 16 January 1844; medical certs., 24 November and 3 December 1843; med. Cert., 15 January 1844.

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to drain away the fluid proved of any avail, and on 19 August, barely three years since he joined the Foreign Office, he died.81 Despite the inconvenience caused by his long absences from work, relations between Quick and Lewis Hertslet appear to have improved. In the months before his death Quick was supplied with stationery for his personal use, and he saw fit to write to Hertslet begging his assistance in finding a place for his eldest son in a charity school in Westminster.82 Moreover, Quick’s death was of dynastic advantage to the Hertslets. Edward Hertslet, whom in January 1842 Aberdeen had agreed to make a temporary library clerk in Lumley’s place, succeeded to the vacancy amongst the permanent staff, and in October 1844 he replaced Seale as first clerk in the department.83 But Henry Rich, another of Palmerston’s recruits, remained a problem. Lewis Hertslet had had fair warning that he might prove a wayward youth. In a letter to the Foreign Office of 12 October 1841, written just a few months after Henry Rich joined the department, his father expressed his concern lest his son feign indisposition in order to absent himself from work. He had, William Rich confessed, no confidence in the young man and could ‘neither rely on his words or acts’. ‘I am’, he added, ‘more & more desirous that he should be kept to his work & upon no account allowed to flinch or be absent from his post during office hours.’84 This, however, was a plea from a father, who, while on holiday in Exmouth, had heard that his son had occupied the family home at Sydenham and, against his wishes, taken possession of his horse and chaise.85 As both James and Lewis Hertslet soon discovered, the regular presence at the Office of the pleasure-loving Henry Rich was far from easy to ensure. Like Quick, Rich had no difficulty in finding doctors ready to certify his unfitness for work, though his maladies seem rarely to have amounted to more than influenza and ‘violent Spasms’.86 His punctuality also left much to be desired: he sometimes arrived at the Office well after the commencement of business at 12 noon and departed before its close at 6.00 pm. On one occasion Rich asked that he might leave at 4.30 pm because he was living eight miles out of town (presumably at Sydenham) and therefore had far to travel.87 And when James Hertslet sought to check his absconding he was denounced by Rich for slandering him behind his back.88 There was evidence too of financial irresponsibility and irregularities on his part. In July 1842 William Rich asked Hertslet not to allow his son leave of absence for ‘there were some private matters which he must previously settle’, and in August Henry Rich implored Hertslet not to Ibid., Quick to L. Hertslet, letters, 12 March and 16 July 1844. Middleton, Administration, p. 303. Ibid., Quick to Hertslet, letter, 20 March 1844. 83 In notifying Lewis Hertslet of Aberdeen’s decision to promote Edward to the position of second library clerk, Addington stressed that the appointment was ‘not the result of personal solicitation, but that it [arose] solely from a knowledge of [his] Son’s fitness for the place’. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Aberdeen, letter, 22 December 1841, and note by Aberdeen, 8 January 1842; Addington to L. Hertslet, letter, 28 August 1844. 84 LD, Cases, W. O. Rich to FO, letter, 12 October 1841. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., H. Rich to L. Hertslet, letters, 5 and 24 July 1843; medical certs., 3 November 1842; 16 March, 1 and 21 April, 16 June, 5 July 1843. 87 Ibid., H. Rich to L. Hertslet, letter, 2 January 1843. 88 Ibid., minutes by J. Hertslet and Addington, 1 and 6 September 1843; H. Rich to L. Hertslet, letter, 26 September 1843; H. Rich to Addington, 12 October, with minutes by Addington and J. Hertslet. 81 82

 Keepers of the Papers 55 allow his father to learn of his whereabouts during his planned holiday in Ireland as this would ‘be sure not to add to my pleasure or enjoyment’.89 Then in October 1842 it was reported to the Office that he had drawn a cheque in Dublin which his London bank had subsequently declined to honour. On other occasions pecuniary matters necessitated his absence from London.90 But what gave the Hertslets and their colleagues greater cause for concern was Rich’s habit of extending his holidays and sick leave way beyond the limits set by the Office and sometimes with an unsatisfactory or much delayed explanation. The most notable of these instances was in the autumn of 1843, when Rich, having parted the Office on 4 November and sent in a medical certificate on the 6th, was found to be residing at the Hotel Meurice in Paris.91 Pressed by Addington for an explanation, Rich claimed falsely, in a letter which did not reach the Office until 18 December, that he was owed two to three weeks of his annual leave and that he had decided to recuperate from his illness in France.92 Addington was outraged at the inadequacy of this explanation and, after consulting Aberdeen, wrote on 20 December to inform Rich of his dismissal.93 In his turn, Rich pleaded for clemency. He was, he explained, entirely dependent on his situation in the Foreign Office, and, after recalling his father’s friendship with Palmerston, Rich added that it would ‘be hard if the son of so old a public servant should be visited with such extreme and unusual severity for so small a cause’.94 Addington gave way. Although he was angered at Rich’s notion that he had only been guilty of a ‘small fault’, he was ‘averse to harsh punishments’, and he persuaded Aberdeen that Rich should be reinstated, but without pay for what by his return in February 1844 amounted to a full three months of absence.95 Rich was also warned that any repetition of the offence would result in his dismissal, and in a minute whose admonition was evidently intended for Hertslet as well as Rich, Addington observed that it would be ‘independently necessary to make it understood in the Librarian’s Dept that it is the last exercise of merciful visitation that the idle and the careless of that Dept will have to expect’. Meanwhile, William Rich wrote to Addington to express his gratitude for the foreign secretary’s leniency towards his son – an indulgence he characterized as a ‘personal favour’ from Aberdeen, an old schoolfellow at Harrow.96 This was not, however, the end of Hertslet’s troubles with the delinquent Rich. The latter continued to press for longer holidays than were his due, and in January 1845 Addington finally granted him another two months’ leave of absence.97 It was the last that the library would see of Rich. He did not return to work in March, and a few 91 92 89 90

95 93 94



96 97

Ibid., W. Rich to L. Hertslet, letter, 25 July 1842; H. Rich to L. Hertslet, letter, 29 August 1842. Ibid., H. Rich to L. Hertslet, letter, 19 October 1842. Ibid., minute by L. Hertslet, 6 November 1843. Ibid., Addington to H. Rich, letter, 5 December 1843; H. Rich to Addington, letter, 8 December 1843, with minute by Hertslet. Ibid., Addington to H. Rich, letter, 20 December 1843. Ibid., H. Rich to Addington, letter, 25 December 1843. Rich was given permission to stay on in Paris until 31 January 1845 for the ‘arrangement’ of his ‘pecuniary affairs’. Ibid., minute by Addington, 30 December 1843; Addington to H. Rich, letter, 19 January 1845. Ibid., W. Rich to Addington, letter, 17 January 1845. Ibid., H. Rich to Addington, letter, 28 September 1844; Addington to H. Rich, 28 September 1844; H. Rich to L. Hertslet, 28 January 1845.

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days after the expiry of his leave, a solicitor called to inform Addington that Rich was ‘in Brussels, and that it was not in his power, in consequence of pecuniary difficulties, to return to England’. Addington was still prepared to grant him an extension until 15 April so that he might settle his affairs. But, almost certainly to Lewis Hertslet’s relief, this proved impossible, and in a letter of 12 April 1845 Rich tendered his resignation.98

The hardest working man in Europe Soon after the appointment of the Liberal peer, Lord Wodehouse (later 1st Earl of Kimberley), as political undersecretary in December 1852, Addington introduced Lewis Hertslet to him as ‘the hardest working man in Europe’. This might, as Hertslet liked to believe, have been intended as a compliment. It might also have been a thinly disguised attempt at sarcasm.99 By then Addington and Hertslet were, to say the least, disaffected colleagues. It was unfortunate for Hertslet that Addington’s appointment as permanent undersecretary in April 1842 came close to coinciding with the commencement of his troubles with Seale and Quick. Hertslet’s handling of his recalcitrant juniors suggested a want of discipline in the registry, upon which Aberdeen and the clerks of other departments remarked and for which Hertslet could not, despite his protests to the contrary, wholly escape blame. Addington certainly had grounds for criticizing Hertslet’s conduct, more especially his long absences from his room during the early part of the working day, a custom which Hertslet claimed to have been sanctioned by Backhouse when, in 1836, it had been settled that he would not be expected to be in the Office before 1.00 pm and that he should be there as soon after that hour as was convenient.100 Yet, Addington viewed with dismay this and the paid duties and fees amassed by Lewis and his brother James. He considered the librarian’s superintendence of the messengers ‘altogether foreign from his peculiar avocations’ and detrimental to the smooth running of his department, and he characterized as ‘obscene’ the pay rises he had secured since his appointment.101 Already by 1827 Lewis Hertslet’s cumulative annual earnings stood at £1,400, a sum greater than the salary of the chief clerk. In any one year his extra services could yield £250 and his superintendence of the messengers earned him another £450.102 Hertslet was, for all that, less than satisfied. His aggregate income may have remained high, but during the sixteen years following 1821 he, as librarian, had enjoyed neither a salary increase nor further promotion within the Office. True, his extra services had provided him with extra revenue, but these, he insisted, were distinct from and did not in any degree diminish his ordinary duties as librarian. And heavy demands upon himself and his department had meant that his earnings from the preparation of the State Papers had tended to decrease. All this he had brought to Palmerston’s attention Ibid., minute by L. Hertslet, 16 April 1845. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to J. Russell, minute, 3 February 1853. 100 Ibid., L. Hertslet to Aberdeen, letter, 9 June 1843. 101 LD, Corresp., vol. 2, minute by Addington, 19 February 1844; Addington to Treasury, draft of proposed letter, n.d. 1847. 102 See Chapter 3. 98 99

 Keepers of the Papers 57 in a minute of 19 December 1836. It would not, he hoped, ‘be deemed unreasonable, or presumptuous, on his part, if as the Head of a responsible and not unimportant Branch of the Office, he should aspire to the First Class [of clerks], and to a corresponding increase in Salary’.103 There was some justice in Hertslet’s claim. The librarians of the Home Office and the Colonial Office had by then respective salaries of £975 and £800; others in the Foreign Office had not been denied promotion because of their extra services; and Bandinel, his near-contemporary in the Office, had, as head of the Slave Trade Department, the rank and salary of a senior or first-class clerk. Backhouse seemed supportive of Hertslet’s proposal that he should either receive (1) a pay increase of £100 per annum, which would place him on the same scale as a senior clerk; or (2) an annual incremental pay increase of £25 over the next ten years, which would eventually take his salary as librarian to £900 per annum.104 But Palmerston was not persuaded. After taking the best part of five months to consider the librarian’s claim, he pointed out in a minute of 19 May 1837 that Hertslet had achieved his present income ‘by rapid augmentations made at early Periods after his first Appointment’ and that he had for many years received emoluments higher than others of similar rank in the Office. And, all things considered, Palmerston did not think that he could with propriety add to Hertslet’s present income. Nor could he see his way to placing Hertslet ‘in a class with which neither his Duties nor his Income assimilate[d]’.105 Palmerston was ready to make one concession. In July 1837 he directed that the £100 a year which Hertslet received for his work on the Public Documents Book should in future be paid as a regular part of his salary, thus raising this to £800 per annum, ‘the maximum of the Salary of the Second, Third and Fourth Clerks of the Senior Class, with which class Mr. Hertslet’s Rank in the Office [would] henceforward be assimilated’. This was an ambiguous formula which, though it involved no increase in his overall income, allowed Hertslet to claim that he now ranked as a senior clerk and should in future be treated as such.106 Indeed, with this in mind, Hertslet returned to the fray in 1843, again pressing for a pay rise. Just prior to his departure from office in 1841, Palmerston had succeeded in winning Treasury consent to an increase in the number of senior clerks from four to six, and a subsequent order in council set the maximum pay of the senior clerks at £1,000 per annum, but left that of the librarian unchanged. Hertslet was evidently incensed at this and in November 1843 he drafted a letter to Aberdeen setting out his case for immediate preferment.107 He hoped once more to enlist the support of Backhouse, who, overworked and mentally stressed, retired in April 1842. To this end Hertslet even prepared for Backhouse’s communication to Addington a minute, apparently intended for Aberdeen’s signature, instructing that the £150 Hertslet received for the compilation of each volume of the State Papers be included in his regular salary and that he receive an annual increment of £25 per annum, backdated to January 1842 – an arrangement which, if implemented, would have taken LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Palmerston, minute, 19 December 1836. Ibid., memo. by Backhouse, n.d. January 1837. 105 Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 19 May 1837. 106 Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 22 July 1837. UoS, Broadlands Papers., PP/MPC/541, L. Hertslet to Palmerston, letter, 29 July 1837. 107 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Aberdeen, letter, 1 November 1843. 103 104

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him straight to the top of the scale for senior clerks.108 But Backhouse declined to weigh in on Hertslet’s behalf. It would, he thought, be presumptuous and inappropriate on his part to act as Hertslet wished.109 Addington, who consulted Backhouse, evidently agreed, and Hertslet was informed in no uncertain terms that in 1837 Palmerston had simply intended to give him the ‘rank and standing’ of a senior clerk, leaving his salary fixed as before, and that given the current size of his total emoluments, Aberdeen did not think it would be fair towards either the other senior clerks or the public that he should receive an increase in pay.110 Hertslet was almost certainly mistaken in assuming that, but for his impaired mental faculties, Backhouse would have supported his claim. Backhouse, who in 1843 was busy trying with Addington’s assistance to secure a consular appointment for his son, had simply done his arithmetic and been astonished at the size of Hertslet’s total earnings.111 Yet Hertslet was convinced that Addington’s appointment marked a turning point in his career. He later recollected that prior to 1842 he had ‘been uniformly treated in the most kind and confidential manner, by each of the several permanent [sic] under-secretaries’. He also came to believe that from 1839 he had had to reckon with the growing prevalence of a ‘new and . . . [for him] baneful influence’ in the person of the future permanent undersecretary Edmund Hammond. The latter was twenty-three years junior to Hertslet and had only joined the Office in 1824. He had, nonetheless, risen to be a senior clerk, and Addington relied upon his judgement where domestic matters were concerned. He seemed ready to interfere in the workings of the Librarian’s Department, and Hertslet held him in part responsible for the inferior grading of his clerks. He also began lecturing Hertslet on his superintendence of the messenger service. Meanwhile, Hertslet’s relations with Addington were beset by a number of trifling differences, some of which were magnified into matters of importance, and all of which were added to the oversensitive librarian’s extensive list of grievances. Thus, on one occasion Hertslet was summoned to read in the presence of Addington and Charles Canning a memorandum recording clerical complaints over various misdemeanours on the part of his brother James, the most serious of which was the latter’s neglect to lock up certain papers. When at another juncture Hertslet contested such criticisms of his department, Addington declared that he would never speak to him again except in the presence of a third person.112 Addington also challenged Hertslet’s assumption that the concession granted to him by Backhouse in 1836 remained ‘undisturbed’ by regulations introduced in the summer of 1843 stipulating that either the librarian or the sub-librarian should be present in the Office when it opened for business at noon.113 He was determined to enforce the strict observance of Office rules and felt Hertslet too inclined to assume that Ibid., draft minute in L. Hertslet’s handwriting, December 1843. Ibid., Backhouse to L. Hertslet, letter, 2 January 1844. 110 Ibid., Addington to L. Hertslet, letter, 29 February 1844. 111 DU, Backhouse Papers, Box 13, Addington to Backhouse, letter, 25 November 1843; Planta to Backhouse, letter, 11 December 1843. 112 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Clarendon, unsent draft letter, 30 April 1853. Anderson, ‘Edmund Hammond’, p. 29. 113 Ibid., Hertslet to John Russell, 3 February 1853. 108 109

 Keepers of the Papers 59 his peculiar workload entitled him to privileged treatment. In the autumn of 1849 he rebuked Hertslet for seeking and securing an extra week’s leave on the grounds that he had been occasionally employed on official business during his holiday. He reminded Hertslet, ‘we are all liable to be called upon to perform official business during our respective holidays’, and that in the course of the year the librarian had already been ‘indulged’ with more leave than that to which he was entitled.114 But one major disincentive to Hertslet spending more time in the Office was the accommodation allotted to himself and his department. He had once enjoyed a good-sized ground-floor room on Downing Street. The removal of his department to Fludyer Street in 1825 had, however, reduced space both for work and storage. Thus, while some 1,300 volumes of diplomatic correspondence, covering the years 1781–1810, had been transferred to the State Paper Office, it had soon become apparent that the new premises were not up to bearing the weight of the remaining manuscript and printed volumes. Such was the degree of subsidence on Fludyer Street that Hertslet’s own room had to be supported from beneath by posts installed at varying intervals, and in order to forestall further structural damage some of the heavier library presses had to be removed from their rooms and placed against staircase walls. Meanwhile, the tomes in Hertslet’s custody continued to accumulate. By 1839 he held in all about 5,000 printed and 4,000–5,000 bound manuscript volumes, and the latter were increasing by between approximately 400 and 500 volumes a year. ‘They [the volumes] are’, Hertslet had complained in July 1839 to the parliamentary Select Committee on the Public Offices, ‘placed in the most irregular manner possible: some of them are stored away in obscure rooms and passages and there is no semblance of a library.’ None of this was to Hertslet’s personal convenience. Nor did the distribution of the department’s business over several floors facilitate that close supervision of new staff, the need for which Seale’s misconduct was amply to demonstrate.115 Members of the select committee suggested a possible solution. They envisaged the construction of a new building on the then vacant site to the east of the Office on Downing Street with a view to its serving as a records repository and library either for the Foreign Office alone, or for it and other government departments, in which papers of more than five years’ standing might be kept. The idea was not greeted with any enthusiasm by Hertslet. He viewed his archival work as central to the operations of the Office and, though he conceded that many printed books might be kept in a separate building, he maintained that he had no manuscript correspondence that could be considered old. He claimed that the efficiency of his department required all correspondence and treaties to be kept under the Office’s roof: ‘there is’, he added, ‘no divisible period in our foreign affairs, nor any limit to our researches’. Communications between one extremity of the Office and the other were already in Hertslet’s opinion so distant that a new library, even if it were no more than 200 feet further to the

At that time clerks were permitted eight weeks holiday a year, inclusive of such feast days as Easter. Addington seems to have been particularly irritated by the fact that both Lewis and Edward Hertslet had been absent at the same time, leaving him with no proper means of archival reference. Ibid., Addington to Hertslet, letter, 13 October 1849. 115 HC, Report from Select Committee on Public Offices (1839), paras. 227–57. 114

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east, ‘would greatly add to our inconvenience’.116 For the moment his preference was for a rearrangement of existing rooms such as would allow him to consolidate his department. Thus, in March 1843, he proposed that he, his clerks and their many wooden presses should be moved to two adjoining first-floor rooms, one of which was that used for Cabinet meetings.117 Nothing came of this initiative, but nine months later Hertslet struck an informal deal with Bandinel for an exchange of rooms between the Librarian’s and the Slave Trade Departments. This, like the earlier proposal, would have provided Hertslet’s department with two neighbouring rooms, one of which would be used for storing records and for work on the register and the other of which would serve as a reference room. But neither Addington nor Lenox-Conyngham was party to this arrangement, and they reacted angrily when they learnt of what was afoot.118 It would, in any case, appear that they already had under consideration a plan for consolidating the Librarian’s Department and it was not one of which Hertslet would approve. Without first consulting Hertslet, it was decided during the course of 1844 to squeeze him and the library reference room into what had previously been the door porter’s ground-floor apartment, and to confine the greater part of the department’s printed collection to basement rooms. The space provided was far from adequate. Books were henceforth stored in damp, airless and almost inaccessible cellars, while volumes of correspondence remained scattered throughout the passages of the building with no adequate library space for their consultation. Hertslet found himself in a room which, he protested, was ‘decidedly the worst Writing Room in the Office’ and a threat to his health and well-being, and in a letter of 14 February 1853 to the then foreign secretary, John Russell, he begged that he be found a more appropriate sitting room. Of his present one, he wrote that the smell which existed in it was often intolerable, and the ventilation so bad that when the wind was in some quarters he suffered ‘Rheumatism of the Head, owing to the Draught, out of which [he could] not remove’. No librarian he was aware of had ‘so many and such onerous Duties to perform’, and yet he knew of no other librarian whose personal convenience and accommodation had been given less consideration. And, with the prospect of a new Foreign Office building as distant as ever, Hertslet reversed his earlier stance and put it to Russell that his department might be better accommodated if a temporary structure were erected on Downing Street and linked to the present building.119 Prone to exaggeration Hertslet may have been. He was not, however, alone in complaining about subterranean working conditions on Downing Street. A Treasury report of 1849 on the neighbouring Colonial Office was damning in its criticism of the risks to which the department’s employees were exposed

Ibid. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, memo. with respect to the better accommodation of the Librarian’s Dept., 9 March 1843. 118 Ibid., L. Hertslet to C. Canning, letters, 3 and 23 January 1844; memo. by Addington, 12 January 1844. 119 Ibid. 116 117

 Keepers of the Papers 61 ‘in cellars the dampness, closeness and darkness of which must be very injurious to their health’.120 The dispersal of the Librarian’s Department about the building did not diminish demands upon its time. As the business of the Office expanded, so too did requests from political departments for archival information. As a result, the two permanent library clerks, who might otherwise have been engaged in assisting the sub-librarian with the arrangement of current correspondence and parliamentary papers and the making up of arrears in the register and indexes, were regularly involved in records retrieval. Such searches could relate to subjects as diverse as historic complaints against the British consul in Königsberg, the legality of marriages solemnized in British missions abroad, and the Anglo-American settlement of outstanding claims for compensation. New duties were also devolved to the librarian: he had thus to take on the task of vetting for possible publication documents selected by historians during their researches in the State Paper Office. Indeed, so burdened were he and his department with other work that by 1850 some 707 volumes of papers for the years up until and including 1846 awaited registration, and 5,295 had yet to be indexed. Hertslet had also fallen far behind with the compilation of the State Papers. While during the first ten years after the series’ initiation, thirteen volumes had been completed, during the next ten this slipped to seven, and between 1845 and 1850 only one appeared in print. By 1850 the years covered by the volumes did not extend beyond 1834, and the enterprise, which Hertslet believed to contribute much to his own professional expertise as well as to his income, seemed threatened with ‘total extinction’. All this Hertslet related in two memoranda of January 1850, which were evidently drafted in anticipation of an impending enquiry by a Treasury committee into the workings of the Foreign Office. In the first of these he described in detail the several tasks performed by himself and his department, and in the second he considered the extra services he had undertaken. Never one to make light of his labours, Hertslet maintained, ‘without exaggeration’, that he was ‘incessantly employed in Public Business, either at the Office or at his own Home’. Yet, he confessed, it was impossible for him to do all that was expected of him, or all that he desired.121 The Treasury enquiry, one of several undertaken in response to the alarm recently expressed over the growth in public expenditure, seemed destined to recommend economies.122 Indeed, faced with the prospect of Treasury cutbacks, Hertslet contemplated retirement.123 He had, however, other solutions in mind. For one thing, he hoped that the Office would be prepared to indemnify him for the losses he had HC, Reports of Committees of Inquiry into Public Offices and Papers connected Therewith (1859), p. 60. 121 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, memos., review of the Librarian’s Dept. and with regard to L. Hertslet’s extra services, 5 January 1850. Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 22–40, 148–64. FO 366/392, memo. Arrears of Register and Index thereto, February 1850; statement by L. Hertslet regarding the employment of library clerks, 3 February 1853. Foreign Office records in the State Paper Office were open to the public up until 1688, and to historians with permission and subject to review, up until 1760 and sometimes to 1790. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, memo. by E. Hertslet, 21 June 1861. 122 Wright, Treasury Control, p. xv. 123 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Palmerston, draft letter, 11 January 1850. FO 366/392, L. Hertslet’s Answers respecting the State Papers, 23 February 1850. 120

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incurred as a result of his not having been able to devote more of his time to the State Papers. He also speculated on ‘whether the State Papers might not in future be transferred altogether to other hands, he receiving the Compensation which [had] been usual in such cases, or might not be continued by him, with the assistance of the Sub Librarian and the Permanent Clerks in the Librarian’s Department’.124 In addition, he put forward his own plan for bringing up the arrears in the register within two years by having one library clerk devote all his time to the task, and by employing him and each of the three other clerks for two extra hours a day. The same clerks would, he reckoned, complete the index in about six and a half years.125 Addington, who sat on the committee of enquiry along with the Treasury representatives, Sir William GibsonCraig and Sir Charles Trevelyan, while not wholly unsympathetic to Hertslet’s plight, harboured doubts about the State Papers. The volumes, he advised Palmerston, were expensive to produce and their sale was ‘almost null’. If Hertslet were to resume and continue work on them, then, Addington thought, he would need ‘the assistance of one, or perhaps two, extra hands for a while to help him’.126 Palmerston agreed. He was decidedly of the opinion that the series should not lapse, and Frederick Sasse, the second of the permanent library clerks, was subsequently assigned to help with preparation of the volumes.127 And although Addington, like his colleagues on the Treasury committee, was in principle opposed to the notion of clerks working extra hours for extra pay, he too thought that in the case of the arrears in the register and its index it could be resorted to with ‘good effect, and moreover with good economy’.128 The Treasury committee also recognized that the ‘prompt and accurate transaction of the business of the Office’ was to a great degree dependent on the state of the registers and indexes. It, therefore, proposed, in what appears to be a draft report of August 1850, the addition of a third permanent clerk to Hertslet’s staff, and the transfer of the superintendence of the messengers to the chief clerk, with ‘full compensation’ to the librarian for the discontinuance of his existing allowance. Other passages in this draft report were less likely to have appealed to Hertslet. Presumably with the object of recouping some of the cost of the additional library clerk, it recommended a reduction of £165 per annum in the maximum salary of the sub-librarian. Moreover, without any mention of indemnifying Lewis Hertslet for earnings and labours lost, it proposed entrusting the future compilation of the State Papers to a second clerk in the Treaty Department.129 The committee’s proposals with regard to the Librarian’s Department and the messenger services were very much in line with Addington’s thinking. But differences with the Treasury over other matters, including a dispute over the backdating of a pay rise to clerks in the Slave Trade Department, prevented the completion of an agreed report. Meanwhile, Addington’s prickly relationship Ibid., memo. re. L. Hertslet’s extra services, 5 January 1850. FO 366/392, L. Hertslet’s answers respecting the State Papers, 23 February 1850; memo. ‘Arrears of Register and Index thereto’, n.d., February 1850. 126 UoS, Broadlands Papers, PP/FO/B?32/2, Addington to Palmerston, minute, 8 February 1850. Emphasis in original. 127 FO 366/392, L. Hertslet’s answers respecting the State Papers, 23 February 1850; further queries and answers, respecting the Register, the Index thereto, and the State Papers, 19 April 1852. 128 Ibid., Addington to Palmerston, memo., 26 February 1850. 129 Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 148–64. 124 125

 Keepers of the Papers 63 with Hertslet persisted. The permanent undersecretary kept under close scrutiny the overtime worked by library clerks, and in April 1852, following the departure of first Palmerston and then his immediate successor, Lord Granville, from the Foreign Office, he gave full vent to his dissatisfaction with the continued employment of regularly appointed clerks for extra hours and extra pay – an ‘irregularity’ which had not achieved its objective, and a ‘serious evil’ which ‘must be corrected’. ‘[I]t appears to me’, he informed Hertslet, ‘that we have fallen into a State of complication with regard to the Index, Register, and State Papers, from which it is imperatively necessary we should relieve ourselves.’130 Hertslet was more than a little annoyed at Addington’s complaints. He insisted that his work on the State Papers in no way interfered with the making up of arrears; that Sasse, the only permanent clerk engaged in overtime, had been permitted this ‘indulgence’ because of the inadequacy of his basic salary; and that, according to his calculations, the arrears in the index of the register up to 1846 were likely to be made up nine months ahead of schedule. It is, nevertheless, apparent that Hertslet was guilty of gross exaggeration in claiming that the arrears in the register up to 1846 had been completed.131 He was also excessively optimistic in his assessment of what registry clerks could accomplish in a day. Figures submitted by him in January 1852 revealed that 411 pre-1847 volumes awaited registration, and a year later this figure stood at 306. Indeed, in January 1853 he admitted that, if overtime work were abolished, the best if not the only effectual way to reduce the arrears in the register would be to employ two more temporary clerks upon the distinct understanding that their employment would cease at the end of two years. By then it was also apparent that arrears were building up in the registering and indexing of volumes from the ‘current period’ (i.e. 1847–9), with an annual deficiency of eighty volumes of the register and sixty-nine of its index.132 For his part Addington was reluctant to acquiesce in Hertslet’s own peculiar working practices. In a circular of 2 February 1853, the main purpose of which was to draw the attention of clerks to their late timekeeping, Addington cited Hertslet as an example of one who was rarely in the Office when business began at noon. ‘I believe’, he observed, ‘that Mr Hertslet seldom comes before 2, 3, or 4, at least. I have frequently asked for him between 2 and 3 pm, and he has not been here.’133 Mortified that after more than half a century of public service he had thus been singled out for reproach, Hertslet complained immediately to John Russell, then in his first brief spell as foreign secretary.134 While, however, the offending minute was cancelled, Russell upheld the remonstrance. In a letter to Hertslet, doubtless intended to soften the blow, he wrote: ‘The valuable information of which your mind is full renders your absence the more

LD, Corresp., vol. 2, minutes by Addington and Palmerston, 4 and 5 April 1851. FO 366/392, further queries and answers, respecting the Register, the Index thereto, and the State Papers, 19 April 1852. Emphasis in original. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid., statement by L. Hertslet regarding the number of volumes of the register and index finished, 11 January 1852; memo. by L. Hertslet of work done upon the Arrears and Current Register and Index, in 1850, 1851 and 1852, 10 January 1853. 133 LD, Corresp., vol. 1, circular from Addington, 2 February 1853. 134 Ibid., L. Hertslet to J. Russell, letter, 3 February 1853. 130

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felt & your attendance the more necessary.’135 For his part, Hertslet insisted that his ‘particular duties’, such as the drafting of memoranda, required ‘great accuracy and an undivided attention’, and could not be fulfilled in the Office owing to the interruptions to which he was continuously subject. He resided only a few hundred yards from the Foreign Office and could easily be summoned if his presence were needed.136 That said, his subsequent claim that he was not like other heads of department, who ‘had only sometimes Duty to perform that could not be done in the Office’, was less easy to sustain. Senior officials did a good deal of paper work at home before arriving at the Office, and once there had to pay considerable attention to the drafting of correspondence. Hammond, whom Hertslet understood to be the source of Addington’s criticisms, dismissed his claims as specious and, when tackled on the subject, added insult to injury by telling Hertslet that the sooner the State Papers were ‘got rid of the better, . . . they were so much in arrear that they were no use’. He further complained that he could never obtain what he wanted in the library reference room, that the clerks were often not there, and when present ‘they were doing “he did not know what”’.137 And in a subsequent minute he noted that he ‘constantly if not invariably’ made his own researches in the Librarian’s Department.138 Hertslet’s department seems, nonetheless, to have been kept fully occupied and, as Hertslet had foreseen, his own room afforded easy access to all those wishing to consult the records in the adjoining reference room. This finally brought matters to a head with Addington. Irritated by the conversion of his working space into a passageway, Hertslet had printed and pasted to his door a notice reading ‘No Thoroughfare’. When subsequent building work exposed him to more draughts and the more frequent passage of others through his room, Hertslet, armed with a medical certificate, attempted on 12 March 1853 to persuade Addington of the dangers to which his personal well-being was thereby exposed. The solution first suggested by Addington was that he should simply lock the outer door of his room, but, having been persuaded by Lenox-Conyngham of the impracticality of this, he subsequently advised Hertslet that it was ‘perfectly absurd’ to suppose that he could not compel the clerks to do what he thought proper in his own room. This, in his turn, Hertslet contested. He did not, he argued, have the authority to do so as head of department since he did not have Addington’s countenance and support. Addington, he protested, communicated with him ‘only in the shape of dry written Interrogatories’ and that under such circumstances he could not but feel that he ‘was superseded, and comparatively powerless’. Angered at the tone adopted by Hertslet and especially by what he inferred to be his questioning of whom he might consult, Addington then demanded that Hertslet address a letter of complaint to Lord Clarendon, Russell’s immediate successor in Aberdeen’s coalition government.139 After an initial show of reluctance, Hertslet accepted the challenge, and by 30 April 1853 he had in draft a thirty-seven-page letter in which, on the basis of memory and archival research, he detailed every slight he believed himself to have suffered from 137 138 139 135 136

Ibid., John Russell to L. Hertslet, letter, 12 February 1853. Ibid., L. Hertslet to J. Russell, letters, 3 and 14 February 1853 Ibid., L. Hertslet to Clarendon, unsent draft letter, 30 April 1853. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, minute by Hammond, 4 June 1853. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to Clarendon, unsent draft letter, 30 April 1853.

 Keepers of the Papers 65 Addington and his associates in the preceding twelve years. Addington, he maintained, had failed to consult sufficiently with him when decisions had been taken relating to his department and the regulation of the messenger service, and had been all too ready to support unfounded criticisms of his management. He had, Hertslet continued, been treated ‘as the nominal Head of the Librarian’s Department, as the nominal Superintendent of Queen’s Messengers, and as nominal Clerk of the First Class’. And given that his services had previously received the approbation of secretaries of state, he concluded that Addington’s objections to himself must ‘therefore be of a Personal Character’. Quite what such personal objections might be, Hertslet could only speculate. Confident of his own abilities, he was not one to admit to bureaucratic imperfection, and was left wondering as to whether his social origins accounted for his colleague’s disdain. There is [Hertslet suggested] but one defect that I can imagine as besetting me; and that is that I am the Son of a Queen’s [sic] Messenger. If such accident of birth be not considered a Fault or an Offence in the Foreign Office, which was certainly not the case formerly, I must plead guilty to it; and must incur the penalty, which I can continue to do with composure: but I have too much respect for Mr. Addington’s sense of justice to suppose that, so long as I do not bring discredit upon my Appointment, by inefficiency or misconduct, he could be influenced against me officially, by any such personal consideration; a consideration to which I would not even have alluded, were it not for my utter inability to conceive any reason whatsoever for his withholding from me his countenance and support, so long as I do my Duty, as the Head of a Department, some of the responsibilities of which are of no ordinary character.140

Hertslet’s wordy missive was never seen by Clarendon. Before submitting it, Hertslet sought the opinion of the former undersecretary, William Hamilton. The latter wisely cautioned him against troubling Clarendon with his case. ‘The Draft of Remonstrance’, Hamilton observed, ‘shows a very strong case in your favour, perhaps rather too strong, inasmuch as it places the Defendant so much in the wrong that it would be difficult to reconcile the Differences between you without a regular blow-up, which is not what you want.’141 There seems, however, to have been no perceptible improvement in relations between Addington and Hertslet’s department. When in June 1853 Edward Hertslet followed the family tradition and pressed for a pay rise, he received from Addington a less than gracious letter informing him that Clarendon could not accede to his request. Edward Hertslet based his claim on a recent decision to grant to the two most senior clerks of the Slave Trade Department salaries equivalent to those of the second- and third-class clerks of the establishment. But Addington pointed out that while it had for some time been intended to place the Slave Trade Department ‘to a certain extent, on the same footing with the regular Establishment of the Office’, the same was not true of the Librarian’s Department. The latter had been what in his draft remonstrance Ibid. Ibid., W. Hamilton to L. Hertslet, letter, 20 May 1853.

140 141

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Lewis Hertslet had himself described as ‘one of the inferior Departments’, and this seemed to be reaffirmed when in 1854 the Slave Trade Department was reconstituted and its clerks absorbed into the Office’s regular establishment. Edward Hertslet had, for the moment, to content himself with the knowledge that though Addington thought he had ‘no rightful ground for making his request’, he had spoken highly of him in conversation with a mutual acquaintance and had written to Clarendon that he would ‘one day be well entitled to fill a higher position in his Dept.’.142

Unhappy spirit The upgrading of the slave trade clerks addressed a long-standing grievance. It was also one aspect of the reform process initiated by the Treasury’s enquiry into the workings of the Office.143 The subject of administrative restructuring was, at Clarendon’s direction, referred by Addington to the senior clerks, but the permanent undersecretary deliberately excluded Hertslet from their ruminations on the ‘general state of the Office, because the Librarian’s Dept. [was] an entirely separate Dept.’ (emphasis in original). It is likely that it was this and the implications of further organizational change that led Hertslet to return to the offensive. In a letter to Clarendon of 31 December 1853, drafted in what Addington rightly described as an ‘unhappy spirit’, Hertslet made plain his dissatisfaction at the way in which he was too often overlooked when matters relating to his department were under consideration. Annoyed at Addington’s treatment of his son, he was particularly concerned about the pay and standing of his staff. He argued with some justice that the clerks of the Slave Trade Department, who owed their anomalous status to their having been recruited to a department once viewed as temporary expedient, performed duties that ‘were not more useful or responsible’ than those undertaken by his own staff. He also questioned Addington’s assertion that there had never been any intention on the part of the foreign secretary ‘to place the Librarian’s Department on the same footing with the Establishment’, citing the several occasions prior to 1840 when he himself and the sub-librarian had for purposes of remuneration been graded with clerks of the establishment. Clarendon, he hoped, would consider placing the Librarian’s Department on a ‘more respectable footing’, thus removing the ‘obloquy’ attaching to its clerks and providing them with a ‘stronger inducement’ to continue in their chosen career.144 Clarendon took seriously Hertslet’s plea. He recognized the importance of the Librarian’s Department and admitted that he would be sorry if ‘due encouragement were not given to those employed in it’.145 But Addington, though anxious to impress on Clarendon that Hertslet’s evident animosity towards himself was not reciprocated within the Office, had little time for the librarian’s all too tender susceptibilities. Ibid., Addington to E. Hertslet, letter, 25 August 1853; Addington to Clarendon, letter, 26 August 1853. 143 Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 22–40, 148–64. 144 FO 366/392, L. Hertslet to Clarendon, letter, 31 December 1853; Addington to Clarendon, minute, 4 January 1854. 145 Ibid., Clarendon to Addington, minute, 2 January 1854. 142

 Keepers of the Papers 67 The letter, he opined, betrayed a feeling seemingly ‘habitual to Mr. Hertslet’, which ‘leads him to suppose that every Man’s hand is against him, and that because others do not share his views with reference to his Dept. they therefore wilfully do him and his Department an injustice’. Addington did not believe that the business of Hertslet’s department bore comparison with that of others within the Office. It was, he contended, sui generis, and in his personal opinion there were no good grounds for altering the pay and position of either Hertslet or his clerks. He was, however, in favour of the senior clerks, in conjunction with Hertslet, eventually being requested ‘to investigate, and state their opinions, on the state and requirements of that Department’. They would enquire not only into conditions of service, but also into the department’s mode of conducting its business, especially with regard to eliminating the arrears in the register and index of correspondence. And with one of Hertslet’s extra duties in his sights, Addington proposed that they should look at the ‘expediency of continuing the publication of the work called the State Papers; and in the affirmative case, whether some mode of diminishing the expense of that work may not be devised’. Addington, while making no concession to the claims of Hertslet that he should be treated on a par with other senior clerks, thus threatened to bring once more under official scrutiny a work dear to the librarian’s heart.146 The senior clerks were not overly concerned with the future of the State Papers. In any event, the memorandum on Foreign Office reform which they submitted to Addington on 6 January 1854, made no mention of the publication. They were more interested in Hertslet’s department being able to make an effective contribution to diplomacy. ‘It is’, they observed, ‘impossible to overrate the importance of the Librarian’s Department being kept up in the most efficient state – for time in this office is most valuable and every minute that can be gained by facilitating the means of referring to correspondence is of the greatest importance as regards the efficiency of the whole office.’ To that end, they thought its staffing should be sufficient to ensure not only the early completion of the registers and indexes in arrear, but also that these should be completed as soon as possible after the yearly binding of the correspondence. They were likewise at one with Hertslet in believing that his department required better and more convenient accommodation. The whole arrangement for keeping and using the library was, they asserted, ‘of the most faulty description’ and, though they made no reference to Hertslet’s plea for a better sitting room, they did endorse the notion that if the present Foreign Office were not rebuilt on a ‘proper scale’ a temporary library should be constructed adjoining the present building. There was, however, some disagreement over a proposal from Hertslet that his department be strengthened by making the three temporary library clerks permanent.147 Lenox-Conyngham questioned the validity of figures supplied by Hertslet in support of his case. But the senior clerks, including Hammond, were ready to support the plan, and in his letter to the Treasury of 9 March, setting out his recommendations for the restructuring of the Office, Clarendon Ibid., Addington to Clarendon, minute, 4 January 1854. Ibid., memos. by Lenox-Conyngham, 3 and 6 February 1854; minutes by senior clerks, 4–6 February 1854. FO 366/449, memo. attached to chief clerk and senior clerks to Addington, minute, 6 January 1854. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to J. Russell, letter, 14 February 1853.

146 147

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endorsed it with a view finally to reducing ‘all the arrears of the Registers at an early moment, and prevent[ing] a future recurrence of such an evil’. In addition, after having confirmed his desire to transfer the charge of the messengers from the librarian to the chief clerk, Clarendon urged that Hertslet be permitted to retain the £450 per annum allowance he had received for his management of the service.148 The Treasury made no objection to Clarendon’s recommendations regarding the librarian and his department and readily accepted the adoption of new salary scales for library clerks.149 Moreover, in the following year Hammond, as permanent undersecretary, gave his backing to Edward Hertslet succeeding his uncle as sublibrarian when the latter sought retirement. At sixty, James was not in the best of health and, after forty-four years in the Office, was eager to leave. Edward, who had for some time been regarded as his heir apparent, had recently received high praise for his assistance from Edmund Hornby, the British jurist appointed to a commission then meeting at Lancaster Place to settle outstanding claims between Britain and the United States.150 Hornby was himself the nephew of one of Clarendon’s oldest friends and though his word was not decisive, it counted with those in power.151 One consequence of Edward Hertslet’s elevation was that other library clerks were, in turn, upgraded. Hitherto temporary staff had, as a result of their positions being made permanent, already been rewarded with the prospect of eventual promotion and a pension on retirement. They had, however, to contribute to the Office’s superannuation fund, and for Francis Irving and Arthur Walmisley, now respectively third and fourth library clerks, this meant a reduction in pay received. Both had been recruited in the mid-1840s and both had reached the top of the salary scale for temporary clerks of £150 per annum; and though Irving could look forward to incremental rises over the next five years to a maximum of £200 per annum, Walmisley, on his new permanent grade, could expect no increase at all. Such a settlement seemed patently unfair for, as Hammond observed in a letter to the Treasury, it was not ‘commensurate with the length of time which from the limited number of the Establishment they must serve so as to acquire the means of maintaining themselves independently’. Clarendon thought that the salary scale of the third library clerk should be assimilated with that of the second, which rose to £260 per annum, that the fourth clerk’s salary should rise to £200, and that Irving and Walmisley should, in consideration of the time already served, start at once on a salary of £200 per annum. Fortunately for the two clerks, the Treasury agreed without any further quibbling over sums.152

FO 366/449, Clarendon to Treasury, letter, 9 March 1854. FO 366/449, memo. by Aberdeen, 17 June 1854, enclosed in Trevelyan to Hammond, letter, 23 June 1854. 150 Ibid., Hammond to Clarendon, minute, 17 February 1855; minutes by Hammond and Clarendon, 21 and 23 February 1855. Hammond was appointed permanent undersecretary in April 1854. Ibid., Clarendon to Treasury, letter, 10 April 1854. 151 E. Hornby, An Autobiography (Boston and New York, 1928), pp. 59–64. 152 FO 366/449, Irving to Clarendon, minute, 3 July 1855, with minutes by Clarendon and Hammond, 7 July 1855; Hammond to Treasury, letter, 21 July 1855; Arbuthnot to Hammond, letter, 15 August 1855. From 25 April 1855 Lewis Hertslet had under his superintendence: Edward Hertslet 148 149

 Keepers of the Papers 69 By the summer of 1855 the Librarian’s Department was stronger in terms of its permanent establishment than it had ever been. But the pay and grading of its employees clearly distinguished it from other divisions of the Foreign Office. The maximum salary of the first library clerk was fixed at £350 per annum, the starting salary of a firstclass junior clerk in the political departments, and only through promotion could any other library clerk hope to earn more than £260 per annum.153 Moreover, the labours of the Hertslets and their staff were not valued as highly as those of others in the Office when it came to awarding and distributing bonuses. This was made plain when in May 1856, in the aftermath of the Crimean War and the subsequent Paris peace conference, the senior clerks petitioned Clarendon for ‘pecuniary compensation’ for the extra hours worked as a result of the conflict. In the two years since 1853 diplomatic correspondence had risen by two-thirds, and the advent of the electric telegraph had meant that clerks were regularly involved in additional ciphering and deciphering duties. There was also a precedent for such compensation: in 1833 Palmerston had won from the Treasury a grant of £1,000 to remunerate staff for extra work resulting from diplomatic activity generated by the question of Belgian independence. In June Clarendon gave his considered support to the claim and a month later the Treasury concurred, awarding the Foreign Office £2,000 for division amongst clerks of the Office’s political and consular divisions.154 The Hertslets, who seem only to have learnt of the Treasury’s largesse in the aftermath of the award, felt that they and their clerks also deserved some reward. Lewis and James Hertslet had benefited from the grant of 1833, and, as Lewis, Edward and their two most senior clerks explained in a minute of 4 September 1856, wartime diplomacy had required additional searches by library clerks, very often outside office hours, and the drafting of many more memoranda pertinent to the conflict. These included papers on as diverse a range of subjects as the Russian occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia, sound dues payable by British warships to Denmark, and the fortification of the Aaland Islands.155 Doubtless, however, to the disappointment of the librarians, Clarendon would not admit the claim and there were no fresh negotiations with the Treasury upon the subject.156 Lewis Hertslet suffered one further disappointment. There had in the previous decade been much talk about the possibility of constructing new public offices in Whitehall. A Treasury report on the Colonial Office of 1849 had drawn attention both to the dilapidated state of the houses that constituted the Colonial and Foreign Offices, and to the inadequacy of the accommodation they afforded for the conduct of public business.157 And when in January 1850 Hertslet had been interviewed by the Treasury (sub-librarian), Frederick Sasse (1st clerk), Alfred Green (2nd clerk), Francis Irving (3rd clerk), Arthur Walmisley (4th clerk) and George March (5th clerk). 153 By 1856 senior clerks earned an annual salary of between £700 and £1,000. The salaries of other clerks were as follows: first-class juniors, £350–£545; second-class juniors, £150–£300; and thirdclass juniors, £100–£150. Ibid., Clarendon to Treasury, letter, 13 January 1856. 154 FO 366/449, senior clerks to Hammond, minute, 10 May 1856, with memo.; Clarendon to Treasury, letter, 30 June 1856; Treasury to Hammond, letter, 29 July 1856. 155 Ibid., L. and E. Hertslet, Sasse and Alfred Green to Hammond, minute, 4 September 1856. 156 Ibid., minute by Hammond, 11 September 1856. 157 HC, Reports of Committees of Inquiry into Public Offices and Papers Connected Therewith (1859), p. 61.

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commissioners enquiring into the Foreign Office, they had encouraged him to believe that a new building ‘was certainly about to be erected’ and that the difficulties under which his department laboured from want of sufficient space would ‘speedily cease’.158 He had indeed hoped to oversee the ‘putting into order’ of the Librarian’s Department in a new Foreign Office building. That was not to be. After fifty-six years’ service and fast approaching his seventieth birthday, he found himself ‘nearly worn out’ and no longer able to carry out his duties ‘with that activity of mind and body’ he would have wished, and in a letter to Clarendon of 14 November 1857 he requested that he be recommended for superannuation.159 He was granted an annual allowance of £800, a pension equal to his current Foreign Office salary, though significantly less than the £933 10s. 10d. awarded eight months earlier to Thomas Staveley, who had joined the Foreign Office some thirteen years after Hertslet first assisted Ancell. The succession was nonetheless secure. Clarendon seems not to have hesitated in appointing Edward Hertslet librarian, though, probably at Hammond’s instigation, the young Hertslet was reminded in his letter of appointment that it was necessary that he ‘should attend daily at this office, during office hours’.160

Misnomer’s heir The new librarian shared his father’s obsession with pay and status. He had too his father’s talent for venting his grievances in lengthy memoranda. He had reason to complain. The department he inherited had with five, albeit permanent, clerks, no more clerical staff than it had in the 1840s, but the number of papers it received annually for registering, indexing and binding had almost doubled between 1848 and 1859.161 The three clerks available for employment in the registry were, in Hertslet’s opinion, clearly insufficient to cope with this vastly expanded inflow of paper, with the result that the index was again falling into arrears; and, despite a much larger manuscript collection, there had been no improvement in the manning of the reference room. Meanwhile, a shortage of both accommodation and staff meant that the printed book collection remained inadequately housed, inconveniently arranged, and improperly catalogued. Books were kept in attics, kitchens and passages, often piled one upon another in heaps or arranged on the floors of different rooms. Otherwise, they were shelved two or three volumes deep. All this Edward Hertslet explained in detail in a memorandum of 21 February 1861, which he submitted to John Russell, then foreign secretary in Palmerston’s administration. Therein, he also drew attention to the extent to which the general increase in Office business had led heads of political divisions to devolve to the Librarian’s Department work they had hitherto done themselves. LD, Corresp., vol. 1, L. Hertslet to J. Russell, letter, 14 February 1853. FO 366/449, L. Hertslet to Clarendon, letter, 14 November 1857. 160 FO 918/40, Lord Shelburne (parliamentary undersecretary, FO) to E. Hertslet, letter, 19 November 1857, cited in memo. by E. Hertslet, 13 March 1872. 161 E. Hertslet calculated that the average number of despatches received and sent in the four years 1848–51 was 27,313, and that by the four years 1856–59 this had risen to 53,551. FO 366/449, memo., by E. Hertslet, 2 March 1861. 158 159

 Keepers of the Papers 71 Whereas it had formerly been the duty of the librarian himself to draw up reports on international issues and treaty questions, and then only on subjects contained in official correspondence of previous decades, he was now, with the assistance of the sublibrarian and the senior reference room clerk, obliged to furnish memoranda when the relevant records were still within a year of their registration.162 Indeed, it was because of his incompetence in preparing such reports that in January 1859, at the end of his probationary period, Frederick Sasse, Edward Hertslet’s designated successor as sublibrarian, was judged unfit for the post. He was replaced by Alfred Green, who, besides being Edward Hertslet’s close friend, was the next library clerk in line of seniority.163 Whether this was a wise choice is questionable. Fourteen years later, Lord Tenterden, having worked with Green, dismissed him as a ‘plodding man, useful in his capacity, which is that of an Index maker’.164 Edward Hertslet had no personal objection to his own role or that of his colleagues in preparing memoranda for the political divisions. He was evidently pleased at being able to make an informed and constructive contribution to the smooth running of the Office. The system, he observed, was ‘found to work well’, and he did ‘not wish it to be supposed that he [was] suggesting any alteration in the arrangement’. He was, however, anxious that his department’s work be given due recognition and adequate reward. His own annual salary stood at £675 and would rise by increments to £800, earnings equivalent to those of the librarians of the Home and Colonial Offices. But, as Hertslet pointed out, they were ‘literally “Librarians” in the ordinary acceptation of the term’, custodians of books and manuscripts with no obligation to engage in archival research. The appellation of ‘Librarian’ was, he complained, a misnomer for no notion of his duties were conveyed by the term and the title ‘operated prejudicially to the interest of his Department especially in a pecuniary point of view’. Like his father, Edward preferred to think of himself as being on the same footing as the senior clerks who headed other departments and who could look forward to maximum salaries of £1,000 a year.165 True, having inherited his uncle’s position as messengers’ agent, he continued to profit from agency fees, but his total earnings seemed not to match those of his father. There was also in Edward Hertslet’s opinion a case to be made for putting the sub-librarian Green on a similar grade to the recently established class of assistant clerks, who ranked immediately below heads of the political departments. Yet, Green was currently paid £380 a year on a scale which rose to £545, while assistant clerk salaries began at £550 a year.166 Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 21 February 1861. Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 18 February 1861. Although in November 1857 the library had acquired extra shelving in two rooms in the Passport Office, it had at the same time been forced to abandon two commodious attic rooms to make space for resident clerks. FO 95/795, memo. by E. Hertslet, 19 December 1859. Sasse suffered a further misfortune when on 5 May 1863 he was adjudicated bankrupt. The London Gazette, 13 May 1863, p. 256. Alfred Green was evidently the clerk ‘A. S. G.’, whose extramural escapades Edward Hertslet described in his memoirs. Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 149–56. 164 BL, Granville Papers (formerly at TNA), PRO 30/29/106, Tenterden to Granville, letter, 16 January 1873. 165 FO 95/795, memo. by E. Hertslet, 21 February 1861. 166 FO 366/675, memo. by E. Hertslet, 18 February 1861. 162 163

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In addition to bidding for more pay, Hertslet proposed the appointment of three supernumerary clerks to assist in keeping up the register and the index, and the allotting to Sasse, who had resumed his former rank of first library clerk, responsibility for arranging and cataloguing the library’s printed collection. None of this found immediate favour with Hammond. The proper organization of the books must, he thought, follow their transfer to temporary accommodation after the Office’s planned departure from Downing Street. Moreover, while he accepted that there had been an enormous increase in the number of papers handled by Hertslet’s department, he did not believe that this had ‘been attended generally with a proportionate increase of work’. As he pointed out to Russell, a vast number of papers coming into the Office from abroad, especially those to the Consular Department, were ‘merely returns’ and many of those sent out were no more than covering letters. These had to be entered into diaries and laid out for binding, but that was all. A very large portion of the papers might ‘both for Register and Index be dismissed from consideration’. Indeed, once such deductions were taken into account, Hammond thought that so long as the registry clerks were not distracted by other tasks, they might cope with their workload and more. To this end he proposed that, instead of their going doggedly through the whole correspondence of each year, they should focus upon individual countries, disposing firstly of the correspondence relating to the most important ones and thereby gaining familiarity with the issues covered. He wanted to see established a ‘more regular system of discipline’, with the first clerk in the registry assuming responsibility for the regular discharge of his duties and preparing a weekly, rather than a quarterly, statement of work accomplished.167 Probably to Hertslet’s disappointment, Hammond also recommended that in future abstracts and memoranda based on correspondence of less than ten years standing should be prepared in the political divisions themselves, leaving the Librarian’s Department to focus on those of a strictly historical character. This, Hammond argued, would free Hertslet and his colleagues from ‘a most mischievous practice’ they were ‘not calculated to undertake’. He considered the drafting of such memoranda part of a learning process and thought that its delegation to the Librarian’s Department ‘tended to impair the efficiency of the Clerks on the general establishment’, allowing them to shake off a very valuable mental exercise. In any case, he considered it impossible for the librarian to have that knowledge of current political business for the conduct of which such papers were required. Already angered and disappointed by the undersecretary’s negative response to his proposals, Hertslet dismissed Hammond’s assertion that the adoption of the above rules would ‘relieve the Librarian’s Department to a very great extent’ as ‘Simply Bosh’.168 Russell was, nevertheless, persuaded to sanction instructions to senior clerks that while the librarian was to continue to supply information on subjects of a general character, in future all abstracts and memoranda of papers on subjects not going back further than fifteen years should, as a general rule, be prepared Hammond further urged that in future the Librarian’s Department should be responsible for supervising the binding of the papers of the Slave Trade Department, a duty previously borne by the latter. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, memo. by Hammond with annotations by E. Hertslet, 9 March 1861. 168 Ibid. 167

 Keepers of the Papers 73 in the respective divisions of the Office. Otherwise, the Librarian’s Department was simply to ‘look out’ the relevant correspondence.169 Hertslet’s sole consolation was the thought that those who got ‘the most money should have the most work to do’.170 Hammond was for the moment dead set against any increase in either staff or salaries in Hertslet’s department. He was, however, sympathetic towards one library clerk whose case seemed particularly deserving. After some thirteen years spent indexing and registering correspondence, Irving had, following Green’s replacement of Sasse as sub-librarian, succeeded Green as clerk in charge of the reference room. There he had found himself increasingly engaged in highly responsible tasks including the preparation of library memoranda. But he had received no advancement in either his grade or salary. While Sasse had resumed his status as first clerk, albeit in the registry, Irving had remained second clerk with a maximum salary of £260 a year in a position previously occupied by the first clerk of the department. With Hertslet’s support, on 18 February 1861 he submitted a plea for more. In this instance Hammond considered the request a ‘fair one’ and recommended that as a ‘personal indulgence’ Irving should be placed on the same pay scale as Sasse with an annual incremental rise of £15 until he reached a maximum of £350.171 This came close to setting a precedent, and in May 1862 Arthur Walmsley, the third library clerk, applied, also with Hertslet’s backing, to be placed on a higher pay scale. He had, after all, been in the Office only three months less than Irving, and yet he was still in receipt of just £260 a year, a salary which Hammond freely admitted was ‘certainly small’ in relation to his long service. Moreover, although for the past four years he had earned an additional £60 a year for indexing the library’s printed Public Documents outside Office hours, this work was nearing completion and he would soon have to reckon with a reduction in his income. Yet, Hammond found it inconvenient ‘unless under very peculiar circumstances to evade the classification of the office by raising a Clerk in a lower Class to the salary of the Class above him’. All that he and Lenox-Conyngham could recommend and Russell accept was the payment to Walmisley of a gratuity of £60.172 The cases of Irving and Walmisley highlighted the problem of how best to promote and reward those in the Office who were recruited and worked separately from the clerks of the regular establishment. The library clerks had, however, to wait more than another two years for any amelioration of their lot. Even then, the settlement envisaged was hardly flexible or generous, and was essentially an exercise in administrative tidying up. Thus, in a letter to the Treasury of 16 December 1864, Russell recommended that the library clerks, along with those of the Treaty Department, the junior clerks of the Chief Clerk’s Department, and the supplemental clerk in the Consular Department, It was at Russell’s suggestion that it was decided that departments would be responsible for drafting all abstracts and memoranda on subjects dealt with in correspondence within the past fifteen, rather than ten, years. Ibid., with undated note by J. Russell; memo. by Hammond, signed off by J. Russell, 16 March 1861. 170 Ibid., draft memo. by E. Hertslet, 18 March 1861. 171 Ibid., Irving to Hammond, minute, 16 February 1861, with letter attached to J. Russell; memo. by Hertslet, 18 February 1861; memo. by Hammond, 9 March 1861. 172 Ibid., Walmisley to Hammond, minute, 30 May 1862; Hertslet to Hammond, minute, 5 June 1862; Hammond to J. Russell, minute, 8 June 1862; memo. by Lenox-Conyngham, 10 June 1862; minute by J. Russell, 12 June 1862. 169

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none of whom came ‘within the general promotion of the ordinary Clerks’, should be divided for salary purposes into three classes. For the first, second and third library clerks, who were ranked in the second class along with the clerks of the Consular and Treaty Departments, this meant raising their maximum salaries to £360 per annum, a prospective rise of £100 for the third library clerk; and, likewise, the fifth library clerk, the recently recruited Duncan Robertson, would as a third-class clerk be able to look forward to a maximum salary of £240 per annum, £90 more than he might previously have expected. Yet, no change was foreseen in Hertslet’s salary and any future appointee to the position of sub-librarian, henceforth classified as a first-class clerk, must reckon with the prospect of a maximum annual salary of £500 rather than the current one of £545. Moreover, the letter made plain that as regards promotion the clerks concerned ‘would, from the peculiar nature of their respective duties, be confined to the particular department to which they [were] attached’.173 The Treasury questioned the advisability of the Foreign Office adopting so arbitrary a rule with regard to limiting promotion. Otherwise, it welcomed Russell’s proposals and consented to their application.174 But the library clerks were far from satisfied with the new settlement, and on 2 May 1865, headed by the sub-librarian, they urged on Russell some amelioration in the scale of salaries allotted to them. Russell was not to be moved and would not even consider taking up their case with the Treasury. He argued that the supplemental clerks of the Treasury, whose grading and salary scales were much the same as those about to be adopted for the library clerks, received inferior annual incremental rises, and that there were no clerks in the librarians’ departments of the Colonial, Home and War Offices with whom those of the Foreign Office could be compared.175 There were, however, other Foreign Office clerks who were not of the regular establishment and with whom the library clerks bore comparison. This Irving pointed out in a letter he addressed directly to Lord Stanley (later the 15th Earl of Derby), the then foreign secretary, in April 1868. His salary of £360 a year, the maximum for his grade, was barely half that which a clerk in the consular or diplomatic divisions might expect to receive after almost twenty-three years in service, and it compared poorly with those of two first-class clerks in the Chief Clerk’s Department who, though they had been employed for considerably less time in the Foreign Office and were engaged in what was essentially financial work, earned between £400 and £500 a year. As it was, Irving thought his own duties, which were ‘closely and intimately connected with the daily working’ of the political departments, were ‘quite disproportionate’ to his remuneration. Yet, there was no moving Stanley on the matter, and he declined to support Irving’s claim.176 Stanley and Hammond were doubtless aware that if Irving were regraded, others in the Librarian’s Department might hasten to request some advancement in their FO 366/675, J. Russell to Treasury, letter, 16 December 1864. Duncan Robertson was appointed fifth library clerk in January 1861, following the transfer of George March, the fourth library clerk, to the Treaty Department and the consequent promotion of Augustus Oakes (fifth library clerk since April 1858). 174 FO 366/676, Peel to Hammond, letter 26 January 1865. 175 Ibid., memos. by J. Russell, 9 May and 15 June 1865. 176 FO 366/677, Irving to Stanley, minute, 16 April 1868; Hammond to Irving, minute, 21 April 1868. 173

 Keepers of the Papers 75 earnings. The foreign secretary may also have had in mind the extra spending that the Treasury had sanctioned in the years since the Office’s relocation to Whitehall Gardens. The Librarian’s Department had itself been provided with more room space and extra staff. Thus, in line with Hammond’s thinking and on the recommendation of the principal librarian of the British Museum, Percy Carpenter, who was then employed in the Royal Library at Windsor, was hired as a temporary assistant. Better known today as an artist and for his watercolours of south Asian and north African locations, under Hertslet’s direction Carpenter had by 1865 completed an ‘analytical catalogue’ of the department’s printed collection, listing upwards of 30,000 books covering matters of historical, geographical and international significance.177 Meanwhile, the demolition of the State Paper Office in order to make way for the construction of the new Foreign and India Offices allowed Hertslet to expand and consolidate his archive. Lack of storage space had compelled the Foreign Office to transfer all of its pre-1830 records to the State Paper Office, but the new Public Record Office building in Chancery Lane was still incomplete and the prospect of improved temporary accommodation in Whitehall Gardens allowed the librarian to press successfully for the return to his custody of post-1760 diplomatic correspondence and the ratifications of treaties.178 Edward Hertslet himself was allocated what had once been Malmesbury’s dining room; original treaties, which had previously been kept in a glass case, were placed on slate shelves in an adjoining and specially built fire-proof safe; and, after bricking out the water, the long basement passages connecting the back of Pembroke House to its gatehouse were used to stow away the printed books and parliamentary papers. Two small neighbouring houses (Nos 1 and 2 Whitehall Yard) were also acquired to store additional papers, and their care was entrusted to George Mason. Formerly in the bookbinder’s employ, Mason had increasingly acted as a parttime porter, seeking out and fetching bound volumes of correspondence, in return for which the bookbinder received one guinea a week in compensation. Then in April 1857 Mason was made a full-time library messenger with a salary of £90 a year. He and his family were provided with rooms in Whitehall Gardens, and from February 1862 his wife was paid an allowance of 6s. a week for cleaning and ventilating the repository.179 She too proved an asset and after the Office’s return to Downing Street she was re-employed as cleaner in the library.180 By then, much to Edward Hertslet’s delight, there was a proper library to clean. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, memo. by E. Hertslet, 12 December 1861. FO 366/675, Peel to Hammond, letter, 7 February 1863. FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 9 February 1865; memo. by E. Hertslet, 20 January 1871. FO 366/677, J. V. Lister to J. Walsend, letter, 30 September 1874. 178 S. Palmer, ‘Sir John Soane and the Design of the New State Paper Office, 1829-1834’, Archivaria, 60 (Fall 2005), pp. 39–70. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, memo. by E. Hertslet, 4 June 1861. TNA, SP 45/47, Thomas Duffus Hardy (deputy keeper, PRO) to Charles Lechmere (State Paper Office), letters, 27 November and 10 December 1861. 179 Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 9–11. FO 366/674, minute by Lenox-Conyngham, 12 August 1842. FO 366/675, G. Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 23 January 1862. FO 366/764, memo. on the bookbinder’s representation, 18 April 1857. Mason also received a gratuity of £10 for working fourteen hours a day for fourteen weeks overseeing the removal of books from Downing Street to Whitehall Gardens. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, memo. by E. Hertslet, 11 November 1861, with minutes by Russell and Hammond. 180 FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 24 April 1869. 177

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Carriers of the papers The King’s/Queen’s Messengers, 1795–1858

[A] change has taken place in the Class of Person who are selected for the appointment of Foreign Service Messengers, several of whom are Gentlemen who have previously held Her Majesty’s Commission in the Army. Lewis Hertslet, March 18411 Most Persons are of the opinion . . . that the Military Rank of a Messenger facilitates his Journeys on the Continent, more particularly in Russia . . . but this advantage is, it is presumed, somewhat diminished by the great extent of Country over which they now travel by Railway. Lewis Hertslet, 14 September 18522 The Hertslets might be said to have epitomized what in the late twentieth century would come to be regarded as Victorian values. Self-help, moral rectitude and respect for the institutions of state and society were all elemental to their conduct. More than a family, they were a business whose industry and zeal turned public service to private profit. Yet, as individuals they exhibited traits, particularly in their nepotism and in the way in which they clung to the perquisites of office, which belonged to an earlier age. Lewis Hertslet’s administrative responsibilities were after all defined as much by the eighteenth as the nineteenth century. Thus, when in 1810 he was appointed librarian and keeper of the papers, he also took over from Richard Ancell the latter’s role as private agent of the Corps of King’s Messengers. Fifteen years earlier the messenger service, which had once fallen in whole or part under the broad supervision of the lord chamberlain, had been remodelled and placed directly under the command of the home and foreign secretaries and the recently appointed secretary of state for war. And Ancell, while continuing to make out the messengers’ bills of service, had in his own words assumed the ‘Superintendence and Arrangement of the whole Business of the Corps’.3 The messengers thereafter FO 366/494, L. Hertslet to O’Ferrall (Admiralty), draft letter, n.d. March 1841. FO 366/495, memo. by L. Hertslet, 14 September 1852. 3 HC, Sixteenth Report of the Select Committee on Finance; Expenditure of the Public Revenue; Secretaries of State (1797), Appendix M, Report concerning H. M.’s Messengers by R. Ancell, 15 July 1797, p. 326. 1 2

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alternated in their duties between the three departments, conveying correspondence within the British Isles and to, from and between diplomatic and military missions and other posts overseas. As their agent, Lewis Hertslet initially received an annual fee of six guineas (£6 6s.), raised in 1813 to eight guineas, from each of the thirty messengers. In return, he, like his immediate predecessor, was expected to ‘maintain and uphold all those Rights, Profits, Privileges and Advantages’ which would be committed to his care, and which belonged from ‘ancient usages’ to the messengers ‘individually and collectively’.4 If this was a tall order for a young man still in his early twenties, it was one with which Hertslet, both as a messenger’s son and Ancell’s assistant, was already quite familiar. He had, Ancell assured the messengers, been ‘officially educated’ under his eye ‘and in the Good Old Path’.5

Persons of a very subordinate class The King’s Messengers could trace their origins to the creation in early modern times of the Forty Messengers of the Great Chamber in Ordinary, a body of men who, in addition to delivering correspondence at home and abroad, ‘were employed whenever persons of authority were needed to perform the King’s errands’.6 Even in the days of Richard Ancell and Lewis Hertslet they could still find themselves entrusted with the custody of prisoners in transit. Those sent abroad were, however, most likely engaged in carrying important despatches and private letters to and from secretaries and undersecretaries of state.7 Foreign service could also mean the prolonged attachment of messengers to a mission or station abroad and, though it entailed greater risks than home service, it was certainly more lucrative. All King’s Messengers received salaries of £60 a year and daily board wages which were intended to compensate for their no longer being lodged in royal palaces. The latter, as fixed in 1795, were 7s. 6d. when in waiting or on duty in the British Isles, and 13s. 4d. when overseas. In addition, messengers received travel allowances which varied according to the distances covered and whether or not they rode on horseback, in a chaise or some other horse-drawn vehicle. But continental journeys were longer and messengers could reckon on profiting from the differing rates allowed for post horses and other expenses incurred while on the road, at sea or otherwise engaged. Moreover, the outbreak of war with revolutionary France generated a demand for more diplomatic and military couriers, and this, along with a desire to put an end to squabbling amongst messengers over the distribution of work, was largely responsible for the reform of 1795. The sixteen messengers who since 1772 had been designated specifically for foreign service were then merged with the other King’s Messengers into a single corps of thirty men; older Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 32–3, 37, 45 and 223–5. FO 351/14, Ancell to William Ross, letter, 23 May 1810. 6 Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, p. 6. 7 Ibid., p. 74. K. L. Ellis, ‘British Communications and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxi (November 1958), pp. 159–67. See also on the role of the messengers during the eighteenth century, D. B. Horn, The British Diplomatic Service 1689–1789 (Oxford, 1961), pp. 217–36, and Nelson, Home Office, pp. 149–53. 4 5

 Carriers of the Papers 79 and unfit messengers were retired and some younger ones recruited; and, with a view to ensuring ‘equal services and equal emoluments’, members of the new establishment were obliged to wait in fortnightly rotation on all three departments according to lists prepared by Ancell. Messengers ‘first and second in Turn for a Ride or Journey’ attending on the Home Office were, for instance, expected to ‘come every morning booted and ready’ so as to avoid delays in the despatch of messages within and about the London area.8 The new arrangements were less than satisfactory, not least because the Foreign Office frequently required more than the ten King’s Messengers regularly allotted to it and had therefore to look elsewhere for couriers. As a possible solution to the problem, in July 1797 the House of Commons Select Committee on Finance recommended that a greater proportion of the corps be allocated to the Foreign Office, it being important that those in service overseas should be the ‘most active, most intelligent, and most trust-worthy of the Body’. ‘Perhaps’, the committee speculated, ‘it might be still better that the Admission into the Service of the Foreign Office should always be made a matter of promotion from the other Offices . . . and that every Messenger should have given proofs of his diligence, and acquired some experience in the Home Service.’9 Such thinking would find an echo in later official deliberations. But from the late 1790s until well into the next century the messenger corps remained a mixed and occasionally truculent bunch of individuals. There was no shortage of those seeking employment as messengers and new recruits were sometimes no more than the former servants, or sons of servants, of those who carried influence in government circles. The diplomats they served were known to distinguish between messengers who were to be entertained at table and those who would dine in the legation kitchen and, as Lewis Hertslet later recalled, the corps was seen as composed of ‘Persons of a very subordinate Class’.10 According to one account, when it was proposed to the Duke of York, the army’s commander-in-chief, that non-active officers in receipt of half pay might fill up vacancies in the messenger service, the duke objected on the ground that it would be inconsistent with the military service ‘to appoint that Class of Persons to an Office the existing Members of which were not Gentlemen’.11 And an application made by a Captain Lucas in January 1831 for appointment as a messenger was accompanied by the observation ‘appointment unfit for one who has held his Majesty’s Commission’.12 The lower orders were also ready to challenge authority, especially when expense claims were disputed or payment delayed. Suspension without pay was the usual punishment meted out to messengers who neglected their duties or who gave offence to their superiors. Very often a reprimand and an apology sufficed. Nonetheless, disputes were not invariably settled within the Office. In June 1797 in response to a complaint from Thomas Bidwell Sr., the chief clerk, that one of the messengers, William Tims, had behaved towards him in an insolent and improper manner when requesting money owed to him, Grenville, the foreign secretary, demanded a report and then ordered FO 351/14, King’s Messengers’ Regulations, 8 October 1795. HC, Sixteenth Report of the Select Committee on Finance, 19 July 1797, p. 306. 10 Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, p. 34. FO 366/473, minute by L. Hertslet, 12 July 1839. 11 FO 366/495, memo. by L. Hertslet, 14 September 1852. 12 UoS, Broadlands Papers, PP/FO/G/2, Candidates as Foreign Messengers, 4 January 1831. 8 9

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that Tims be immediately suspended and given six weeks in which to apologize. Tims’s refusal to comply was followed by his dismissal. This, in turn, resulted in Tims taking Bidwell to court on a claim that the latter had maliciously connived at his removal. The case pitted against each other two celebrities of the English judicial system: Thomas Erskine, the future lord chancellor, who represented Tims, and William Garrow, the legendary adversarial lawyer, who defended Bidwell. It also involved the appearance as witnesses of both Grenville and George Canning, then undersecretary of state, and revealed a possible libel by Bidwell against the lord chamberlain regarding his misuse of public funds. Perhaps more surprising, however, was the fact that the jury chose to ignore the judge’s advice to find in Bidwell’s favour. They instead awarded Tims £50 in damages and recommended that he be restored to his former position as messenger on his making a ‘reasonable and consistent apology to his Superior Officer’. That he never did.13 A more serious misdemeanour was that of William Hunter, a messenger of almost ten years standing, whose family had long been associated with the corps. In the spring of 1804 he stole a box from the office of Lord Hawkesbury (later Lord Liverpool), the then foreign secretary, and subsequently ordered that a key be made with which to open it. Quite what Hunter had in mind remains uncertain, but his offence led to his instant dismissal.14 This left Hunter without a pension, and aged and in poor health, he was by 1807 without any means of earning a livelihood. Fortunately, his son, another messenger, William Hunter Jr., was of exemplary character and conspicuous for his good conduct and activity. Indeed, the British minister at Stockholm was so impressed by his exertions that he recommended him for a reward. This, following a plea from Hunter Jr., it was decided to commute into provision for his father, and in November 1807 Bidwell authorized the payment to him of an allowance of £50 a year, or about one-third of the pension he might once have anticipated.15 But miscreants such as the elder Hunter were few in number and against their lapses have to be set the courage and endurance displayed by others, especially during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars when messengers had very often to brave a North Sea crossing before commencing a perilous continental ride. Nearly three years before his suicide, Lewis Hertslet’s father journeyed in the king’s name for four consecutive months back and forth across central Europe: for fifty-two days he was in the saddle, and for another twenty-eight he was in ice-bound Cuxhaven awaiting a ship which would take six days to reach Great Yarmouth.16 In 1797 two messengers drowned off Calais when the open boat in which they were trying to land capsized, and another was killed in a carriage accident near Augsburg; in 1807 George Sparrow, then en route for Constantinople, was stabbed to death off Sicily; and in 1816 George Lyell was murdered in Madrid while awaiting orders prior to his return to England.17 Messengers also suffered FO 351/14, minute by G. Canning, 21 June 1797; manuscript extract from The Times, 8 December 1797; John Roberts et al. to Grenville, letter, 7 December 1797. Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 40–5. 14 FO 366/5, J. King to G. Hammond (undersecretary, FO), minute, 4 May 1804. 15 Ibid., minute by G. Canning, 18 November 1807. 16 Hertslet, Recollections, p. 160. 17 Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 203–5. 13

 Carriers of the Papers 81 grievously, sometimes fatally, from fatigue-exacerbated ailments and from the effects of inclement weather. In January 1815 John Shaw, a messenger of thirty years standing, had the misfortune to be ‘seized by frost’ while travelling between Paris and Vienna in consequence of which, he reported in gruesome detail, he ‘suffered the loss of both feet, one of which [was] entirely off from the ankle joint, the wounds of each limb being still open and requiring constant medical assistance’. For the remaining fourteen years of his life he was compensated with an enhanced annual pension of £333 6s. 8d.18 There were occasions when, much to the irritation of established messengers, diplomats at foreign courts found it more convenient to entrust correspondence to colleagues or personal servants.19 Nicholas Damien, a servant who accompanied Charles Stuart when he was legation secretary, first at Vienna and then at St Petersburg, appears to have been regularly used in this fashion, and when in 1807 he was killed in a carriage accident while returning to Russia. Canning, then foreign secretary, had no hesitation in providing his widow with a pension from the Foreign Office’s contingent fund.20 ‘Extra messengers’, not members of the corps, were also from time to time similarly employed. Thus, Augustus Kraus, a Hanoverian subject of the king who first settled in London in 1803, was frequently engaged by the British government in undertaking particularly hazardous missions across Germany at a time when in Lewis Hertslet’s words war meant ‘the Continent was closed to England’. A good horseman who could converse in French, German, Italian and Spanish, he was sent to St Petersburg, Constantinople and Lisbon; he acted as a courier during the Peninsular War; he accompanied Castlereagh on his continental mission of 1814–15, and was with Wellington at the Congresses of Vienna and Verona; and during the troubles in Spain in the early 1820s he was selected for special duties there. He was, therefore, disappointed to find that when in 1824, then aged thirty-four, he finally decided to seek formal appointment as a foreign service messenger he was disqualified by new regulations which restricted those engaged on foreign service to nationals of Great Britain and Ireland. Fortunately for Kraus, good sense prevailed in the Foreign Office and, following Canning’s intervention, it was agreed in January 1825 that he should be an exception to the rule.21 The new regulations of 1824 were part of a fresh reform aimed at righting what was by then an over-expensive, undermanned and otherwise pretty decrepit messenger corps. As a Foreign Office memorandum of 3 March reported, of the thirty messengers, thirteen were on foreign service, six were absent because of ill health, and only eleven were currently available for home duties. Britain’s aged and sickly messengers were according to Canning ‘the ridicule of the whole Continent’ and ‘an impediment to Shaw’s pension was a generous one, calculated as two-thirds of his average earnings during the previous year and the preceding two years, which amounted to £500 per annum. Following his death on 15 March 1829, his widow was granted a pension of £100 per annum. FO 366/ 672, memorial from Shaw, n.d.; Castlereagh to Treasury, letter, 26 April 1816; Lushington to Castlereagh, letter, 15 May 1816. FO 366/673, Aberdeen to Treasury, letter, 25 August 1829; J. Stewart (Treasury) to Backhouse, 17 September 1829. 19 Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 48–53. 20 FO 366/671, memorial from Mary Damien, n.d.; minute by Canning, 7 July 1807. 21 FO 366/276, memo. by L. Hertslet, n.d. June 1824; memorial from Kraus, 14 October 1824; minutes by G. Canning and Planta, 7 January 1825. 18

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the King’s Service’.22 Since 1821 there had been pressure in Parliament for a reduction in messenger costs; interdepartmental discussions had begun in December 1822 on the basis of detailed briefings provided by Lewis Hertslet; and then in June 1824, at Canning’s instigation and with the Treasury’s consent, the three secretaries of state agreed on the establishment of an expanded corps of thirty-eight messengers. Twenty of them were designated specifically for home service (including eight attached to the Foreign Office) and the remaining eighteen for foreign service. The latter, though nominated alternately by each of the three government departments, were appointed ‘under the immediate orders of the Foreign Office’. They were also, in addition to having to meet the nationality qualification, required to be no more than thirtyfive years old at the time of their recruitment and had to be proficient in foreign languages and horsemanship. And while the salaries and board wages of messengers remained unaltered, it was anticipated that significant savings could still be made in expenses. Hertslet personally ascertained the costs of posting (i.e. the hire of horses and postilions) throughout Europe, and taking advantage of improved road surfaces, the number of horses permitted to messengers on most journeys was reduced to two. Cuts were likewise made in allowances for the repair of carriages and travel by ship and mail coach. Messengers continued to receive their board wages and were allowed a ‘profit’ of 6d. a mile abroad (1s. a mile on horseback) and 3d. a mile at home in addition to their actual travelling expenses. However, those on foreign service were obliged to provide their own vehicles for continental travel.23 These, which had to be both light and capacious and which departing messengers usually kept ready at Calais, were constructed to express specifications at a cost of between £200 and £250.24 The foreign service messengers, nevertheless, continued to be well rewarded. By the mid1820s they could probably reckon on an average annual income of between £400 and £500, and could earn even more if on some journeys carriage space were available for a fee-paying passenger.25 The incomes of home service messengers in the Foreign Office’s employ averaged less than £250 a year.26 Lewis Hertslet, who continued to advise on the reconstruction of the corps, surrendered his position as private agent of the messengers and was charged with effecting the economies foreseen. As the newly appointed superintendent and FO 96/117, unsigned memo. (probably by L. Hertslet), 3 March 1824; draft letter to Home and Colonial Offices, 17 March 1824. 23 FO 351/10, memo. respecting the reduction of messengers’ allowances for foreign service, n.d.; memo. on pay and emoluments of foreign and home messengers, n.d. P. H. M. Wynter, On the Queen’s Errands (London, 1906), p. 165. On the earlier financing of the messengers see: Scott Cady, Royal Messengers Service, pp. 98–121. 24 FO 351/10, memos. by Hertslet, n.d. November 1840 and 23 January 1844. 25 Messenger earnings inevitably varied, depending on when and where they were employed. But, according to reckonings made by Lewis Hertslet in 1822, the emoluments (i.e. payments in addition to salaries and home board wages totalling £196 17s. 6d. per annum) of those who had not undertaken foreign journeys amounted to about £50 per annum, while those of messengers employed abroad could fluctuate between that sum and £300 a year. FO 351/14, memo. by L. Hertslet, 12 December 1822. 26 In March 1835 Hertslet calculated that home service messengers working for the Foreign Office could expect their mileage profits to average £30 per annum, while those of the other two offices could expect £20 per annum. Ibid., memo. by L. Hertslet, 25 March 1835. 22

 Carriers of the Papers 83 comptroller of accounts of what in theory was still a single body of King’s Messengers, he was awarded an annual income of £350 (£98 more than he had previously earned as messengers’ agent), made up of £150 from the Foreign Office and £100 from each of the other two offices of state.27 And his family fortunes were boosted further when the messengers selected his brother James to succeed him as their private agent responsible for the preparation and submission of their bills of service.28 Three years later, in recognition of savings so far achieved, including a reduction by July 1825 of approximately one-third in Foreign Office messenger bills, Hertslet’s salary as superintendent was raised to £450 per annum, with the Colonial Office and the Home Office each contributing £25 more.29 Meanwhile, a fresh effort was made to weed out messengers no longer considered fit for service. Some had already sought retirement on grounds of age and infirmity, and others it was thought best for efficiency’s sake simply to pension off.30 Of the eleven thus retired the eldest was the 72-yearold Nathaniel Vick and the youngest the 52-year-old John Youres. Another, Francis Bettles, who had been only five years in service and who was one of seven deemed a ‘special case’ for early retirement and therefore deserving of an enhanced pension, was recorded as being in a ‘very precarious state of health in consequence of the effects of a Winter in Russia, and the hardships’ suffered on his return voyage from St Petersburg aboard a British warship. He had, unfortunately, no time in which to enjoy the £200 a year pension proposed, as he died in October 1824, three months before the Treasury sanctioned the award.31 Canning would like to have further improved the quality of those appointed to the foreign messenger service. According to Planta, Canning was of the opinion that though the ‘appointment of Gentlemen to the situation seem[ed] to be impracticable, . . . a better Description of Persons than the Messengers about to retire should be selected, and that the qualification of foreign Languages should be as much as possible attended to’.32 Foreign Office records shed little light on why exactly Canning considered it ‘impracticable’ to appoint gentlemen to the service. It seems hardly likely to have been the pay and conditions on offer since these remained the same when former army officers were later recruited. One possible explanation might be the reluctance of those deemed gentlemen to demean themselves by joining a corps so populated with men from the ungentlemanly classes. In any event, even though Hertslet thought ‘servants’ excluded from appointment, the new foreign service messengers were, as previously, FO 366/496, memo. by Bathurst, R. Peel and G. Canning, 30 June 1824; J. C. Herries (secretary to the Treasury) to Planta et al., circular letter, 11 February 1825. FO 96/117, L. Hertslet to C. Canning, extract from letter, 25 January 1844. 28 FO 351/10, memo. by L. Hertslet, 12 October 1824; answer by L. Hertslet to query from LenoxConyngham, 26 February 1844. 29 Hertslet later estimated that when the increased number of journeys was taken into account, the savings he had effected in expenditure on the foreign service messengers amounted to approximately £8,000 in the first year of operations and £15,000 by the second. FO 366/673, memo. by H. Hobhouse, J. Backhouse and H. W. Horton, 13 June 1827. FO 96/117, account of messengers’ bills at the FO, 5 July 1825; memo. by L. Hertslet, 30 July 1833. 30 Ibid. 31 Vick also died before receiving his pension. He passed away on 24 February 1825. FO 366/672, list of King’s Messengers proposed for pensions, June 1824. 32 FO 366/496, memo. by Planta, 28 July 1824. 27

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drawn from many quarters and occupations.33 Amongst them was William Hunter Jr.’s son, George. But he was not nearly as dedicated a servant of the state as his expeditious father and proved almost as unsatisfactory a messenger as his disgraced grandfather. In February 1826, while he was stationed at the Paris embassy, it was discovered that he was illegally profiting from the conveyance of private mail between Calais and the French capital, and when, after receiving a warning from the ambassador, he persisted in the practice he was recalled to London.34 Eight months later, his failure to wait at the Foreign Office for despatches he had been instructed to deliver to Berlin led Canning to demand his removal from the service.35 His replacement, Frederick Fricker, had no messenger pedigree. Indeed, it was said that he had once been no more than a boot black. Yet, though a man of comparatively humble origin, he already had experience as a courier, he spoke French and German, he knew some Spanish and Italian, and he had the backing of William Huskisson, then war and colonial secretary, who proposed him for the position.36 Other messengers, who thought themselves of a higher social standing, were evidently averse to mixing with the likes of Fricker. His troubles were, however, nothing when compared with those of the feckless John Nixon, who was appointed a foreign service messenger in August 1830 and who quickly gained a reputation for ‘not being a sober man’.37 Lewis Hertslet was at first inclined to attribute complaints about Nixon’s alleged intoxication to his ‘dull and subdued appearance’ and ‘apparent stupidity’.38 But in August 1833 Palmerston received a letter from a British businessman describing how early in the morning, soon after boarding a packet boat in Rotterdam, he had witnessed Nixon in what he assumed to be a drunken state, and how, after making enquiries, he had been informed that the messenger ‘was rarely in any other condition’.39 This raised questions in the Foreign Office about whether or not Nixon was to be trusted with despatches.40 George Stafford Jerningham, the British chargé d’affaires at The Hague, while conceding that he considered Nixon addicted ‘to an indulgence in spirituous liquors’, doubted if the public service had suffered from his habit and claimed that he had invariably found him ‘civil, zealous and punctual’. And Nixon, while admitting that he ‘sometimes indulged’, held that it was never to a degree that might reflect discredit on himself or his situation and that he suffered from a ‘weakness in the legs’ which sometimes led others to suspect inebriation.41 Palmerston was not persuaded by this defence and on 13 September he minuted: FO 96/117, L. Hertslet to Planta, letter, 17 December 1827. FO 366/473, Granville to Planta, despt. and letter, 17 March 1826, with enclosures; Planta to Granville, despt., 21 March 1826; memo. by L. Hertslet, 21 March 1826; 35 Ibid., memos. by L. Hertslet, 28 and 29 November 1826, with minute by G. Canning; Hunter to Hertslet, letter, 28 November 1826. Eleven years later George Hunter sought unsuccessfully to be reinstated as a messenger. FO 366/473, petition from G. Hunter, 18 July 1837; minute by Palmerston, 2 August 1837; W. Fox-Strangways to G. Hunter, letter, 8 August 1837. 36 FO 366/476, minute by Backhouse, 22 December 1827. 37 FO 366/473, minutes by Backhouse and Hertslet, 13 August 1831. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., J. B. Powles to Palmerston, letter, 7 August 1833. 40 Ibid., Backhouse to G. S. Jerningham, despt., 14 August 1833. 41 Ibid., Jerningham to Backhouse, despt., 20 August 1833; Nixon to L. Hertslet, letters, 30 August and 10 September 1833. 33 34

 Carriers of the Papers 85 I do not know what is the precise Degree of Intoxication which may be indulged in without Discredit to the Individual or his Situation and as that Degree might be difficult to be ascertained I should strongly advise Mr Nixon for the future not to indulge in Intoxication at all if he wishes not merely to do credit to his Situation but to render it a permanent one.42

It was left to George Shee, the political undersecretary, to warn Nixon that he should be ‘more circumspect in [his] conduct’ and that a further serious charge might induce Palmerston to believe him no longer sufficiently trustworthy to employ.43 What effect this remonstrance may have had on the unfortunate Nixon is unknown, for in the following month he took ill with cholera and in a short while Jerningham had to report his death. Nixon left insufficient funds to cover the costs of his funeral in The Hague, had outstanding debts on his rooms in Pimlico, and no known next of kin.44 The boorish behaviour of messengers could also cause political embarrassment. Early in January 1840 Robert Fennessy, then returning from St Petersburg, provoked Prussian ire through his misuse of a coffee pot. On arrival at the post office at Taplacken in East Prussia, he had coffee brought to him in his carriage. But, after taking his refreshment, Fennessy urinated in the pot before returning it to the servant. Reports as to whether or not Fennessy took the trouble to empty the pot before handing it to the servant differed: Fennessy insisted that he had; the postmaster at Taplacken said otherwise. But the matter was raised to a higher level when Prussia’s foreign minister complained to the British legation at Berlin. So upset was Palmerston at this ‘disgusting outrage, disgraceful to Mr. Fennessy, and discreditable to the Government which employs him’, that he directed that Fennessy be suspended from pay and allowances and be deprived of foreign duties for a year.45 Fortunately for Fennessy, the Prussian authorities considered the punishment too severe and intervened on his behalf. Even the director of posts at Tilsit was moved to write a letter pleading for remission of the sentence. As he explained, Fennessy was a much-respected messenger, noted for his ‘gentlemanlike’ manners, and his action was surely excusable when it was borne in mind that having journeyed 700 miles in three days in the midst of a Russian winter, his legs swollen with cold, he had been in no fit state to step down from his carriage. Palmerston gave way and in April Fennessy’s suspension was lifted.46 The personal inadequacies of some messengers were matched by the social pretensions of others, and it was the latter which seem to have been a more frequent source of irritation amongst heads of diplomatic missions. Thus, William Cookes, who was formerly a manufacturing chemist, displayed more swagger than sense after his appointment as King’s Messenger in 1834. Stationed at Madrid during the spring of Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 13 September 1833. Ibid., Shee to Nixon, letter, 17 September 1833. 44 FO 366/490, Jerningham to Shee, letters, n.d. (October) and 28 November 1833; E. G. P. Sievers to L. Hertslet, letter, 12 November 1833. FO 366/491, John Thompson to War Office, letter, 20 July 1835. 45 FO 366/473, G. Hamilton to Palmerston, despt., 9 February 1840, enclosing Werther to Hamilton, note, 7 February 1840, and report by von Franckenberg, 18 January 1840. FO 366/673, minute by Palmerston, 24 February 1840. 46 FO 366/473, William Russell to Backhouse, despt., 31 March 1840, enclosing Nernst to H. F. Howard, letter, 26 March 1840. FO 366/673, minute by Palmerston, 7 April 1840. 42 43

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1835, he soon earned the displeasure of George Villiers, the British minister there. Villiers, who as 4th Earl of Clarendon would rise to become foreign secretary in 1853, was a persistent critic of messengers, particularly where bag delivery times were concerned. Yet, it was Cookes’s general demeanour rather than his punctuality to which Villiers took offence. According to a letter from Villiers to Backhouse, the messenger had ‘been living away like a great Gentleman, giving Dinners, &c.’, and allowing others to think him an English officer, all of which might have signified less had he ‘not permitted himself to be publicly thrashed at a masked Ball’ while taking the best care afterwards to appear not to resent the affront. ‘Valour’, Villiers observed, ‘is certainly not his forte, and I should be sorry to see an important Dispatch committed to his care at a moment of danger.’47 Almost two years later, in February 1837, Cookes’s brash behaviour and choice of travelling companion moved no less a person than Prince Klement von Metternich, the Austrian state chancellor, to issue a formal protest.48 The incident on this occasion involved, not the partying high society of a European capital, but a bloody affray in the village post house at Dobra in distant Transylvania. Charged with despatches for Constantinople, Cookes was joined on his journey by a fee-paying passenger, Frederick Wynn Knight, a young gentleman who four years later would enter Parliament as a Tory member for Worcestershire. Cookes usually travelled by his own caliche, but in order to cope better with the deeply mudded tracks of Transylvania and Wallachia, he had, as was customary, purchased en route an additional vehicle, a light peasant wagon, into which every disposable item of his and Knight’s baggage was thrown. At Dobra, where he arrived late on the evening of the 31 January 1837, he planned to change horses and then to take the lead in the wagon, the faster of the two vehicles, with Knight following in the caliche. The postmaster, Paul von Nemes, advised against this course: the caliche was fitted with lighted lanterns, and the road to the next relay station was treacherous, passing as it did close by the swift-flowing River Maros. When however, on Nemes’s instructions, the postilion of the caliche made to position the carriage ahead of the wagon, Cookes drew a pistol from his pocket, pointed it at the postilion, and threatened to shoot if he persisted. Nemes thereupon demanded that the messenger surrender the weapon and, following Cookes’s refusal, he had the horses removed from their harnesses. Knight was able to procure fresh animals elsewhere. Nevertheless, a wrangle over the return of money previously received by Nemes for the hire of horses led tempers again to flare. Knight struck Nemes, knocking him to the ground in the post-house yard, and once they were within the confines of the postmaster’s room the two men exchanged further blows. A guard was summoned and an enquiry instituted, and it was only after Cookes appealed to the local military commandant and insisted on his right of passage, that at 4.00 am on the morning of 1 February he and Knight were finally permitted to proceed.49 Depositions from the postmaster, and from two postilions and a maidservant who had witnessed the fight, though not entirely consistent in detail, portrayed Nemes as FO 366/473, Villiers to Backhouse, extract from letter, 3 April 1835, and letter, 27 February 1836. Ibid., Metternich to F. Lamb, letter, 28 February 1837. 49 Ibid., Lamb to Fox-Strangways, letter, 3 March 1837, enclosing Cookes to Lamb, letter, n.d., and Knight to Lamb, letter, 3 March 1837; Cookes to L. Hertslet, letter, 14 April 1837. 47 48

 Carriers of the Papers 87 the victim of a vicious assault, and suggested that Cookes had by blocking a doorway prevented any attempt to assist or rescue him from Knight’s aggression. These written testimonies, assembled in the form of a protocol, Metternich sent to Sir Fredrick Lamb, the British ambassador in Vienna, with a request that the assailants be reprimanded.50 But in a letter to Lewis Hertslet Cookes maintained that it was Nemes, a burly Hungarian, who had grabbed hold of Knight once they were inside the office and thereafter forced him backwards onto a bed. Additional statements from those of Cookes’s colleagues who were familiar with the postmaster at Dobra also indicated that he had an unsavoury reputation and was considered brutal, insolent and untrustworthy.51 Lewis Hertslet, who drafted a résumé of the affair for Palmerston, thought it evident that ‘all the three Individuals concerned in this discreditable Occurrence were, more or less, to blame’. He, nonetheless, drew a distinction between the misconduct of the parties: while that of Cookes and Knight was the result of an impulse of the moment, or of rashness, – the misconduct of the Postmaster, – in insisting upon the alteration of an Arrangement which did not concern him, – in detaining a Messenger for a fault into which the Messenger had been betrayed by the Postmaster’s own improper interference, – and in refusing to restore Money to which he could have had no legal claim, – was deliberate, and it was, therefore, less excusable than the misconduct of the Two Others.52

Palmerston, who must surely have resented the just cause for complaint that the incident afforded Metternich, so often his diplomatic adversary, took a rather less benevolent view of the conduct of Cookes and Knight. As he noted in the margins of Hertslet’s draft, he considered the postmaster’s advice with regard to the caliche taking the lead ‘very Sensible’; Cookes’s levelling of a pistol at the postilion ‘very improper’; Knight’s levelling of Nemes to the ground ‘highly improper’; Nemes’s seizure of Knight and attempt to detain him ‘very natural’; and the commandant’s decision to allow the errant pair to continue their journey ‘very indulgent’.53 ‘Nothing’, he minuted, ‘can be more unwise than for a man to put his Rights upon the issue of physical Force, in Time & Place when he is sure to be in a Minority.’54 No one could accuse Palmerston of patriotic bias when it came to judging the misdeeds of subordinates. Nor could anyone doubt his understanding of an inappropriate resort to force. In a despatch of 6 May 1837 Lamb was instructed to inform Metternich that Cookes’s explanation of what had happened at Dobra did not justify his behaviour, that in consequence he had been reprimanded, and that British messengers in general had been admonished to treat Austrian authorities with the respect due to their station. At the same time Lamb was to intimate to Metternich that the postmaster at Dobra was not free from blame, and that several instances of ‘incivility and rudeness’ Ibid., protocol, Hermannstadt, 3 February 1837, enclosed in Metternich to Lamb, letter, 28 February 1837. 51 Ibid., Cookes to L. Hertslet, letter, 14 April 1837 and enclosures. 52 Ibid., résumé by L. Hertslet, n.d. 53 Ibid., annotations by Palmerston. 54 Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 23 March 1837. 50

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towards British subjects had been mentioned during the course of an investigation.55 It is also worth noting that the revised foreign service messengers’ regulations of November 1839 contained the additional ruling that messengers were ‘not to engage in personal altercation with the Postmasters, or Customs House Offices, nor to maltreat the Postillions or Ostlers’.56 But the affair also brought to light two other issues that worried Palmerston: first, Cookes’s need of a second vehicle with which to complete his journey; and second, Knight’s presence with him as a paying passenger. ‘What Business’, Palmerston asked, ‘has a Messenger with two Carriages?’ Furthermore, he thought it ‘very improper & objectionable that F.O. Messengers should become omnibus drivers & carry Passengers about with them in their own Carriages, and still more so that they should act as Canary for Gentlemen in the attendant Train’. Such ‘abuses’ Palmerston thought must necessarily retard a messenger’s progress, and he wished to issue instructions strictly prohibiting the practice in future.57 Lewis Hertslet had no difficulty in disposing of the first of Palmerston’s objections. As he explained, it was quite common for messengers to travel with two carriages in Wallachia, at least one of which would be a small country wagon adapted to the narrow roads and mountain passes. Such was the state of the roads there that messengers sometimes left their own carriages behind at the Roteturm Pass before crossing into Wallachia and then continued their journey either with two wagons or on horseback with one wagon for luggage.58 As for the second of Palmerston’s objections, Hertslet pointed out that it had ‘not hitherto been deemed improper and objectionable that English Messengers (in common with Couriers of every other Cabinet) should, when practicable, accommodate a second person with a seat in their Carriages’. The presence of a passenger or travelling companion could, Hertslet argued, be of advantage to the public service. By sharing the costs of posting messengers could afford to hire more horses and pay postilions more liberally, and journeys could thereby be more speedily accomplished; and, he continued, a passenger could through vigilance relieve a fatigued messenger, particularly at post stations and frontier crossings, ensuring the safety of the precious despatches. It might in any event ‘be deemed a hardship’ if a messenger were not permitted to have his wife, his child or another relative accompany him. Messengers, Hertslet noted, had expensive two-seater carriages constructed with a view partially to recouping the cost of their investment from passenger fees, and the public benefited from an arrangement which secured the ‘employment of good Carriages’. The ‘employment of inferior Vehicles would’, he added, ‘be prejudicial to the Service, in point of expedition, from the greater frequency of Accidents’.59 This last argument initially carried little weight with Palmerston. ‘If they built Carriages for their own Single use instead of for the purpose of being used as Diligences’, he noted, ‘such Carriages would cost less, and the Messenger would go faster.’60 At this point Backhouse intervened, explaining in a note of 4 May, that 57 58 59 60 55 56

Ibid., Palmerston to Lamb, despt. No. 64, 6 May 1837. FO 96/117, Regulations for the Guidance of Foreign-Service Messengers, November 1839. FO 366/473, minute by Palmerston, 23 March 1837. Ibid., minute by L. Hertslet, n.d. FO 96/117, memo. by Hertslet, n.d. April 1837. Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 60–5. Ibid., p. 65.

 Carriers of the Papers 89 it frequently happened that when messengers had to call at several courts, even the space within a carriage built for two was insufficient for the convenient conveyance of the bags and the messenger alone. He also reminded Palmerston that applications for permission to travel with messengers were continually made to the Office and were likely to continue, especially where the journey between Calais and Paris was concerned. When individuals connected with the government and parliamentarians applied, then Backhouse advised, it might ‘be considered expedient not to refuse’, and if exceptions were to be made it would ‘be very difficult to draw the line of exclusion’.61 Indeed, though Backhouse made no mention of it, Palmerston had himself sanctioned the custom and had even thought of profiting from it. In April 1835 he had agreed to a request from Alfred Bunn, the manager of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, that he might occupy a seat in the carriage of the British messenger travelling from Calais to Paris. ‘I do not know Mr Bunn’, Palmerston had admitted, ‘but I hope he will in Return give me a good Seat some of these Days in his Jurisdiction.’62 However, in response to Backhouse, he insisted that the ‘short way’ to deal with the problem was ‘to make the Prohibition absolute and without Exception’, and on 6 May 1837 a circular was issued giving effect to this decision. Not only were messengers prohibited from allowing anyone to accompany them in their carriages when engaged in conveying despatches, they were also ‘forbidden from acting as Convoy to Travellers, and from granting any protection or privilege, which their Official Character might enable them to extend, to other Persons who may be travelling upon the same Route’.63 The prohibition was shortlived. Subsequent representations from messengers rehearsed arguments previously put forward by Lewis Hertslet against the measure, and Hertslet again impressed upon Palmerston that fee-paying passengers contributed to faster and safer journeys. Palmerston at long last confessed to seeing the ‘Force in the argument’, and the circular was suspended while the practice of other governments was ascertained.64 Lewis Hertslet could congratulate himself on having successfully defended messenger interests, but in the following year, 1838, he had to reckon with a serious challenge to his superintendence of the corps. For some time it had been apparent that most of Hertslet’s accounting work related to those foreign and home service messengers in Foreign Office employ.65 Moreover, as Lord Glenelg, the colonial secretary, explained in a draft letter to the Treasury, his department had no need of foreign service messengers except in wartime. Much the same could be said of the Home Office, and with the support of the then home secretary, John Russell, Glenelg proposed that they should abandon the fiction that there was a single corps of messengers. He thought that his department’s contribution to Hertslet’s income was an unnecessary expenditure, and that each department should instead employ its own messengers. In the case of the Colonial Office, it would mean Ibid., pp. 65–6. FO 96/117, note by Backhouse, 4 May 1837. FO 366/494, Bunn to Palmerston, letter, 20 April 1835; minutes by Backhouse and Palmerston, 21 April 1835; L. Hertslet to J. G. Marshall, letter, 22 April 1835. 63 Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, p. 67. 64 Ibid., p. 68. FO 96/117, memo. by L. Hertslet, 23 May 1837; Fennessy to Hertslet, letter, 27 May 1837; minute by Hertslet, 31 May 1837; minute by Palmerston, 1 June 1837. 65 Already in 1833 the Colonial Office had proposed that each of the three departments concerned should be responsible for supervising their own messenger accounts. Ibid., draft letter from the Colonial Office to the Foreign and Home Offices, 24 July 1833. 61 62

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that a ‘much lower class of Officers would execute the duties of the Messengers not only with as much advantage as those who [were] now employed but with greater efficiency’. Colonial Office home service messengers currently received on average £226 per annum, but Glenelg believed £100 would ‘be ample for officers whose single duty it [was] to be the Bearers of Messages, Letters and Parcels’.66 Hertslet, whose own income was thereby threatened, was quick to mount a typically long-winded defence of the status quo in a memorandum, in which he emphasized the value of employing ‘Persons of a superior condition’ to perform ‘most confidential and responsible Services’, and disparaged the notion of rewarding them ‘with the pay, if not the denomination, usually given to OutDoor Porters’. But the most telling point of his argument was that the portions of his salary that were paid from the messenger funds of the Colonial and Home Offices were ‘never intended to bear any proportion to the importance of the Superintendent’s past services, or to the duties which he would have to perform for those Offices, respectively’. Those services and duties combined were, he maintained, ‘as nothing compared with the value of those services, attendant upon the Affairs of the Home and Foreign Messengers of the Foreign Office’.67 Fortunately for Hertslet, Palmerston, despite seeing prima facie no objection to the case made by Glenelg and having no alternative to offer, thought compensation due to those facing possible financial loss. He did not believe that the Foreign Office could manage with a lower class of home service messengers, and he directed that Hertslet should ‘be protected as to Salary if this arrang[emen]t does not relieve him from any considerable amount of Duty’.68 In any event, nothing seems to have come of the proposed reform before Glenelg’s resignation in February 1839. Equally inconsequential was the news which reached Hertslet in August 1841 that Palmerston was planning to transfer responsibility for the supervision of the Foreign Office messengers to the chief clerk, a move which Hertslet assumed would probably be followed by similar changes in the Colonial and Home Offices. This time Hertslet drafted a missive to Palmerston, once more reciting the history of his long association with the corps. In it he pleaded that he be allowed to retain the salary he received from the messenger funds of the three offices, which he claimed was both indemnification for the losses incurred when he ceased to be private agent for the messengers and reward for special services long since rendered.69 The letter was never sent, and Palmerston left office in September. But its contents provided a store of verbal ammunition for future administrative battles.

A change in the class of persons Besides menacing Lewis Hertslet with a considerable reduction in his income, the projected secession of the Colonial and Home Offices from the existing messenger Ibid., Colonial Office to Treasury, letter, enclosed in James Stephen to Backhouse, letter, 8 December 1838. 67 Ibid., memos. by L. Hertslet, enclosed with Backhouse to Stephen, letter, 27 December 1838. 68 Ibid., minutes by Palmerston, 11 and 24 December 1838. 69 Ibid., L. Hertslet to Palmerston, draft letter, n.d. August 1841. 66

 Carriers of the Papers 91 establishment may have reinforced Palmerston in his tendency to set higher standards when recruiting foreign service messengers. Glenelg and Russell might have been looking towards the financial savings that would result from their departments’ employment of ‘a much lower class of Officers’ on predominantly domestic duties. But in July 1839 Palmerston was keen to emphasize that recent foreign messenger service appointees had been military officers and that ‘it was intended that future Vacancies in the Corps of Queen’s Foreign Messengers shall also be filled by Gentlemen’.70 Between 1835 and 1849 five former British army officers were recruited as foreign service messengers. Two more, Lieutenant Spencer Percival Robbins and Captain Edmund Halford Vyner, had served respectively in the Austrian and Hanoverian armies; and another two, Captain Cecil Godschall Johnson and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Townley, had held commissions in the British Auxiliary Legion in Spain, the mercenary force recruited with Palmerston’s encouragement to assist the liberal Cristinos in the first of the Carlist Wars. The thinking behind this preference for messengers with military backgrounds was simple enough. It was assumed that the transmission of confidential diplomatic correspondence required the services not only of trustworthy individuals, but also of ones capable of commanding respect in the capitals as well as along the highways and byways of continental Europe. The couriers de cabinet of Austria, Prussia and Russia almost invariably ranked as officers, and it was generally accepted by British messengers that the possession of a military title facilitated journeys, more especially in Russia. Indeed, Palmerston specified in 1839 that henceforth the military rank of messengers should be inserted on their certificates.71 Due regard for this change in the ‘Class of Persons’ selected was also expected from other services. The long-standing regulation that messengers travelling on British warships should either mess by themselves or with one or other of the warrant officers on board was thus, as Palmerston informed the Admiralty, ‘no longer suitable to the Condition in Society of the Persons holding that Appointment’, and they would henceforth be expected to be entertained by the lieutenant commanding or in the lieutenants’ mess.72 However, the Admiralty was slow to act, and in December 1844 Aberdeen thought it necessary to remind its first secretary that the foreign service messengers, unlike their home service colleagues, were ‘selected from a class of Society superior to that of which they formerly consisted’, and that the existing regulations governing their passage by sea were ‘not suitable to the condition of that Class of the existing Corps’.73 Others were less impressed by the recent intake. The new messengers did not, for instance, meet with universal approval of Britain’s representatives abroad, and their former military ranking was no guarantee that diplomats and Foreign Office clerks would either regard or treat them as their social equals. Philip Barnard and Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 72 and 80. FO 83/348, minute by Palmerston, 11 July 1839. FO 366/495, draft circular from Palmerston, 19 July 1839. 71 FO 351/10, Johnson to Palmerston, letter, 8 July 1839; Backhouse to Johnson, letter, 19 July 1839. FO 366/495, memo. by L. Hertslet, 14 September 1852. Townley was also amongst those severely wounded in Spain and was subsequently awarded compensation. E. M. Brett, The British Auxiliary Legion in the First Carlist War, 1835–1838: A Forgotten Army (Dublin, 2005), p. 198. 72 FO 366/494, FO to Admiralty, draft letter, March 1841. 73 FO 96/117, Addington to Sidney Herbert, letter, 17 December 1844. 70

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Richard Hill Webster, messengers who had previously officered infantry regiments, won no plaudits from Lord William Russell, Britain’s minister at Berlin. He thought them ‘very poor specimens’ of messengers and army officers. Barnard, he informed Backhouse in a letter of 16 April 1839, was a ‘very slow Coach’ and Webster ‘could not bear the fatigue of the Journey’. But what appears to have upset Russell more was the fact that Barnard was said to be accompanied on his travels by his personal servant.74 Russell’s complaints over the speed and stamina of the two messengers may have been unfair. As Hertslet later pointed out, Barnard had recently distinguished himself in outpacing other messengers in the delivery of mails from Vienna, and the palpitations of the heart, from which Webster was said to have suffered and which were evidently the cause of his fatigue, might well have been brought on by his having travelled some 12,500 miles in the incredibly short space of seven months.75 The presence in Webster’s company of a servant had, however, already been noticed by Backhouse, and this raised issues both of class and status. It was, Backhouse noted, ‘one of the several indications of growing pretensions not quite consistent with the stations and duties of Messengers, and [might] lead to their devolving upon their Lacqueys duties which they ought to perform in Person’.76 Hertslet had already remonstrated with Webster on what appeared to him ‘objectionable and an unnecessary expense’. Webster had, nonetheless, insisted that he had always had a servant and did not see how he could do without one, and that it would be very expensive to maintain one in service in England while he himself was abroad. He was not in any case aware of any ‘official Objection’ to the practice, and no extra charge to the government was involved: the servant cost him ‘little or nothing for travelling’, apart from his cross-Channel fares, and saved him money at sea ports where he would otherwise have had to hire porters. Moreover, as was equally true of paying passengers, the presence of another person provided additional security for the carriage and despatches, and was often indispensable for travel at night, ‘more particularly in Wallachia and Transylvania’.77 Webster’s case, which was much the same as that also presented by Barnard, was a sound one, and Hertslet could not perceive how a messenger could delegate to his servant any duty which could tend to the prejudice of the public service. Yet, for all that, he conceded that the ‘attendance of a Servant on his Journeys, certainly gives an air of independence to the Individual, which to those who have been accustomed to regard Queen’s Messengers as Persons of a very subordinate Class, would appear to be inconsistent with his Station’. It and ‘other indications of growing pretensions’ were, he advised Palmerston, ‘all probably the natural consequence of the recent custom of appointing Gentlemen to the situation of Queen’s Messengers, more especially with reference to the Diplomatic Body at Foreign Courts’.78 Palmerston appears to have agreed. In any event, William Russell was informed by despatch that he was of the opinion that it made no sense to appoint a gentleman to a situation and ‘then prohibit FO 366/473, W. Russell to Backhouse, letter, 16 April 1839. Ibid., minute by Hertslet, 12 July 1839. Barnard seems to have particularly sensitive to any criticism of his timekeeping. FO 366/494, Barnard to L. Hertslet, letter, n.d., May 1839. 76 FO 366/473, Backhouse to Palmerston, minute, 2 May 1839. 77 Ibid., Barnard to L. Hertslet, letter, 29 May 1839; minute by L. Hertslet, 12 July 1839. 78 Ibid. Emphasis in original. 74 75

 Carriers of the Papers 93 him from filling it in a way conformable with his habits of Life, with regard to things in which these habits may not be inconsistent with a proper discharge of his Duties’. That being the case, he thought it inexpedient to interfere with the practice.79 Yet, Frederick Lamb (Lord Beauvale from 1839), had a point when he protested to William FoxStrangways, Palmerston’s political undersecretary, that the old messengers ‘had habits of obedience’ of which the new ones were ignorant and would not accept even if they knew them. We diplomats [he observed] are no match for these tigers of the Demi-Soldes who are let loose upon us, placed themselves, in the very awkward position of holding situations which no where in Europe ranks with those of Gentlemen, in which they will consequently be exposed to constant mortification & be proportionably susceptible.80

Meanwhile, complaints from Barnard and his colleague, Robert Haviland, that they had been treated by Prussian customs officers as if they were no more than domestic servants drew Palmerston into a protracted and inconclusive wrangle over the inspection of messengers’ baggage.81 The honesty of Teutonic officialdom had to be weighed against the honour of English gentlemen. The reluctance of the new intake of couriers to defer to clerical and diplomatic strictures also made for uneasy relations between them and the establishment in Downing Street. Take, for example, the case of Cecil Johnson, a swashbuckling soldier of fortune and misfortune whom diplomacy failed to tame. Born into Bedfordshire gentry and related to Palmerston, Johnson served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy before securing a captaincy in the Auxiliary Legion in Spain, and in March 1838, just a year before his appointment as a Queen’s Messenger, magistrates at St Omer indicted him on a charge of duelling.82 He would later be remembered for his striding down Dover pier arrayed in a flowing cloak, with his silver greyhound messenger’s badge around his neck and a line of porters behind, clearing his path with the cry ‘Room for Her Majesty’s despatches’.83 In the words of one of his companions, he was ‘pompous as a peacock’ but, for all his good qualities, ‘still very unpleasant & by no means safe’.84 Easily offended, particularly when his social standing seemed in question, on 18 October 1839 Johnson came close to exchanging blows with two Foreign Office clerks, Clinton Dawkins and Thomas Ward, in a quarrel arising from the latter instructing him to deliver a non-sealed letter to Madrid.85 Just four months later, on 13 February 1840, there was a similar set-to between Barnard and Richard Mellish, a resident clerk. Mellish was the son of a career diplomat and a graduate of Trinity Ibid., Palmerston to W. Russell, draft despt., n.d. July 1839. FO 366/471, Beauvale to Fox-Strangways, letters, 10 August and 3 September 1839. 81 FO 366/474, Barnard to L. Hertslet, letter, 30 June 1838; Fox-Strangways to G. Hamilton, letter, 25 August 1838; W. Russell to Backhouse, letter, 28 November 1838, and enclosures. 82 Bourne, Palmerston, pp. 1–2, 451–2. M. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–62 (Athens, Georgia, 1992), p. 80. Morning Post, 22 March 1838, p. 3. 83 James Rennell Rodd, Social and Diplomatic Memories (3 vols, London, 1922–25), vol. 1, p. 42. 84 Crawford, Russell’s Civil War, pp. 112 and 127–8. 85 FO 366/673, unsigned memo., 22 October 1839; unsigned and undated memo. 79 80

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College, Cambridge. He was also, through his mother, a distant relative of Queen Adelaide, and had been a favourite of her husband, William IV, and his illegitimate offspring, the Fitzclarences.86 Barnard’s origins were less elevated, though far from lowly. The son of a Suffolk clergyman, he had been schooled at Charterhouse and, prior to his employment by the Foreign Office, had served as a lieutenant in the 24th regiment of foot.87 But a chance remark by Mellish that Barnard’s recent journey from Vienna had taken longer than usual was assumed to be an insult. Doubtless wearied by his wintry exertions, Barnard rejected efforts to pacify him, declaring himself ‘as much a gentleman bred and born’ as Mellish, and that he would ‘be damned if he would submit to be treated, as it was his conviction it was the intention of the Clerks in the Office to treat the Messengers generally & him in particular’.88 Palmerston, who in both instances received testimonies from the clerks and messengers involved, judged Johnson and Barnard to have been in the wrong. Johnson, he considered, ‘to have taken a captious and unfounded objection to an order which he received from the Clerk on duty and from whom he was to secure his orders and Despatches’, and his language and bearing were, Palmerston concluded, ‘improperly disputatious and inconsistent with official subordination’. However, since seven weeks had elapsed between the incident and Palmerston’s reaching his verdict, and since Johnson was unemployed during the whole of that period, Palmerston decided on 10 December 1839 that he should be subject to no further penalties.89 And, while a cash-strapped Barnard was initially suspended for six months, this was reduced by a third following an appeal from Barnard and a plea from Hertslet that the punishment had had a ‘salutary effect’ and that the impression entertained by some messengers of the personal hostility of the clerks appeared ‘to be in a great measure, if not entirely, removed’.90 Only a few months later Palmerston had to arbitrate in another ungentlemanly dispute. Johnson was again the culprit, but this time the offence was given abroad. Charged with correspondence for posts in Italy, Johnson arrived in Florence during the early hours of the morning of 24 July 1840 and went to the home of Edward Erskine, the attaché at the British mission there. A minor misunderstanding ensued when, according to Erskine, Johnson demanded that he come downstairs to receive the diplomatic baggage. The request may not have been accurately conveyed since Johnson spoke no Italian and addressed a porter who spoke neither English nor French. Nevertheless, Erskine was irritated at being summoned from his bed. He also Middleton, Administration, p. 295. This was the same Mellish whom Palmerston would later cite as being amongst the only three persons to understand the Schleswig-Holstein question. Bourne, Palmerston, pp. 446–7. 87 W. D. Parish (ed.), List of Carthusians, 1800 to 1879 (Lewes, 1879), p. 12. 88 FO 366/673, Mellish to Fox-Strangways, minute, 13 February 1840. 89 Ibid., memo. to be read to Johnson by the chief clerk, 10 December 1839; Mellish to Fox-Strangways, minute, 13 February 1840; minute by Palmerston, 18 February 1840; Barnard to Fox-Strangways, minute, 22 February 1840; Forster, Huskisson and Wellesley to Fox-Strangways, minutes, 25 and 26 February 1840. 90 FO 366/473, minutes by Palmerston, 30 March 1840; Barnard to Palmerston, letter, 6 June 1840; minutes by L. Hertslet and Palmerston, n.d. and 18 June 1840; Bannard to Palmerston, letter, 4 July 1840. 86

 Carriers of the Papers 95 discovered an apparent error in the messenger’s record-keeping, and when on 3 August Johnson returned from Naples to Florence, he insisted that he call at the mission so that he could personally check his way bill, even though there was no mail for despatch to England. Johnson complied, but made clear his annoyance at this inconvenience. ‘Mr Erskine’, he protested, ‘I wish to know why you sent to desire me to come here; I would have you know that I am not one of the old Messengers but am a Gentleman, and that my word is sufficient to fix the time of my arrival at and departure from any place. I have no idea of submitting to such impertinence.’91 This and more Erskine reported in detail to the Foreign Office. And again Palmerston decided in favour of the complainant. On 18 August 1840 he ordered that Johnson be suspended for six months for his ‘improper and offensive language’.92 It was not only Johnson’s language that Palmerston objected to. He was also outraged by the news that on his journey to Naples the messenger had been accompanied by his wife. Most certainly [Palmerston noted] Ladies should never accompany Messengers. The Health and Strength of a Woman cannot be equal to the Fatigues of a Journey performed with the Expedition with which a Messenger ought to travel; and it is not possible that a Messenger should perform his Duty with the disregard of personal Convenience which is required of him if he is accompanied by a Wife whose Health & Comfort he must be supposed anxious to attend to.93

But as Johnson subsequently explained, there were only two married messengers who had never journeyed with their wives and he was not aware of any regulation expressly prohibiting the practice.94 Hertslet also intervened in Johnson’s defence. In a memorandum he pointed out that messengers had long been in the habit of taking their wives or their children ‘occasionally upon their Journies [sic] to the Continent’, more especially when they were leaving to be stationed at Paris, Brussels or The Hague, and sometimes when their children were being placed in schools in or near to those cities. Others had married abroad, and since brought their wives to England. And though Hertslet recognized that delays might result from taking family members on long messenger journeys, he was inclined to think that the only restriction on the practice should be a requirement that messengers first secure the permission of the foreign secretary or local head of mission. Palmerston would have none of this. Across Hertslet’s final paragraphs he scrawled: ‘I am not surprised that our messengers are the laughing Stock of Europe: let this Practice or rather Abuse cease entirely and for ever.’ It seems, nevertheless, to have persisted, but subject to messengers first obtaining official consent.95

93 94 95 91 92

FO 366/673., memo. to be read to Johnson by the chief clerk, 11 August 1840. Emphasis in original. Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 18 August 1840. FO 366/496, minutes by Leveson and Palmerston, 17 and 18 August 1840. FO 96/117, Johnson to Leveson, letter, 19 August 1840. Ibid., memo. by L. Hertslet with minute by Palmerston, 29 August 1840. Revised messenger regulations specified that a messenger ‘while travelling on service, must never be accompanied in

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There was also no end to Johnson’s misbehaviour. A grovelling letter to Palmerston of 18 October 1840 in which Johnson claimed that he was threatened with financial ruin, promised henceforth to act with ‘every possible propriety’, and pleaded for an early end to his suspension, was greeted with some incredulity in the Office. In the words of one official, Johnson had to understand that his ‘susceptibility of temper . . . independent air and impatience of control’ were ‘quite incompatible with the subordinate occupation of a Queen’s Messenger whilst under Orders, and [could not] be permitted’.96 Nor was Palmerston at first persuaded to give way. He could see no reason for remitting Johnson’s punishment as language such as he had used could ‘not be tolerated’. Pressure of business seems, however, to have led him to concede, and on 18 November Johnson was allowed to return to work.97 Needless to say, he continued to offend. Thus, in October 1846 he was again suspended and threatened with dismissal, when, despite his having been first in line for duty, he deliberately evaded taking a letter from Palmerston to Paris, on the grounds that he assumed he was about to undertake a more profitable journey to Serbia.98 Moreover, Johnson’s ‘wild and expensive habits’ and consequential indebtedness did not enhance his reputation, and in part explain Addington’s opposition to offering him assistance when during the winter of 1847–8 rheumatism forced him to take to his bed and seek costly medical advice. Lewis Hertslet thought the Office might pay him a full foreign service board wage such as incapacitated messengers had sometimes received prior to 1824. But Addington was against setting such a precedent. ‘I have no wish to be hard on Johnson’, he noted, ‘but I think that a severe lesson or two would bring him to his senses, and be eventually of service to him.’99 Johnson’s financial excesses were not curbed. Nor were his temperamental outbursts. In December 1849 Philipp von Brunnow, the Russian minister in London, protested to the Foreign Office that, after disembarking at St Petersburg on 14 July, Johnson had struck a customs officer charged with verifying the number of packages in his custody.100 The long delay in lodging the complaint and an error in the dating of the alleged ‘outrage’ led to some confusion over what was supposed to have happened. Johnson was initially under the misapprehension that the Russians were referring to an altercation prior to his leaving the steamer at Cronstadt when he had seized back a despatch bag which an official had seemed set on removing from his possession.101 Of the subsequent quayside incident, he claimed to have no recollection. If he had put his hand upon the complainant, then, he later wrote, he had done so ‘unconsciously’ and



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his carriage by his wife or any other female, unless specially permitted by official authority’. Ibid. Regulations for the Guidance of Foreign-Service Messengers, 5 November 1844. Ibid., Johnson to Palmerston, letter, 18 October 1840; undated memo. on Johnson’s application for remission. Ibid., minutes by Palmerston, 22 October and 18 November 1840. Despite this remission, Johnson warned Hertslet that his suspension had so increased his financial embarrassments that it was impossible for him to leave England. FO 366/473, Johnson to L. Hertslet, letter, 21 November 1840. FO 366/674, minute by Palmerston, 18 October 1846. FO 366/495, memorial by Johnson, 15 February 1848, with notes by L. Hertslet and Palmerston, 17 and 25 February 1848; minutes by Addington and Palmerston, 26 and 29 February 1848. FO 366/465, Brunnow to Palmerston, letter and enclosure, 4 December 1849. Ibid., Johnson to L. Hertslet, letters, 6 January and 13 February 1850.

 Carriers of the Papers 97 he regretted any offence he might thereby have given. Palmerston, who was then in his final term as foreign secretary, readily admitted to Brunnow that this was not the first time that the messenger’s ‘vivacité de caractère’ had been drawn to his attention, but he was disinclined to accept the charge at face value.102 Lord Bloomfield, the British minister at St Petersburg, had difficulty in finding any independent witness to the alleged assault and concluded that at most Johnson might in a moment of excitement or impatience have given the officer ‘a violent push’. And, while Bioomfield did not dismiss the Russian complaints as groundless, he insisted on the ‘improbability of a Gentleman and an Officer like Captain Johnson being guilty of the charge brought against him’.103 The Russians, nonetheless, demanded satisfaction. They wanted Johnson reprimanded or otherwise punished, and when in August Palmerston affirmed that he ‘must attach weight to the positive denial of an English Gentleman, whatever allegations may be brought against him to the contrary’, they threatened a judicial investigation if Johnson should ever return to Russia.104 ‘The only thing to be done’, Palmerston concluded, ‘will be to place Mr Johnson upon some other line.’ For the time being Johnson’s journeys would be elsewhere.105 Johnson remained a Queen’s Messenger for many more years to come. His colleague Barnard did not. Reluctant to demean himself by giving way to those he considered no more than his social equals, he could be insolent to a degree that the Office simply could not countenance. Rarely was this more openly displayed than when in early September 1842, he was instructed by Thomas de Grenier de Fonblanque, the British consul-general and chargé d’affaires in Serbia, to delay his journey from Constantinople to Vienna in order to allow de Fonblanque time to report on the ongoing political crisis in Belgrade. Barnard refused. He wrote by return of post that he considered it a ‘great presumption’ on de Fonblanque’s part to interfere with orders he had received from Vienna, and that in the absence of ambassadorial instructions to the contrary he would take none from the consul-general. De Fonblanque was outraged by Barnard’s deliberate ‘insult’, as indeed was the foreign secretary, Aberdeen.106 He ordered Barnard’s suspension for three months for ‘gross impropriety’ and threatened the messenger with dismissal in the event of further misconduct.107 When Barnard begged permission to defend himself ‘as a Gentleman, and one who [had] held Her Majesty’s Commission’, he received a curt reminder from Addington that it was not his conduct as a gentleman that was in question, but that of a Queen’s Messenger in the execution

Ibid., Brunnow to Palmerston, letter, 28 January 1850; Palmerston to Brunnow, letter, 16 February 1850; memo. by L. Hertslet, 31 May 1850. 103 Ibid., Bloomfield to Palmerston, despt. No. 156 and letter, 9 May 1850. 104 Ibid., Bloomfield to Palmerston to Palmerston, despts. Nos. 224, 248 and 249, 16 July and 13 and 17 August 1850; Palmerston to Bloomfield, despts. Nos. 279 and 358, 1 August and 21 September 1850. 105 Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 23 August 1850. 106 The British consulate-general was in Semlin, a town separated from Belgrade by the Sava River and at that time within the borders of the Austrian Empire. De Fonblanque was concerned lest Barnard arrive in Semlin while he was in Belgrade gathering information on the rebellion against the ruling Obrenović dynasty. Ibid., de Fonblanque to Aberdeen, despt., 4 September 1842, enclosing Barnard to de Fonblanque, letter, 3 September 1842. Sir H. Layard, Autobiography and Letters from His Childhood until His Appointment as H.M. Ambassador at Madrid (2 vols, London, 1903), vol. 1, p. 32. 107 FO 366/465, minute by Addington, 30 September 1842. 102

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of his duty.108 Following an abject apology from Barnard his suspension was remitted to one month.109 Hardly, however, had he returned to full-time duties in November 1842 before he was in more trouble, this time for falsely accusing Lenox-Conyngham of using inappropriate language in making a payment to a fellow messenger. The accusation was based on hearsay, an enquiry demonstrated that there was no evidence to support it, and since the honour of gentlemen was in question Barnard was again forced to apologize.110 None of this seems to have restrained Barnard from letting fly when he felt others expected more of him than was their due. Thus, when on 4 May 1844 en route for Madrid, he called at the British embassy in Paris to collect despatch bags, he was evidently surprised to find that he was also expected to take charge of two cases containing uniforms for Henry Lytton Bulwer, the British minister to Spain. Strictly speaking, the cases constituted private baggage which messengers were not required to carry, and Barnard could not have taken them without first hiring a second carriage.111 But Bulwer was the son-in-law of Lord Cowley, the British ambassador in Paris, and the peremptory manner in which Barnard declined to take the excess luggage was considered insubordination by his official superiors and earned him another severe reprimand.112 Less than a year later his reluctance to sacrifice his personal dignity to the requirements of the state finally cost him his job. The task he was then asked to undertake was not an onerous one. Queen Victoria simply wished to send a present, a box of fowls, to the Duc de Nemours, the second son of the French king and prospective regent of France, and on 18 April 1845 Dawkins, who was by then Aberdeen’s private secretary, instructed Barnard to take the box to Paris along with a letter from the queen, a small bag of corn, and directions from the palace for feeding the birds. At first, Barnard seemed ready to comply. Then, after reflecting on the matter, he returned to inform Dawkins that ‘it was quite contrary to what he had been accustomed to do, and that he could not undertake the duty’. Had he known at an earlier period that poultry were to be consigned to his charge, then, he protested, ‘he would at once have resigned his situation, and that now considering his position, birth, &c, he must decline to take the Birds’.113 Aberdeen reacted swiftly. In consequence of ‘such gross disrespect of Her Majesty’, his direct disobedience of the foreign secretary, and former warnings regarding his behaviour, Barnard was to be ‘forthwith removed from The

Ibid., Barnard to Aberdeen, letter, 9 October 1842; minute by Addington, 6 October 1842. Ibid., Barnard to Aberdeen, letters, 13 and 24 October 1842; minute by Addington, 27 October 1842. 110 FO 366/770, memo. by Lenox-Conyngham, 8 December 1841; memos. by L. Hertslet, 11 and 21 December 1841, with annotations by Lenox-Conyngham. FO 366/465, Barnard to Addington, letter, 14 November 1842; Lenox-Conyngham to Addington, minute, 15 February 1843; minute by Addington, 20 February 1843; Barnard to Addington, minute, 21 February 1843; interrogatory by Addington, 24 February 1843; minute by Addington, 22 April 1843; Barnard to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 24 April 1843. 111 Ibid., memo. by Barnard, attached to Barnard to Addington, minute, 28 May 1844. 112 Ibid., Cowley to Addington, letter, 6 May 1844; memo. by William Hervey, 10 May 1844; Barnard to Addington, minute, 28 May 1844; minute by Addington, 10 June 1844; memo. by LenoxConyngham, 12 June 1844; minute by Dawkins, 18 April 1845. 113 Ibid., minute by Dawkins, 18 April 1845. 108 109

 Carriers of the Papers 99 Establishment of the Queen’s Foreign Service Messengers’.114 His insubordination cost him dearly. Nine years later he was still without employment, and Aberdeen, who was by then prime minister, could offer him no more than a position in the Legacy Duty Office at £1 16s. a week, a wage unlikely to assist in repairing Barnard’s ‘shattered fortunes’ and hardly compatible with a gentleman’s expectations.115 Palmerston’s gentlemen messengers could also be distinctly disrespectful of the sensitivities of those of their colleagues whom they considered to belong to a class lower than their own. This was the underlying cause of a brawl which ensued in the messengers’ waiting room of the Foreign Office on 22 August 1844. The two principal antagonists were Captain Thomas Wright, an officer with lofty airs and abysmal manners, and the self-made and lowly Frederick Fricker. Their quarrel originated in January 1844, when Fricker, suspecting Wright of deliberately seeking to embarrass him by interfering with the notification of messengers’ duties, quizzed Wright about his intentions. Wright, according to Fricker, had responded within the hearing of Fricker’s son and other messengers, ‘how dare I presume to speak to him, that I ought to remember that I had been nothing but a Shoe Black while he was a Gentleman, and that he regretted ever having joined such associates, and that I was an ignorant fool, presuming to speak foreign languages while I did not know my own’. Wright had then immediately departed, leaving a ‘dumbfounded’ Fricker nursing a grievance to which he gave full vent when eight months later he next confronted his assailant.116 Accounts of the subsequent ‘violent altercation’ differ on points of detail, but the fullest is that by James Crotch, who, along with other messengers then present in the waiting room, was required by Addington to provide written testimony. In this Crotch recalled: On the 22nd Instant [August], Captain Johnson and myself were sitting in the Queen’s Foreign Service Messengers Waiting Room, when Mr. Fricker entered and stood near the Window. Soon after Mr. Wright came in and placed himself near the Fire place. Mr. Fricker then said, addressing himself to Mr. Wright, ‘I have something to say to you respecting your conduct when last we met.’ On which Mr. Wright turned his head and addressed Captain Johnson, when Mr. Fricker continued ‘You will not hear as to your blackguard conduct to me’ and ‘You damned Blackguard’. Mr. Wright then took up the Tongs from the Fire place, saying ‘By God, I will break your Skull’, when Captain Johnson said ‘no, no, Wright’ and placed himself before him. I then heard spitting, and saw Mr. Fricker attempt to strike with his cane stick. Mr. Wright took the jug from the Wash hand Stand and threw it at Mr. Fricker, when the latter took up some of the broken pieces and threw them at Mr. Wright, and which I believe he returned. Mr. Wright then took up the Stool, when I arose and stood between them. In an instant all was quiet, and I left the Room.117

Ibid., minute by Addington, 19 April 1845. BL, Aberdeen Papers, Add. Ms 43251, Barnard to Aberdeen, letter, 3 August 1853. 116 FO 366/465, Fricker to Addington, minute, 23 August 1844. 117 Ibid., statement by Crotch, 26 August 1844, attached to Crotch to Addington, minute, 26 August 1844. 114 115

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Johnson, who was first to report the incident, suggested in his account that Fricker had been a little more provocative in his handling of Wright. He had, Johnson noted, declared the latter ‘a damned Scoundrel, a damned Blackguard, and a Liar’ and, after the spitting had begun, but before the seizure of the water jug, Fricker had struck Wright with his cane.118 As for the original row between Fricker and Wright in January, none of the messengers then present seemed able to remember with any degree of accuracy what had then been said, and two of them, John Gutch and Robert Haviland, expressly denied Fricker’s assertion that they had told him that they were ‘quite indignant and disgusted’ at the way Wright had spoken.119 Fricker had, indeed, reason to fear that Wright and the other gentlemen might collude against him. In a note to Addington, Fricker confessed, ‘I am only on terms of friendly intercourse with them (owing to no other cause than my former station in Life), whilst Mr. Wright is on terms of the greatest intimacy.’120 Fortunately for Fricker, Lewis Hertslet did remember that Wright had mentioned to him the earlier dispute and that Wright had then said that ‘in the irritation of the moment, he had reminded Fricker of his former condition in life, in the words quoted by Mr. Fricker, or words to the same effect’. And on reading a denial by Wright of the truth of Fricker’s allegations, Hertslet hastened to draw this to Addington’s attention.121 It certainly seemed to lessen the gravity of Fricker’s resort to offensive language, and in consequence Addington ordered that he receive no more than a severe reprimand from the chief clerk for the ‘impropriety of his conduct’. Meanwhile, Wright was ‘to be admonished to conduct himself in future towards all his fellow Messengers without reference to birth or former Station in life, as persons who [were] strictly his official equals’.122 This left Wright dissatisfied. He still held it against Fricker that he had allegedly libelled him a liar, and he complained to both Addington and Hertslet that Fricker had repeated the assertion.123 Fricker was ready to concede. Such an accusation must, he observed, ‘have escaped him in the anger of the moment’, and through Hertslet he expressed his ‘great regret that his excited feelings should have betrayed him into the employment of such an unfounded reproach’.124 None of this did anything to diminish Wright’s sense of his own superiority. In December 1844 he protested fervently against new regulations for foreign service messengers on the grounds that they contained ‘Expressions obnoxious to the Feelings of Gentlemen’.125 Yet, Wright’s commitment to his work could not be questioned. In the summer of 1846 he won praise from Palmerston and a gratuity of £50 when, after suffering severe injury as a result of an Ibid., memo. by Johnson, 25 August 1844, attached to Johnson to Addington, minute, 26 August 1844. 119 Ibid., Haviland to Addington, minute, 26 August 1844; Gutch to Addington, minute, 26 August 1844; notes to Wright from Gutch and Haviland, attached to Wright to Addington, minute, 30 August 1844. 120 Ibid., Fricker to Addington, minute, 26 August 1844. 121 Ibid., L. Hertslet to Addington, minute, 31 August 1844. 122 Ibid., minute by Addington, 2 September 1844, read by Lenox-Conyngham to Fricker and Wright, 4 September 1844. 123 Ibid., Wright to Addington and L. Hertslet, minutes, 4 September 1844. 124 Ibid., L. Hertslet to Wright, minute, 10 September 1844. 125 Ibid., minutes by C. Canning, 10 and 20 January 1845; Wright to Canning, letter, 8 February 1845. 118

 Carriers of the Papers 101 accident with his carriage at Villafranca, he exhibited courage and energy in pursuing his journey to Madrid.126 Then in May 1848, following the Spanish government’s expulsion of Bulwer, who was accused of encouraging progressive forces there, Wright hastened to the minister’s rescue, overtaking and outpacing a Spanish agent despatched to inform London of the news.127 He could also be devious and untrustworthy in his dealings with fellow messengers, especially when it came to his securing the journeys he wanted, and he was not above engaging in the silliest of childish pranks.128 Thus in May 1850 Robert Haviland, whose personal relations with Wright were anything but good, wrote to Lewis Hertslet to complain that Wright had for some time been in the habit of writing his (Haviland’s) name in the water closets, public places and visitor books of various countries, and that he had latterly taken to adding Mrs Haviland’s name to those scrawled on water closet walls. As supporting evidence Haviland enclosed a page torn from the register of the Hotel Vittoria in Naples, down the right-hand side of which ‘HAVILAND’ was boldly inscribed along with the messenger’s home address; and a letter from a friend which asserted that Haviland’s name had appeared no less than five times in a closet in Lille and that in another of these places ‘it was written on the ceiling in letters at least six inches long’.129 Wright indignantly denied these charges, recalling that, when he had first joined the service, both he and Haviland had written each other’s names in visitor books ‘as a joke’.130 But Haviland supplied additional particulars: he insisted on the consistency of the style and format of the inscriptions, and offered to provide names of individuals who had witnessed the graffiti artist at work.131 Palmerston evidently required no further persuasion. A Foreign Office minute of 11 June 1850 recorded that he considered Wright’s conduct ‘as unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman’ and his order that Wright should be suspended from pay and duty for six months.132 It is possible that Wright may not have been solely responsible for defaming Haviland. Subsequent to learning of his suspension he attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to persuade another messenger to endorse his claim that ‘the system of writing up Haviland’s Name on the Walls had been taken up generally as a Joke’, and that ‘men wrote up Haviland’s name without intending it to hit at any particular individual and that it appeared to be quite a mania’. There was apparently no end of such lavatory humour within the messenger service. Palmerston, while wondering whether Wright might ‘not be of a sane mind’, was prepared to allow him his basic pay for the period of his suspension. Much, however, to Wright’s distress, he refused to erase the minute of 11 June from Foreign

FO 366/674, minute by Addington, 16 September 1846. FO 366/495, Wright to L. Hertslet, letters, 6 February and 17 April 1849. R. Bullen, Palmerston, Guizot and the Collapse of the Entente Cordiale (London, 1974), pp. 290–2. K. Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England, 1830–1902 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 60, 293–4. 128 FO 366/674, Addington to Palmerston, minute, 25 April 1850; Palmerston to Addington, minute, 29 April 1850. 129 FO 366/474, Haviland to L. Hertslet, letter, 24 May 1850, with enclosures; including J. Melton to Haviland, letter, 3 May 1850. 130 Ibid., Wright to L. Hertslet, letter, 25 May 1850. 131 Ibid., Haviland to L. Hertslet, letter, 30 May 1850. 132 Ibid., minute by Addington, 11 June 1850. 126 127

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Office records. The foreign secretary ‘felt it to be his duty out of regard to the Body to which Mr. Wright belonged, to mark, as he had done, his sense of his proceedings’.133

New ways for old By the 1850s foreign service messengers had more to worry about than the mural and extra-mural scribblings of their colleagues. Technology was overtaking their equestrian profession. In February 1844 the South Eastern Railway Company completed the construction of its line between London and Dover. Meanwhile, in France work began on railways linking Paris to the Channel ports and the Loire valley, and by the autumn of 1846 lines had reached Arras and Tours. The new railways opened up the prospect of a cheaper, more comfortable and speedier mode of conveyance, and Palmerston was eager to exploit them. Already in the spring of 1839, he had been so irritated by the failure of home service messengers to travel by rail when transmitting despatch boxes from Downing Street to Broadlands that he had urged Hertslet to ensure their greater use of public transport.134 And on despatches from the ambassador to France, picked up in Paris on the evening of 19 March 1847 and delivered to the Foreign Office on the morning of the 22nd, Palmerston noted that had they been sent on the afternoon of the 19th and had the messenger availed himself of existing rail services they should have reached him on the evening of the 20th.135 In June 1850 he even went so far as to enquire as to whether special engines might be hired so that messengers could ride back and forth on their tenders between Calais and Paris – a bizarre notion immediately quashed by an official of the local railway company.136 The foreign service messengers were for their part reluctant to embrace change. The expansion of the railway network left them with fewer fee-paying passengers and they complained at the government’s decision in March 1847 to allow them only 4d. a mile profit on first-class rail journeys abroad, a third less than they received when travelling by horse-drawn carriage. But Palmerston, who sought information from other governments on how they managed and rewarded their couriers, was not prepared to yield to messenger pleas for compensation.137 The reduction in their profit per mile was, after all, hardly inequitable when account was taken of the greater distances trains permitted messengers to travel in a day.

Ibid., Addington to Palmerston, minute, 30 April 1850; minute by Addington, 11 June 1850. FO 366/674, summary memo. drafted at Addington’s request, 23 May 1851; Addington to Wright, letter 6 June 1851. 134 FO 366/521, minutes by Palmerston, 9 and 14 April 1839. 135 FO 366/494, minute by Palmerston, 22 March 1847. 136 FO 83/269, Addington to E. Bonham, despt. No. 8, 11 June 1850; Bonham to Palmerston, letter, 12 June 1850. 137 FO 351/10, minute by Palmerston, 27 March 1847. FO 366/494, Addington to Normanby, draft letter, 19 February 1847; order from Addington, 20 April 1847; memo. by L. Hertslet, n.d. December 1847; Ibid., messengers’ memorial, 3 December 1847; minutes by Palmerston, 6 December 1847 and 7 January 1848. The advent of the railways almost inevitably ended messengers’ opportunities for taking fee-paying passengers. HC, Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure (1848), minutes, para. 5578. 133

 Carriers of the Papers 103 Palmerston displayed no more sympathy for the home service messengers when, in consultation with the other two secretaries of state, it was decided to reduce their profits from 3d. to 2d. a mile when travelling across country by rail. The fatigue and trouble of travelling one hundred miles by post chaise was, Palmerston noted far greater than the equivalent journey in a railway carriage. In the one case [he added] the Messenger is probably 12 Hours at least on the Road, has to change Horses, to look after his Boxes and Bags, to pay at each Stage, and to keep an Account of Horses, Post Bags, Ostlers and Turnpikes. In the other case he pays his Fare once for the whole Journey, is only 4 Hours about it, and has nothing to do but read, talk or sleep while he is travelling.138

And any decrease in the overall earnings of home service messengers was, as Lewis Hertslet pointed out, likely to be very small.139 A suggestion made by the Treasury in January 1848 for bringing the allowances of home service messengers in line with those recently adopted for the payment of Treasury messengers met, however, with more robust resistance from Hertslet. The Treasury messengers, who served the prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer and the Treasury Board, received annual salaries ranging from £80 to £150, plus their actual travelling expenses and 10s. a night when absent from London. The adoption of such rates by the Foreign Office would have resulted in a substantial reduction in the pay of home service messengers and Hertslet was clearly of the opinion that this was unwarranted.140 Palmerston agreed. He considered that home service messengers’ allowances did ‘not appear in aggregate, out of Proportion to the Duties which they [had] to perform’.141 But the subject was not so easily set aside. In July 1848 the House of Commons Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure recommended that no new home service messengers should be appointed on salaries exceeding £150 per annum. A year later the Treasury repeated its earlier proposal. During September 1848 Treasury and home service messengers had alternated in carrying correspondence back and forth between ministers in London and Queen Victoria who was then enjoying her first visit to Balmoral, but as Charles Trevelyan explained in a letter of July 1849, while the expenses of Treasury messengers averaged £11 14s. for the return journey, most of which was by rail, those of the home service messengers

FO 366/521, minute by Palmerston, 25 March 1847. FO 351/10, order to messengers, 27 March 1847. 139 FO 366/521, memorial from the queen’s home service messengers to the colonial, foreign and home secretaries, 20 April 1847; memo. by L. Hertslet, 12 May 1847. In 1840 when the Treasury messengers were paid 4d. a mile for rail travel, inclusive of fares at approximately 3d. a mile, queen’s home service messengers were allowed 3d. a mile profit for rail travel, exclusive of fares. This profit had, according to an unsigned and undated Foreign Office minute, ‘never been considered unreasonably great’. Ibid., Trevelyan to Stephen, letter with enclosures, 23 October 1840, and FO minute. 140 Ibid., Trevelyan to Addington, letter, 1 January 1848, with enclosures; memos. by L. Hertslet on allowances of home service and Treasury messengers, January 1848; home services messengers to Hertslet, minute, 8 January 1848. 141 Ibid., Addington to Trevelyan, draft letter, 29 January 1848, annotated by Palmerston. 138

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came to between £20 and £21.142 The difference was almost entirely attributable to the mileage profits allowed to the home service messengers. Hertslet was, nonetheless, reluctant to accept change. He claimed that a reasonable mileage profit induced ‘zeal and action’; that its payment avoided misunderstandings over claims for extraordinary expenses; and that unlike Treasury messengers, whose duties were essentially domestic, home service messengers worked for long hours out of doors.143 All in the end that Palmerston would concede was a further reduction of messenger profits to 1d. a mile for those portions of rail journeys extending more than 100 miles from London.144 Trains were usually the most economical means of long-distance travel. They were not invariably the most secure. On arriving at Nine Elms Station in London in August 1847 one home service messenger, William Jackson, was distressed to find that while halted at a previous station a porter had mistakenly removed from his carriage locker bags entrusted to him by Palmerston at Broadlands.145 Continental rail travel could also be hazardous and subject to unexpected interruptions, particularly when routes were as yet incomplete and when much of Europe was convulsed by revolution. When Townley left London on 24 February 1848 it was intended that he should travel first to Paris, then through the several Italian states to Naples. There he was to deliver despatches to Lord Minto, the lord privy seal, who with Palmerston’s backing was endeavouring to promote a settlement between the Neapolitan king and his independence-seeking subjects in Sicily. But on his arrival at Boulogne on 25 February, Townley learnt that insurrection in Paris had resulted in the closure of the line south of Amiens. After twenty-four hours of indecision he finally entrusted his Paris despatches to his colleague, Haviland, who was hoping to reach the French capital via Beauvais. Then, after a long delay at Lille, where part of the station had been burnt down and the rest threatened by an angry mob, and where he was robbed of £45, he journeyed by train to Ghent and across Belgium, up the Rhine and Main to Frankfurt and from there onto Turin, only to find when he reached Naples on 10 March that Minto had departed for Palermo. A subsequent attempt by Townley to negotiate his passage to Sicily aboard a French warship failed owing to the concerns of France’s ambassador in Naples over his own anomalous position vis-à-vis the newly formed provisional government in Paris.146 None of this compared with the epic journey which Townley was to make in October of the following year. Then, charged with Palmerston’s instructions urging the ambassador, Stratford Canning, to encourage Ottoman resistance to Austrian and Russian demands for the surrender of rebel Hungarian and Polish refugees, he Ibid., Trevelyan to Addington, letter, 25 July 1849. HC, Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure (1848), p. xv. 143 FO 366/521, memo. by Hertslet, 26 October 1849. 144 Ibid., minutes by Palmerston, 1 September and 28 October 1849; Addington to Trevelyan, draft letter, 6 November 1849. 145 Ibid., Jackson to Palmerston, minute, n.d., and statement by Jackson, n.d.; minutes by Palmerston and Addington, 12 and 13 August 1847. 146 FO 366/495, Townley to L. Hertslet, letters, 25 and 26 February 1848; memo. by Townley, 31 March 1848. FO 366/471, memo. by E. Hertslet, 29 March 1862. On the origins of Minto’s mission to Italy, see: Saho Matsumoto-Best, Britain and the Papacy in the Age of Revolution, 1846–51 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 50–3. 142

 Carriers of the Papers 105 rode 650 miles on horseback from Belgrade to Constantinople in just five days and eleven hours. It was, Townley boasted, ‘the quickest messenger journey ever performed even in summer’. Accompanied by a trusty Tartar guide, he had, according to his own account, braved the ‘brink of precipices . . . passing through defiles where the rocks closed over head’ and, after three days and nights continuously in the saddle, he had reached Philippopolis. Finally, on 26 October 1849, having twice survived his horse falling upon him and scarcely able to see out of his worn and bloodshot eyes, he had entered the Ottoman capital’s ancient and ruined gateway. Such feats of endurance doubtless appealed to the Victorian imagination. Yet, Townley’s exertions were quite possibly superfluous to the needs of diplomacy. Palmerston had already despatched two other messengers with similar instructions and both reached Constantinople days before the expeditious Townley. Robbins departed London for Vienna on 2 October, travelled down the Danube to Rutschuk (Ruse), rode from there to the port of Varna, and arrived at his destination by sea on 18 October; and John Waring, who left the Foreign Office on 7 October, boarded a steamer at Marseille and disembarked at Constantinople on the 24th.147 As the French railway network expanded, the route taken by Waring gained in popularity. But at a time when the line south of Paris did not extend far beyond Bourges, some messengers preferred to journey from the Channel ports to the Mediterranean by their own, rather than hired, horse-drawn vehicles. This Johnson did in February 1850. Then, in expectation that he would return by the same route, he left his recently constructed carriage in Marseille. Unfortunately, his homeward voyage in March was delayed when the French ship on which he had embarked hit a reef in the Dardanelles. After several more days in Constantinople, he left again, this time on board an Austrian vessel heading for Trieste. He eventually arrived home in April, having travelled via Vienna and Berlin. His carriage meanwhile remained in Marseille and only grudgingly did Addington agree to allow him £17 1s 6d for the cost of its transport back to Calais.148 Johnson’s return passage served also to highlight another messenger concern, notably the way in which some continental railway companies insisted on luggage, other than small packages, being conveyed in a designated carriage or van. Already in May 1848 Johnson had drawn Addington’s attention to how, contrary to current regulations, a messenger could thus be separated from his despatch bag for several days. And most alarmingly for Johnson, in April 1850, while changing railway termini at Breslau en route from Vienna to Berlin, he discovered that the bulky despatches with which he had been charged on his return trip from Constantinople were missing from the station baggage room. Only some days later, following a police enquiry, were they recovered from a coal wagon in a nearby railway

Stanley Lane-Poole, The Life of the Right Hon. Stratford Canning, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe from His Memoirs and Private and Official Papers (2 vols, London, 1888), vol. 2, pp. 189–202. Francis Cavendish, Society, Politics and Diplomacy, 1820–1864: Passages from the Journal of Francis W. H. Cavendish (London, 1913), pp. 188–92. UoS, Broadlands Papers, PP/GC/CA/276, Palmerston to Stratford Canning, letter, 11 October 1849. FO 366/495, memo. by L. Hertslet, 21 August 1850. 148 Ibid., Johnson to L. Hertslet, letter, 22 April 1850; memo. by L. Hertslet, 14 May 1850; Addington to L. Hertslet, minute, 15 May 1850. 147

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siding.149 In order to avoid such incidents in future, Johnson urged Addington to consider the expediency of either allowing messengers to convey their carriages by train, or making some arrangement with the railway authorities which would permit all messengers sufficient room in which to keep custody of their bags. If such measures were unachievable, then Johnson wondered whether it was ‘an unnecessary expense to send a messenger beyond Calais or Ostende at either of which places he could book and pay for the transport of dispatches to Hanover, Berlin, Warsaw, and Vienna, saving the sum of money now expended on a messenger’s journey and him much fatigue and anxiety’.150 Addington dismissed as ‘preposterous’ Johnson’s proposal for transporting messengers’ carriages by rail. Despatches, he insisted, generally occupied but a ‘comparatively small space’ and could therefore be kept close by the messenger, while private letters, newspapers, and all the other things usually carried between missions and the Office must still go in the bag and ‘stand their chance’.151 He was no more constructive when it came to considering how best to maintain communications with those capitals, such as Madrid, which could still not be reached by rail or steamship. When four years earlier Palmerston had toyed with the idea of saving money by having messengers travel between Bayonne and Madrid by diligence, Hertslet had advised against it on the grounds that in practice it would delay and risk the safety of correspondence.152 But Palmerston would not let the matter rest and in August 1850 he suggested that messengers might be sent by steamship to Vigo or Cadiz and then on to Madrid by road.153 Hertslet reckoned that it would cost only £73 to despatch a messenger by sea from Southampton to Vigo and thence to Madrid, £32 less than the cost of the conventional route through France. There were, however, drawbacks. Via Vigo the journey would take eight and a half days, or two days longer than that through France, and as there were no post horses to be had on the road from Vigo to Madrid the messenger would probably have first to make his way by road to Corunna, adding £22 to the cost and another two days to his travel time.154 There were other costs too. Messengers, who had grown accustomed to travelling by carriage, rail and steamship, and many of whom Addington considered ‘but bad horsemen’, would on setting forth from an Iberian port have to make their way to Madrid mostly on horseback. They would have to equip themselves with new saddles and saddle bags and then, as Addington, himself a former envoy to Spain, knew well, they must negotiate poorly constructed roads. ‘The moment you get out of the beaten track in Spain’, he noted, ‘you are liable to be beset with difficulties, and every post master does his best to increase them.’ It was also more convenient for messengers to pass through Paris in order that the ambassador there might view under flying seal despatches intended for Madrid.155 Ibid., Johnson to Addington, note, 13 May 1850. Ibid. 151 Addington to L. Hertslet, minute, 14 May 1850; pencil note by L. Hertslet, n.d. August 1850. 152 FO 366/494, minutes by Palmerston and Addington, 14 October 1846; memo. by L. Hertslet, 15 October 1846, with minute by Palmerston, 25 October 1846. 153 Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 21 August 1850. 154 Ibid., memo. by L. Hertslet, 26 August 1850. 155 Ibid., Robbins to L. Hertslet, letter, 10 September 1850; minute by Addington, 12 September 1850. 149 150

 Carriers of the Papers 107 Palmerston agreed. ‘Non lasciar la strada vecchia per la nova is’, he observed, ‘a good Rule in some things. Let it be observed in this.’156 The permanent undersecretary was, nevertheless, keen to make economies and it was clear that to achieve these old ways, if not old routes, would have to be abandoned. ‘I should tell you’, he wrote to Lewis Hertslet in November 1850, ‘that for some time past I have thought that the rail-roads would enable us to reduce our number of F.S. messengers, and also their pay, the wear and tear of service being, in most countries, so much diminished.’157 He was not, however, ready to concur in a Treasury proposal for fusing the foreign and home messenger services with the domestic staff of the Office into a single class of government employees, thereby creating a ‘hotch-potch at the FO of Messengers, F&H, Doorkeepers, House Keepers, Maid Servants, and Porters, and having all the work in door, and only done indiscriminately by all’.158 Hertslet was likewise dismissive of a project put forward by Cecil Johnson. This foresaw a reduction in the annual messenger budget of £2,565 by the stationing of messengers at various foreign capitals for twelve rather than three months, and the basing of others at Frankfurt and Tours to better facilitate communications with Vienna and Madrid.159 Given the current system of paying board wages to messengers, Hertslet did not believe the savings would be as great as Johnson anticipated, and he felt that the introduction of twelve-month tours of duty abroad would weaken Foreign Office control of messenger accounts. It might also leave messengers in London under-employed and impose greater strain upon those more frequently charged with journeys between capitals in central and eastern Europe.160 There was, however, little doubt that the days of horse-drawn and horse-riding couriers were numbered. Even in 1860 messengers journeying via Berlin and Warsaw to St Petersburg still found it necessary to hire carriages for their transport across Poland and into Russia’s Baltic provinces.161 But increasingly they travelled by rail and steamship, and in a minute of 28 March 1854 Addington made known Clarendon’s decision that foreign service messengers would no longer be required to supply their own carriages for journeys abroad, and that those still in possession of them would receive a compensatory allowance of £25.162 Some of the messengers had already parted with their vehicles. One, John Poignand, had sold his, ‘not having had any use for a carriage for a long time’, and since he had been a considerable loser from its sale he hoped he would still be entitled to compensation.163 Henry Grattan had similarly disposed of his carriage, but evidently felt that as he would no longer have use for the two or three sledges he owned for travel in Russia, their future sale would be taken into consideration.164 Others, including Johnson, Haviland and Wright, were in possession of not one, but two carriages, and in the new age of steam they could only sell them ‘Don’t abandon the old road for the new’. Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 13 September 1850. Ibid., Addington to L. Hertslet, minute, 22 November 1850. 158 Ibid. 159 Ibid., Johnson to Palmerston, letter, 13 March 1851 and attached memo. 160 Ibid., minutes by L. Hertslet and Palmerston, 31 March and 6 April 1851. 161 M. E. Haworth, The Silver Greyhound (London, 1880), pp. 171–81. 162 FO 96/117, minute by Addington, 28 March 1854. 163 FO 366/495, Poignand to L. Hertslet, letter, 21 April 1854. 164 Ibid., Grattan to L. Hertslet, letter, 17 April 1854. 156 157

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at a loss. Wright had paid 240 guineas for a broad-gauge carriage for journeys in France and Italy and a further £120 for a narrow-gauge one for use in Germany. Yet, as he complained to Hertslet, on enquiry he had found that he could ‘not get more than fifteen pounds a piece for them, the average price good carriages now fetch’. He therefore hoped, as it turned out in vain, that Clarendon would allow him more than £50 in compensation.165

Matters of fancy and caprice Foreign service messengers were also having to come to terms with other changes which had less to do with their economic well-being than with their own conception of their standing in society. Thus, in June 1851 concerns were raised when an attempt was made to enforce regulations, dating from 1829, which prescribed the wearing of uniforms by messengers on duty. Of late the rule had been infrequently observed, there being a general dislike amongst messengers for a style of dress they felt more appropriate to livery servants than cabinet couriers. The dark blue surtout with scarlet collar and cuffs, matching waistcoat, grey trousers with scarlet-covered seams, and a blue cloth cap may in themselves have been satisfactory, but in Lewis Hertslet’s opinion the unpopularity of the outfit arose ‘from the Gold Lace edging upon the Coat and Waistcoat, the Greyhound upon the Button, and the Gold Lace Band upon the Cap’.166 Vyner for one felt that the time had come to petition Palmerston for a new uniform as the present one was ‘not fit for a Gentleman to wear’. He recalled that while travelling in uniform he had on several occasions suffered the indignity of being asked by postmasters how many carriages his family had and how many horses they required.167 Palmerston was agreeable to change. ‘The object’, he noted, ‘ought to be to make the Dress resemble as nearly as possible the undress of an Infantry or Staff Officer – on the Continent a military Dress commands Respect.’168 Enquiries were made into the dress of the couriers of other powers, and further messenger embarrassment was spared by the eventual adoption of a simpler and less decorative outfit, from which both the silver greyhound badge and buttons were noticeably absent.169 This was not the end of the matter. In March 1854 Edward Hertslet, who in the following year would take over his uncle’s role as private agent to the messengers, proposed that with war threatening with Russia, foreign service messengers should revert to wearing a more military style uniform, including a red collar and cuffs and with a remodelled greyhound badge suspended from a ribband about their necks. Clarendon favoured the idea, and the messengers, though doubtful about the cuffs, were finally won over to it. There was

Ibid., Johnson to L. Hertslet, 3 April 1854; Haviland to L. Hertslet, letter, 8 April 1854; Wright to L. Hertslet, letter, 1 May 1854. 166 Ibid., memo. by L. Hertslet, 23 July 1851. 167 Ibid., Vyner to L. Hertslet, letter, 26 June 1851. 168 Ibid., minute by Palmerston, 27 July 1851. 169 Ibid., design by Thomas Maitland (military tailor), n.d. 165

 Carriers of the Papers 109 to be no gold lace and their buttons were henceforth to be decorated with the royal cipher, crown and garter.170 Much to the annoyance of the Office, messengers continued to ignore regulations regarding their attire, and decades later they were still having to be reminded that they must wear their regulation cap and badge when entering and leaving a railway station or carriage.171 More, however, than appearances were at stake when in May 1852 the Spanish government announced that British subjects who had held commissions in the Auxiliary Legion had no right to retain the title of the rank which they held during their period of service. The decision affected only two messengers, Johnson and Townley. The former, Palmerston had expressly permitted to use his title of captain, and the latter’s title of brevet lieutenant-colonel had been tacitly accepted by Queen Victoria when she agreed to his wearing the insignia of the Order of Charles III. Nonetheless, Malmesbury, who was appointed foreign secretary in February 1852, was at first firmly of the opinion that there could be no question of the messengers holding titles cancelled by the queen of Spain. In partial defence of the thus demoted pair, Lewis Hertslet drafted a memorandum pointing out that it was questionable whether any of the decommissioned officers then serving as messengers were deserving of their military titles. Neither Robbins nor Vyner had previously obtained permission under the Royal Sign Manual before enlisting in the Austrian and Hanoverian armies and both had therefore acted contrary to the law. Moreover, current army regulations specified that officers relinquishing their regimental commissions were not considered as retaining any rank in the service except in special cases. Not one of the then three messengers who had formerly been British army officers had secured exemption from this rule.172 In the face of Hertslet’s memorandum and other papers which the librarian supplied to Addington, Malmesbury eventually relented, and in December he rescinded instructions withdrawing recognition of the military titles of Johnson and Townley. Since, he observed, it was only a matter of custom that the messengers had not been prevented from using their titles, he was ‘not inclined to do a very ungracious act by suddenly withdrawing a courtesy which [his] predecessors had practised towards them’.173 The debate over whether Johnson and Townley were entitled to their ranking raised another question in Addington’s mind: that of why the privilege of retaining a subordinate English title should be allowed to Queen’s Messengers, while it was officially denied to all other British subjects.174 Indeed, Hertslet’s conclusions with regard to this matter may help explain the subsequent decision of some messengers to seek captaincies in local militia regiments. Despite doubts on Addington’s part about the expediency of providing them with a ‘good excuse’ for absenting themselves from FO 96/117, minutes by E. Hertslet and Addington, 1 and 2 March 1854; minute by L. Hertslet, 11 March 1854; minutes by Clarendon, 11 and 21 March 1854. 171 FO 366/471, minute by Granville, 17 December 1872; circular minute by Alston, 30 October 1888. 172 FO 366/495, memo. by L. Hertslet, 14 September 1852. FO 366/449, minute by Addington, 29 September 1852. 173 Ibid., Addington to Malmesbury, minute, 11 December 1852; minutes by Malmesbury, 12 and 13 December 1852. 174 Ibid. 170

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the Office, Webster and Robbins were permitted to enrol respectively as officers in the Tower Hamlets Militia and the East Middlesex Militia on condition that their messenger duties would take precedence over any military obligations.175 And the everimpetuous Wright managed to incur official displeasure when, without prior approval, he obtained a commission in the East Surrey Militia, news of which was only brought to Addington’s attention when in May 1853 Wright requested permission to remain with the regiment for a week to ten days during training exercises at Guildford.176 In seeking Foreign Office consent to his taking up a commission, Robbins related how having the rank of captain would facilitate his travelling ‘with greater benefit to the public service’.177 It was an argument with which Lewis Hertslet was, of course, familiar. It was also one whose soundness he and others had begun to question. It is, Hertslet observed, ‘under the same impression that the Messengers are ordered to wear a Military Uniform when on Service, but this advantage is, it is presumed, somewhat diminished by the great extent of Country over which they now travel by Railway’.178 The ‘whole arrangement’ seemed in Addington’s opinion ‘to rest upon fancy and caprice and not upon reason’. With this the foreign secretary agreed.179 Titles and uniforms still counted for much in society, but they counted for less on the railways than they had once done upon the open road. Addington and Clarendon may have condoned the absence of foreign service messengers with their local militias. They were less ready to acquiesce in the ownership by a home service messenger, Edward Harran, of a public house on Harley Street. The news that Harran was the registered keeper of the Turk’s Head reached Addington in February 1854 via an anonymous letter from a member of the Elmsly Hunt in Yorkshire. According to the letter, Harran had ridden four times that year with the Elmsly hounds, and its author and other members of the hunt wished to ‘dispense with the society of such an individual’.180 Lenox-Conyngham was disinclined to take the matter further, rightly viewing with ‘great suspicion . . . the motives and conduct of any man who ha[d] recourse to an anonymous mode of attack against another’. But Addington confessed that a ‘hunting and public house-keeping Home Service Messenger’ did not seem ‘the best, or most respectable, or trustworthy sort of person for the F.O. Establishment’.181 In fact, as Harran subsequently explained to Lewis Hertslet, he had nothing to do with the daily management of the Turk’s Head, but had agreed that its business might be conducted in his name as the result of its being purchased for his children with a bequest from their grandmother. Clarendon, nonetheless, considered ‘the occupation, Ibid., W. L. Grant to Clarendon, letter, 2 March 1853; Addington to Grant, letter, 12 March 1853, with notes by Addington and Clarendon; minute by Addington, 26 May 1853; Robbins to Clarendon, letter, 28 March 1854; FO memo., 31 March 1854. 176 Ibid., Lord Lovelace to Clarendon, letter, 24 May 1853; minute by L. Hertslet, 25 May 1854; minute by Clarendon, 26 May 1853; Addington to Lovelace, letter, 28 May 1853; Clarendon to Lovelace, letter, 17 June 1853. 177 Ibid., Robbins to Clarendon, letter, 28 March 1854. 178 Ibid., memo. by L. Hertslet, 27 September 1852. 179 FO 366/449, Addington to Malmesbury, minute, 11 December 1852; minute by Malmesbury, 12 December 1852. 180 FO 366/521, Anon. (Elmsly) to Addington, letter, 20 February 1854. 181 Ibid., minutes by Lenox-Conyngham and Addington, 22 February 1854. 175

 Carriers of the Papers 111 real or reputed, of a Publican to be inconsistent with the Duties of a Queen’s Messenger’, and following correspondence with Hertslet, Harran agreed to sever his connection with the business.182

The end of superintendence Lewis Hertslet was meanwhile close to severing his association with the messengers. When in June 1839 the two undersecretaries, Backhouse and Fox-Strangways, had considered the role of the librarian as superintendent of the messengers, they had agreed that the time might well arrive when either through loss of Hertslet’s services or ‘some other paramount cause’ a new and less anomalous arrangement might be adopted. They had, however, then concluded that the advantages derived from Hertslet’s administration, the future benefit which might accrue from ‘his long experiences and his intimate acquaintance with every detail’ of the messenger service, and the cost of compensating Hertslet for the loss of his position, made any such change ‘undesirable’ at the present time.183 By the autumn of 1853, when Clarendon first set out his proposals for reforming the Foreign Office establishment, Addington had long since concluded that the superintendence of the messengers should be transferred to the Chief Clerk’s Department, the division ultimately tasked with managing their finances.184 Already, in 1848, the same Commons committee which had foreseen a reduction in the remuneration of home service messengers had recommended that on vacancy Hertslet’s position as superintendent should be discontinued, and that each of the three government departments concerned should assume responsibility for its charges.185 Six years on, mollified by age and the prospect of full compensation for any loss of income, Hertslet seems to have offered no resistance to this measure, and on 3 November 1854 he surrendered his position.186 This was not, however, the end of the ties between the Hertslets and the messengers. The librarian was still required to prepare weekly and monthly tables showing the arrival and departure of mails and messengers, and on his brother’s retirement in 1855 the messengers selected Lewis’s son Edward as their private agent.187 This transfer of official responsibilities coincided with a further attempt by the Treasury to alter the pay and standing of home service messengers. Prompted by the separation in June 1854 of the War and Colonial Offices, itself the consequence of the onset of the Crimean War, the Treasury lords raised again the question of messenger pay and grading. It was settled that the foreign secretary would henceforth be solely Ibid., Harran to L. Hertslet, letter, 24 February 1854; L. Hertslet to Harran, letter, 3 March 1854. FO 366/674, memo. by Backhouse and Fox-Strangways, 29 June 1839, attached to LenoxConyngham to Palmerston, minute, 21 August 1841. 184 UoS, Broadlands Papers, FO/B/32/2, minute by Addington, 8 February 1850. FO 366/449, Clarendon to Treasury, letter, 9 March 1854. Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 158–9. 185 Ibid. HC, Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure (1848), p. xv. 186 FO 366/449, Clarendon to Treasury, letter, 9 March 1854. FO 83/348, minute by L. Hertslet, 3 November 1854. 187 FO 83/348, memo. by E. Hertslet, 20 December 1862. 182 183

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responsible for the appointment of foreign service messengers, who came increasingly to be seen as constituting a corps quite separate from that of their home service colleagues.188 But the War Office needed its own home service messenger branch, and the Treasury proposed that whatever changes were adopted in its recruitment should be applied to all future appointments in the other offices of state. This was intended both to end the ‘antiquated mode of payment’ by which messengers received salaries, board wages and mileage profits, and to facilitate the adoption of salary scales similar to those already applying to messengers in the Treasury.189 With good reason, Addington’s successor Hammond perceived it as an attempt by the Treasury to reduce the status of the home service messengers so as to place them on a footing similar to that of other Office servants. He insisted that the Office’s home service messengers were sufficiently occupied with out-of-door work without being called upon to act as officekeepers. Their responsibilities, he contended, were particularly onerous when compared with messengers in other government departments. They worked long hours, often until late in the evening; they were engaged in conveying, not just letters, but masses of boxes containing highly confidential communications; and when foreign service messengers were unavailable, they too had to undertake journeys abroad. ‘It is’, he argued, ‘therefore most important that the Foreign Office messengers should be liberally paid so as to be placed beyond temptation instead of being reduced to a low rate of allowance which might lead them, as in the case of some other countries where the remuneration of public servants is inadequate, to eke out their means of subsistence by dishonest practices.’190 With the backing of Clarendon and the concurrence of Palmerston, who was by then home secretary, Hammond was able to withstand the Treasury initiative.191 Reform was, nonetheless, in the air and, following his return to the Foreign Office in 1858, Malmesbury set about transforming the way in which both the home and foreign service messengers were remunerated, introducing enhanced fixed salaries and limiting travel allowances to expenses actually incurred. Once more the home service messengers thought their privileged position under threat: this time from Malmesbury’s decision that they must travel second class on journeys of less than 150 miles.192 The foreign secretary could see ‘no degradation whatever in their being obliged to use for short journeys the same class of Carriage commonly employed by Clergymen, Officers of the Army and Navy, and Tradesmen of the highest respectability’.193 They were after all, as Lenox-Conyngham admitted, generally not gentlemen, but drawn FO 366/675, Clarendon to J. Bidwell Jr., letter, 10 May 1859. FO 366/496, Treasury minute, 12 December 1854; memo. by Hammond, 16 December 1858 (misdated 1857). 190 Ibid., memo. by Hammond, 30 December 1854. 191 Ibid., FO note, 1 January 1855, with minute by Palmerston, 2 January 1855; Hammond to J. Wilson, letter, 24 January 1855. When subsequently he became prime minister, Palmerston recalled how he and other departmental heads had ‘all rebelled and refused to inflict a severe hardship upon a few wretched messengers, in order to save the state an insignificant sum for the public’. UoS, Broadlands Papers, PP/GC/LE/182, Palmerston to G. Cornewall Lewis, letter, 15 December 1855. 192 FO 366/496, memo. by Malmesbury, 16 September 1858; memos. by home service messengers, 28 September and 6 November 1858. 193 Ibid., memos. by Hammond, 4 and 13 November 1858. 188 189

 Carriers of the Papers 113 from ‘gentlemen’s upper servants’.194 However, following messenger protests that without first-class travel they would have no sleep when making the return trip by night train and ferry to the queen’s residence at Osborne on the Isle of Wight, the order was rescinded.195 Another complainant was Edward Hertslet who found that the new system of paying messengers’ expenses involved a substantial increase in his workload. Although, as private agent, he was an employee, not of the government but of the messengers themselves, he discovered that, in addition to verifying their accounts, he was expected to prepare elaborate tables of fares and other charges. Forced to pay for assistance at £30–40 a year, in December 1862 he threatened to resign as agent. Hammond was ready to give way. He conceded that the Office had ‘nothing to do’ with any private arrangement between Hertslet and the messengers, and that it was for the chief clerk to test the accuracy of individual accounts.196 Thus relieved of what he considered an extraneous burden, Edward Hertslet continued to benefit from agency fees received both from the messengers and from consuls for whose accounts his uncle had been responsible. These boosted his income by £500 a year and, after the abolition of the agency system in 1870, he was awarded £369 13s. 8d. in annual compensation.197 For the Hertslets their messenger connection had been, and remained, very much a paying concern.

HC, Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure (1848), minutes, para. 2,227. FO 366/496, undated memo., ‘Particulars of a Journey to Osborne House’; memo. by home service messengers, 17 November 1858; minute by Hammond, 10 December 1858. 196 FO 83/348, E. Hertslet to Sasse, letter, 22 August 1855; memos. by E. Hertslet, 20 December 1862, and Hammond, 31 December 1862. 197 The compensation offered for the abolition of agency fees was reckoned to be the equivalent of two-thirds of average receipts over the previous three years. FO 366/675, memo. by E. Hertslet, 21 February 1861. FO 366/436, C. Strange to Hammond, letter, 30 July 1870. Jones, Foreign Office, p. 99. 194 195

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Adjusting to the new Accommodation and domestic staff, 1868–1914

Could anything be done to give the same purity of atmosphere to the F.O. physically as it has morally? Lord Granville, 20 February 18721 The difficulty of guarding the Office successfully arises from the size and construction of the building, which being intended for partygiving, is much larger than the number of servants in it can watch over at all times. Lord Tenterden, 26 November 18792 The evening of Wednesday 25 March 1868 witnessed a glittering occasion in the new Foreign Office building. Mrs Disraeli, whose husband had recently succeeded the 14th Earl of Derby as prime minister, hosted there a reception attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales, other members of the royal family, and leading figures from the world of politics and diplomacy. The press was ecstatic about the spectacle, marvelling at the long corridor paved with Minton’s mosaic tiles, the walls decorated in chrome and gold, and George Gilbert Scott’s majestic grand staircase with its alabaster balustrades, marble columns, panels and pedestals, and pillars of Peterhead granite, all under a wagon-shaped roof surmounted by a dome.3 The setting was sumptuous and certainly better suited to a gathering of so many of society’s great and good than could be afforded by either the Disraelis’ London home at Grosvenor Gate or the premier’s Downing Street residence at No. 10, a house which Mrs Disraeli found ‘so dingy and decaying’.4 Yet, despite Hammond having visited the construction site three or four times a week during the previous nine months and an urgent plea from him to Scott that the building be ready for occupation by the end of February, work on it was incomplete. The three main state rooms, including that intended for Cabinet FO 366/415, Granville to Alston, minute, 20 February 1872. FO 366/563, memo. by Tenterden, 26 November 1879. 3 Illustrated London News, 4 April 1868, p. 335; D. Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli: A Strange Romance (London: London, 2015), pp. 229–31. 4 R. Aldous, The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli (London, 2007), p. 190. R. Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), p. 487. 1 2

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meetings, were still undergoing decoration, and guests were entertained instead in the foreign secretary’s room overlooking St James’s Park.5 The decorators, Messrs. Clayton and Bell, remained in situ throughout the spring, though Lord Stanley, the foreign secretary, was able to secure the removal of scaffolding and all things unsightly for a dinner party he held in the Cabinet room on 23 May to celebrate the queen’s forthcoming birthday.6 Not until 29 June was the building made ready for the regular business of diplomacy, and only thereafter did the clerks, along with their files and furniture, depart Whitehall Gardens for Downing Street under the protective gaze of two superintendents and thirty constables of the Metropolitan Police. The general public was subsequently invited to inspect the new establishment. From 1 October any parties who might wish to see the principal rooms were, on presentation of their cards, to be admitted on Thursdays between 12.00 noon and 3.00 pm.7

Servants of the new The fine rooms and their furnishings proved such a popular attraction that in December public admissions, which had originally been intended to last for no more than three months, were extended indefinitely into the new year. Visitor delight in Scott’s Italianate design was not, however, matched by servant satisfaction. The architect had in the words of the Conservative politician, Alexander Beresford Hope, been required ‘to make a kind of national palace, or drawing room for the nation, with working rooms hung on to it for the foreign business of the country’.8 And while there were barely more rooms in the new building for daily office work than there had been in Whitehall Gardens, its lengthy and ill-lit passageways, broad staircases, high ceilings and extended room-space, placed new burdens and new responsibilities upon domestic staff.9 Stanley, a parsimonious soul when it came to government spending, had hoped that there need be no increase in the number of officekeepers. The by then five had sufficed in buildings of small and cramped dimensions and, given their distribution of duties, it was thought that they might manage equally well in a modern and in most respects more functional place of work. Electric bells and speaking tubes were incorporated in the new building with a view to easing internal communications, and two hydraulic lifts were installed, one for the use of the coal porter and another FO 366/378, Hammond to Scott, letter, 12 December 1867; Hammond to Layard, letter, 15 December 1868. Toplis, Foreign Office, pp. 161–3. W. F. Moneypenny and G. E. Buckley, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (6 vols, New York, 1916–20), vol. 4, pp. 599–600. 6 On 24 June Stanley hosted another dinner and party in the new building, this time making full use of the new state rooms. Ibid., Hammond to Office of Works, letters, 9 May and 9 June 1868; Alfred Austin to Hammond, letter, 14 May 1868. 7 Cecil Denny Highton, Old Public Office, p. 78. It was originally intended that the Foreign Office would only be open to public visits for three months. But the invitation was subsequently re-issued and the visiting day changed to Friday. FO 366/378, notice for insertion in the newspapers, n.d. September 1868. 8 HC, Report from the Select Committee on Public Offices and Buildings (Metropolis) (1877), minutes, para. 591. 9 FO 366/393, minute by Alston, 31 July 1876. 5

 Adjusting to the New 117 for the Librarian’s Department. But not all such innovations were labour-saving. The advent of international electric telegraphy, epitomized by the opening of cable communications between London and Paris in 1852, hastened the pace of diplomatic exchanges and, despite Hammond’s initial opposition, led to the establishment of a telegraph office in Downing Street. Situated beneath the entrance hall of the Foreign Office and connected by wire to a central telegraph office, it was manned by Cyril West, an employee first of the Electrical Telegraph Company and then, following the company’s nationalization in 1869, of the General Post Office (GPO), and was intended to serve several government departments. Door- and office-keepers were thus required to keep a regular check on the delivery and distribution of incoming cable messages. All this added to their workload and barely a week after the Foreign Office’s return to Downing Street, Hammond successfully petitioned the Treasury for permission to recruit two additional officekeepers, albeit at the lowest rate of salary (i.e. £125 a year). Stanley, Hammond noted, wanted to avoid the risk ‘of incapacitating the present officekeepers from duty by exacting from them an amount of labour which is beyond their physical powers to perform’.10 The performance of domestic staff might have been improved had the electric bells been more reliable and had they and the speaking tubes been more widely distributed about the building. Officekeepers on the ground floor had, for instance, no means of attracting the attention of those on the first other than by shouting, and in consequence visiting foreign envoys ascended the grand staircase to the accompaniment of what, after his appointment at foreign secretary in July 1870, Lord Granville termed ‘unseemly bellowing’ from below.11 Some of the latest installations also raised issues of health and safety. The Office of Works was responsible for the building’s upkeep, and Hammond was particularly disappointed by its evident reluctance to respond positively to his request that a skilled mechanic be appointed ‘to look after the Hydraulic Lifts, the warming apparatus, the Gasmeters, the supply of Water in the Tower and the Hydrants’ of the Office. Indeed, he feared that without the constant attention of such a person the new central heating system might explode. ‘It is’, he protested to the Treasury, ‘impossible to expect that our unskilled servants should be able to understand and look after complicated machinery.’12 So worried was Farmer, the coal porter, about being left to manage a lift, the construction of which placed him ‘in daily peril of his life’, that in December 1868 Hammond wrote to warn the Office of Works that it would be ‘very awkward’ if in the event of a serious accident blame were attributed to that department’s failure to respond to Foreign Office requirements. His concerns were justified. The library lift was prone to malfunction and in June 1869 a registry clerk was forced to

FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 14 July 1868; G. Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 6 August 1868. HC, Report from the Select Committee on Foreign Office Re-construction, minutes, paras. 118 and 121. Simone Fari, Victorian Telegraphy before Nationalization (London, 2015), p. 95. FO 366/432, Hammond to Treasury, letters, 24 December 1869 and 10 February 1870. FO 366/435, minute by Alston, 18 December 1869. FO 366/724, minute by Alston, 18 November 1884. 11 FO 366/415, Hammond to Office of Works, letter, 15 February 1870; minute by Alston, 12 January 1871; Alston to Office of Works, letter, 25 January 1871. FO 366/419, Hammond to GPO, letter, 27 June 1870. 12 FO 366/378, Hammond to G. Hamilton, letter, 28 October 1868. 10

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jump from the cage when it crashed from top to bottom of the Office.13 Admittedly, as Alston and Edward Hertslet were aware, neither of the lifts was designed for the carriage of persons. The engineers responsible for their installation, Messrs. Easton, Amos and Anderson, explained that if it were intended to alter them for this purpose then ‘they should be put into the hands of one or two people specially appointed to work them’.14 The Office of Works was reluctant to consider the cost of conversion and Hammond threatened with dismissal anyone using the lifts for personal conveyance.15 Yet, it was also clear that this much diminished the value of the lifts to those charged with delivering books and coals. Edward Hertslet insisted that unless the library lift were made safe for the carriage of messengers as well as books it was ‘next to useless’ and ought to be ‘abolished’ (emphasis in original). And in his note to Alston describing the latest mishap with the lift he added a prescient sentence: ‘Perhaps it would be as well to keep this Letter in case it should be required before a Coroner’s Inquest!’16 All this came to the fore when five years later, on 2 December 1874, the assistant library messenger, George Coxhead’s son, Charles, died after falling forty-five feet down the library lift shaft. Exactly how the accident occurred it was impossible to say: as far as could be ascertained Charles Coxhead had gone up to one of the upper floors in search of volumes and had stumbled into the open and poorly illuminated shaft. The inquest jury of the Westminster coroner’s court recommended the provision of better lighting, the fitting of a shaft guard in the library lift room, and the appointment of someone specially to work the lift. They also urged the strict enforcement of the order prohibiting persons from riding in it.17 The Office of Works subsequently agreed to the conversion of the library lift so as to make it safe for the carriage of persons as well as books, and in December 1875 its exclusive control was placed in the hands of Thomas Rolfe, Coxhead’s successor as assistant library messenger.18 But, despite a plea from the Foreign Office that the coal lift should likewise be converted, it was left unaltered.19 There was some speculation over whether there were local water supplies sufficient to support such improvements, and the Office of Works sought to demonstrate that two men working in combination could manage the distribution of coals without any need to ride in the lift.20 Unfortunately, Farmer, a disagreeable beast of burden, was rarely capable of working in concert with his hard-of-hearing assistant. Neither seems in any case to have been deterred by notices warning them of the dangers of using the lift for their personal conveyance. They were not alone: the resident clerks’ servants as well as Mary Langcake and her old father became more or less regular passengers when FO 366/415, Alston to Office of Works, letter, 19 April 1869; Hamilton Barwell to E. Hertslet, minute, 25 June 1869; E. Hertslet to Alston, minute, 25 June 1869. 14 Ibid., Messrs. Eastons, Amos and Anderson to John Taylor, letter, 1 July 1869. 15 Ibid., G. Russell to Hammond, letter, 1 May 1869; R. Callander to Hammond, letter, 22 July 1869; minute by Hammond, 19 August 1869; George Russell to Hammond, letter, 1 September 1869. 16 Ibid., E. Hertslet to Alston, minute, 25 June 1869. 17 FO 366/416, Charles St. Clare Bedford to Alston, letter, 7 December 1874; memo. by Alston, 8 December 1874. 18 Ibid., Alston to Office of Works, letter, 13 December 1875. 19 Ibid., Tenterden to Derby, minute, 7 December 1874; Tenterden to Office of Works, letter, 18 December 1874. 20 Ibid., memo. by Alston, 3 February 1875. 13

 Adjusting to the New 119 ascending and descending to and from their apartments.21 Almost four years on the coal lift claimed its own fatality. Alston may have condemned the misuse of lifts by servants. But he recognized the necessity of Farmer and his assistant entering the coal lift to load and unload scuttles, and he was critical of the ‘scant assistance’ offered by the Office of Works when it came to operating lifts.22 Along with his colleagues, he was also far from satisfied with other features of the building. He was, for instance, astonished and disappointed by the absence of any proper system for ventilating rooms, and irritated by what he described as the ‘unwieldy and well nigh impracticable windows’ which had to be opened whenever fresh air was required. He had himself been able to persuade Scott to have a louvre pane fitted in the upper part of the window in his room.23 Others, however, had not been in a position to exercise pressure on the architect. Especially unfortunate were the forty or more compositors of the printing establishment, who, though considered vital to the workings of the Office and parliamentary government, found themselves labouring in conditions which some thought even worse than those they had known in the old building in Downing Street.24 They were thus again allocated space below ground level: this time at the bottom of a quadrangle, with a narrow passageway separating them on three sides from the rest of the Office basement. Their rooms were low-ceilinged and dependent for daylight and ventilation upon skylights in the roof. These afforded insufficient light for composing and, when open, exposed them to cold and vigorous draughts. Gas lamps had therefore to be kept burning for much of the day and these and the steam pipes which passed through the rooms created in the words of John Olding, the manager of the printing establishment, an ‘atmosphere . . . very heated & poisoned with the fumes of Gas’.25 Some relief was offered to the printers by the installation of additional windows, but the subsequent flooding of passages beneath their rooms only added to their distress.26 When in the spring of 1872 illness amongst staff threatened to delay the printing of parliamentary papers, George Buchanan, the assistant medical officer of the Local Government Board, was asked to investigate. His report found grounds for affirming ‘definite and not inconsiderable injury to health from the conditions of heat & moisture, closeness and draught’.27 That August the Office of Works agreed to implement his recommendations, which included the raising of the roof over the compositors’ rooms Ibid., memo. by Alston, 8 November 1879. Ibid. 23 FO 366/415, Alston to Hammond, minute, 28 January 1869. 24 Ibid, John Olding to Alston, minute, 5 April 1872. According to Olding, the number of compositors employed in the Foreign Office ranged between about thirty-five and sixty, depending on the progress of business during the parliamentary session. FO 366/416, statement of the number of clerks and others accommodated in the Foreign Office, enclosed in Tenterden to Office of Works, letter. 20 August 1874. 25 FO 366/415, representation by Olding, 27 January 1869, enclosed in Hammond to Office of Works, letter, 29 January 1869; Alston to Office of Works, letter, 25 November 1870. 26 The source of the flooding was difficult to diagnose because much of the plumbing was inaccessible. FO 366/415, Hammond to Office of Works, letter, 16 May 1871; Russell to Hammond, letter, 18 May 1871. 27 Ibid., memo. by Alston, 6 April 1872; report by Buchanan, 22 April 1872, enclosed in John J. Hibbert to Arthur Helps, letter, 1 May 1872. 21 22

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and its replacement with a horizontal one with moveable glass panes.28 The confined space allotted to the printers, nonetheless, remained a problem. There was simply insufficient room for them efficiently to carry out their work, and increased demands for the printing of parliamentary papers and the recurring build-up of arrears led in 1903 to an extension of their subterranean premises. An adjacent corridor and kitchens intended for the preparation of meals for state banquets were thus encroached upon to meet the requirements of Edwardian public diplomacy.29 Mary Langcake’s workforce was meanwhile upgraded and modestly expanded and, under pressure from Alston and Hammond, the housekeeper eventually abandoned her opposition to providing luncheons for the clerks. Two basement rooms were in consequence set aside for meals and a luncheon management committee was established under Alston’s chairmanship. Langcake and her staff, like other Office servants, were also re-housed in Downing Street. She, her father and a female assistant, were provided with a sitting room and three bedrooms, and five other bedrooms were set aside for the maidservants. By 1869 Langcake had under her direction eight housemaids, two scullery maids and four charwomen. The maidservants earned from £14 to £20 a year according to their standing, plus board wages, while the charwomen continued to receive 14s. a week. The total domestic service wage bill, including payments to a library cleaner, amounted to £628 4s. a year, almost a third more than the £442 8s. paid annually in Whitehall Gardens. This, Hammond subsequently explained, was primarily due to the employment of a different class of person (i.e. of housemaids in the place of charwomen), and it was only right that the housekeeper should ‘be supplied with the means of keeping properly clean the new Building on which so much money ha[d] been expended’. The new arrangements at first appeared to work well. Housemaids were allocated to the cleaning of rooms on the ground, first and second floors, and the charwomen were for the most part confined to the basement, passages, steps and stairs and the rooms of the messengers and officekeepers. Langcake may only have had one extra woman available for such work, but over the winter of 1868–9 it was accomplished to Hammond’s satisfaction.30 Office luncheons were a different matter. These Langcake considered an extra obligation from which she derived little profit and no additional remuneration. Clarendon, in his final term as foreign secretary, recognized that this was patently unfair and in July 1869 Alston suggested a solution. It had once been the custom to place bread rolls and a decanter of water, the so-called Prison Allowance, in certain rooms of the Office for consumption by the clerks. Biscuits had since been substituted for rolls, but quite when or why this practice had been introduced was uncertain. It was generally assumed that it was in consideration of the clerks having not infrequently to Ibid., Callander to Hammond, letter, 9 August 1872. FO 366/759, Thomas Sanderson to Office of Works, letter, 11 August 1903. 30 FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 24 April 1869. FO 366/435, Langcake to Alston, letter, 5 April 1872; statement showing the numbers and rates of pay of Charwomen, Maid Servants &c. employed in the Foreign Office at the present time, 24 April 1869. FO 366/393, list of servants residing in the Office, n.d., 1876. Accommodation was also provided for: an officekeeper, the porter and their wives and families; the doorkeeper, the librarian’s messenger and their wives; and the assistant doorkeeper and the lamplighter. 28 29

 Adjusting to the New 121 remain at their desks well beyond regular office hours. In any event, it cost the Office between £12 and £13 a quarter, and Alston thought the money might be better spent on improving Langcake’s pay and ensuring the continuation of ‘the present happy arrangement about Luncheons’. The biscuits, he noted, ‘were not worth fighting for’. Clarendon agreed. If the clerks were not able to obtain their luncheons within the Office walls, they must be allowed to go out in the middle of the working day, and that, he believed, would be both prejudicial to discipline and a waste of time. It was therefore settled with Treasury consent that Langcake would be offered £25 a year for superintending the service, that a cook should be engaged at £20–30 a year with board wages equivalent to a further £30, and that there should be no more free rolls or biscuits for the clerks.31 In the event, Langcake settled for the extra money, though she still resisted the recruitment of a cook and seems instead to have relied on one of the scullery maids for the preparation of meals, including dinners for the resident clerks. However, it was not so much the catering as the accommodation which was the main source of subsequent complaints. Until 1876 when a spare basement room was found, Langcake had no larder, and the kitchen was located so far from where meals were served that the maids were run off their feet and food less than hot when finally served. As Alston would later note, whatever ‘art the Cook may display in boiling the mutton chop, it is almost next to impossible to place it on table before its star has begun to wane’.32 Rather less sympathy was extended to Mary Langcake and her maids when during the next few years there were signs of a gradual deterioration in the upkeep of the Office. Hammond grew increasingly concerned over the lack of attention paid to keeping clean rooms, corridors and staircases. But it was a party hosted by Lady Granville, the wife of the foreign secretary, on 4 March 1871 that brought matters to a head. Some of the guests remarked on the ‘filthy state’ of the Office and there were complaints over the consequential damage sustained by ladies’ dresses. Hammond thought this ‘in the highest degree discreditable’ to the housekeeper, ‘tending to show that from carelessness and inattention she [did] not properly discharge her duties’. Ever ready to draw comparisons between a gentleman’s home and office, he reminded Alston: The duty of the housemaids and charwomen in the Office is quite different from that in a private family where there are drawing and bedrooms to be attended to, furniture and curtains and chairs to be looked after. It is little more than can be done by broom and duster, and soap and water; and it is the housekeeper’s duty to see that this work is properly done; and more particularly when there is a party in the Office, the Housekeeper, as such a servant in a private family would, should be throughout the day looking to the state of the rooms.

FO 366/435, Alston to Hammond, extra from letter, 23 July 1869; minute by Hammond, 24 July 1869; Arthur Otway to Treasury, letter, 4 August 1869; Hamilton to Otway, letter, 14 August 1869. Hertslet, Recollections, p. 164. 32 FO 366/416, Langcake to Alston, letter, 20 March 1876; Alston to Mitford, letter, 21 March 1876. FO 366/393, minute by Alston, 31 July 1876. FO 366/664, memo. by Alston, 15 October 1881. 31

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The housekeeper was henceforth required to go every day before noon through all the passages and rooms to satisfy herself that the maids had done their work. If this direction were not attended to then Hammond threatened to lay the matter before Granville, a move which he predicted might have serious consequences for Langcake.33 Granville had more than filth to contend with at his receptions. At a Foreign Office party late on the evening of 20 May 1871, yet another celebration in honour of the queen’s birthday, guests risked being upset by the sight of home service messenger Henry Valentine Cocking, dressed in great coat and hat and reeling unsteadily along the corridor leading to the grand staircase. Alston, who was accompanying his wife and two other ladies, reported that Cocking presented ‘in fact all the appearance of a drunken man’.34 It was far from being the first time that Cocking, who had risen from officekeeper to messenger in 1843, had been drunk on duty. In January 1870 Clarendon had found him too inebriated to be entrusted with a letter, and had threatened to fine him two months’ pay (about £40).35 On that occasion, Cocking, who had been in the Office’s employ for more than thirty-five years, had begged for mercy, and Clarendon was eventually persuaded to reduce the fine by half. ‘I have’, Cocking had emoted, ‘pleading eyes at home and they would suffer in my disgrace.’36 On Alston’s advice and following a promise from Cocking to sin no more, Granville was also ready to allow the penitent messenger one final trial. Cocking’s presence at the party had after all been almost as much of a surprise to himself as it had been a shock to Granville’s guests. He had, he admitted, previously joined colleagues in drinking the queen’s health, but then, having been called upon to secure a special train for the military band then playing at the reception, he had simply made his way to the foot of the grand staircase to inform the officer in charge of the arrangements he had made.37 Alston seemed ready to accept this explanation. He was not, he noted, aware that anything could ‘be alleged against Cocking beyond his predilection for drink’. And though that was a failing which might in the case of a messenger ‘lead to serious consequences’, it did not stand in the way of Cocking being sent to Rome with despatches in May 1873 when no foreign service messenger was available to take them.38 As for the general cleanliness of the Office, that remained a problem. Granville, who was again foreign secretary during the early 1880s, continued to worry about the overall appearance of the building, and in January 1882 Alston launched an investigation into its upkeep. From this he concluded that ‘within the limits of what Mrs Langcake [had] conceived to be her responsibility, her duties had not been neglected’. The Office rooms were on the whole kept clean, the carpets were swept, the floors were washed and the furniture was dusted. The tiles in the corridors were also regularly mopped and there were plans to have the stone portion of the flooring scoured with bath brick. FO 366/677, minute by Hammond, 10 March 1871. FO 366/496, minutes by Alston, 22 and 29 May 1871. 35 Ibid., Clarendon to Hammond, minute, 29 January 1870; minutes by Hammond and Clarendon, 29 and 30 January 1870; Cocking to Hammond, minute, 22 March 1870; minute by Hammond, 5 April 1870. 36 Ibid., Cocking to Clarendon, letter, 29 January 1870. 37 Ibid., minute by Cocking, 30 May 1871. 38 Ibid., minutes by Alston, 30 May and 9 June 1871; minute by Alston, signed off by Granville, 20 June 1871; minute by Alston, 14 May 1873. 33 34

 Adjusting to the New 123 It was perhaps not so much the servants who were at fault as the architect and some of those ornamental features which had so impressed journalists and other visitors to the building. Alston was thus horrified to find that dust was lying about ¼ inch thick on the broad ledge immediately beneath the balustrades of the grand staircase. ‘Anything more unsightly or indefensible’, he noted, ‘could not well be imagined.’ He could only surmise that Langcake considered its dusting, some of which would have been out of a housemaid’s reach, devolved upon the Office of Works, and in that case, he believed, she should have summoned its assistance. She could not, however, be held to blame for the dirt stained walls or the grime-covered exteriors of the windows. The former, Alston thought, was due to the imperfect combustion of gas and might be solved by replacing gas with electric lighting, Treasury sanction for which was only granted in November 1892. The window cleaning, likewise the responsibility of the Office of Works, could, he learnt, only be undertaken quarterly according to a rule ‘as fixed as that of the Medes and Persians’. As for the painting or cleaning of the grand staircase and the principal first-floor corridor, that was scheduled for the summer of 1882, and Alston hoped ‘that if the result be not to make us beautiful for ever, it will make us look cleaner than we have done for some time past’.39 The cleanliness to which Alston aspired seems seldom to have been achieved. Francis Bertie would in later years go out of his way to embarrass the charladies by scrawling obscenities in the filth gathered on window bottoms.40 Then, in 1909 the Treasury was persuaded to consent to the employment of two men at 23s. each a week, primarily with a view to their dusting places ‘beyond the reach of women’.41 Some of the accumulated dirt may have been attributable to smoke belching forth from poorly designed chimneys and fireplaces. The latter, though they consumed excessive quantities of coal, failed to keep warm the department’s clerical inmates.42 The Office of Works sought to remedy the problem: fireplaces were changed, blowers were attached, chimneys were contracted, cowls were fitted and openings were made to increase draughts. But the clerks continued to suffer from nauseous sulphur fumes. On 29 April 1882 Alston himself found that not only was his room filled with smoke, but that his tables and papers, amongst which were commissions for the queen’s signature, were ‘covered with a mixture of blacks & small cinders’.43 When during 1896 the seconddivision clerks of the Librarian’s Department were accommodated in the Office’s map room they protested vehemently at the conditions in which they were meant to work. The room, the librarian minuted, ‘is almost insufferable in the winter on account of the smoke which fills it if the fire is alight, or the cold which prevails in the absence

FO 366/393, minutes by Granville and Alston, 20 January 1882; and Sanderson, 23 January 1882. FO 366/713, Currie to Treasury, letter, 10 February 1892; Welby to Currie, letters, 2 March and 5 November 1892. FO 366/722, minute by H. Hervey, 13 November 1895. 40 G. P. Antrobus, King’s Messenger: Memories of a Silver Greyhound (London, 1941), p. 91. 41 TNA, T 1/10992/4874, Louis Mallet to Treasury, letter, 2 March 1909; G. Murray to C. Hardinge, letter, 17 May 1909. 42 WORK 6/307, A. Austin to G. G. Scott, letter, 8 September 1868. FO 366/415, Alston to Office of Works, letters, 29 June 1871 and 9 February 1872. 43 FO 366/420, Alston to J. Taylor, letter, 29 April 1882; Tenterden to Office of Works, letter, 17 May 1882. 39

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of a fire’.44 Others too suffered from the cold of a building whose draughty corridors were dedicated, not to comfort, but to power. As foreign secretary, Granville was much inconvenienced by the icy blasts of northerly winds and had Alston press the Office of Works for the installation of ‘double windows’.45 On Boxing Day 1896 Bertie, who had risen to the rank of assistant undersecretary, complained in Scrooge-like fashion that the heating arrangements for the passages and staircases were not in operation. Nor had they been working on Christmas Day. The stoker responsible for the Office furnaces was an employee of the Office of Works and, like his colleagues, had had the temerity to treat Christmas as a holiday. In the previous year the weather had been ‘arctic’ and ‘in consequence of the coldness of the passages’ Bertie claimed to have caught a chill. As Sir Thomas Sanderson, the then permanent undersecretary, observed, it was ‘certainly severe’ that Foreign Office staff should be expected to work ‘all through Christmas in an Arctic climate’.46 Clerical suffering was compounded by an over-extended system of pipes and radiators, which were meant to compensate for the inefficiency of the coal fires, and the reluctance of the Office of Works to meet the cost of installing a second boiler.47 Foreign Office minds were, nonetheless, also exercised by the hazard of fire itself. In a letter to the Office of Works of 9 June 1868, relating to preparations for another party which Stanley had wished to hold in the new building before its opening for official business, Hammond had stressed that it would be ‘prudent to have the cistern in the Tower filled with water, the hydrants ready for use, and such a number of firemen in attendance as may be sufficient in any accident of fire’.48 And after the Foreign Office’s return to Downing Street Hammond pressed on the Office of Works the urgency of measures to safeguard against a conflagration.49 When, however, fire did break out it had nothing to do with any of the latest mechanical installations. It occurred in one of the servants’ rooms. Although non-resident in the Office, Farmer had a kitchen which he locked overnight, and during the early hours of 1 December 1869 a spark from the fireplace appears to have set the wooden flooring alight.50 Very little damage was done on this occasion, but almost seven years later, during the evening of 25 October 1876, one of the housemaids smelt burning coming from the second room of the Turkish Department. She found the room full of smoke, with a table smouldering and a blotting book about to be consumed by flames. There was no evidence as to how the fire had started: the gaslights had been turned off and, according to Alston, there was no indication of any cigar having been lit or match struck before the close of business. However, a candle was discovered still burning in an adjoining room and FO 366/760, minute by A. Oakes, 28 May 1896. FO 366/416, Alston to Office of Works, letter, 5 January 1874. 46 FO 366/391, minute by Bertie, 26 December 1896, with note by Sanderson. Three years later Algernon Law, another of Bertie’s colleagues, complained that the Office’s cold draughts had in his case been the cause of ‘a week’s illness and a fortnight’s absence from work’. FO 366/723, Law to Dallas, minute, 9 January 1900. 47 Ibid., Sanderson to Office of Works, letter, 22 February 1901; Lord Esher to Sanderson, letter, 25 March 1901. 48 FO 366/378, Hammond to Office of Works, letter, 9 June 1868. 49 Ibid., Hammond to Austin, letter, 29 September 1868. 50 FO 366/415, Alston to Hammond, minute, 9 December 1869. 44 45

 Adjusting to the New 125 it was suspected that it had been left there by a clerk who had returned to the Office to collect papers he had left behind. That said, Thomas Batterbee, an officekeeper, was blamed for his neglect of duty and failure to check that all was in order in the division for which he was responsible.51 Batterbee probably felt unjustly criticized for not checking the rooms of the Turkish Department. After all, the lamplighter had already visited them on his evening round of duty. However, Batterbee was one of the two additional officekeepers recruited in August 1868, neither of whom in retrospect could be considered wise choices for the work. Batterbee’s co-appointee, Christian Hansen, had been found untrustworthy and unreliable, and in May 1871 he was in effect demoted and forced to exchange positions with the assistant doorkeeper, Reuben Maynard.52 During a probationary spell in that post, Hansen’s reputation did not improve. Weller doubted his probity, and came to suspect him of purloining small sums of money and possibly a parcel which mysteriously went missing. Weller’s opinion was corroborated by other office servants, and the gatekeeper at the Colonial Office, where Hansen had once been employed, denounced him as ‘one of the greatest scamps that ever lived’. Finally, in December 1871, Granville, who had hoped that Hansen’s new appointment would permit him ‘to re-establish his character’ decided on his dismissal.53 Not that his immediate successor as assistant doorkeeper proved any better. William Rossiter, who had previously been an extra messenger at the Board of Trade, was a young man with a penchant for debt, drink and gambling. Frequently absent from work and evidently unable to resist temptation, he borrowed from Weller and others, and was simply not to be trusted with what was not his own. Bertie, who handed him £5 with instructions to bring him back some change, was still awaiting his money when, three days later, it was decided that Rossiter must go.54 Threatened with dismissal, Rossiter resigned on 30 March 1874.55 He was far from being the last servant whose honesty was called into question.

Theft, negligence and security Theft of personal and public property may not have been a major problem in the Office, but it was a persistent one. Twice, in November 1869 and in January 1871, Eric Barrington, a recently appointed and not especially security-conscious junior clerk, was distressed to find that money had gone missing from his room – an envelope containing 34s. and a rouleau of 100 napoleons.56 Rather less valuable was a bottle of mustard, belonging either to Granville or his servant, which in May 1871 disappeared

FO 366/677, minute by Alston, 28 October 1876. Ibid., minute by Granville, 12 May 1871. 53 Ibid., minute by Alston, 25 November 1871; minute by Granville, 4 December 1871; Alston to Hansen, minute, 5 December 1871. 54 Ibid., minute by Granville, 23 February 1872; minutes by Alston, 5 March, 8 and 13 October 1873, and 28 and 31 March 1874. 55 Ibid., Rossiter to Alston, letter, 30 March 1874. 56 FO 366/563, minutes by Barrington, 19 November 1869 and 23 January 1871. 51 52

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from one of Mary Langcake’s cupboards.57 Then, seven years later, stories of stolen garments began to circulate. Willoughby Maycock, a clerk who was already unable to account for the loss of an embroidered handkerchief and who would later aspire to literary fame through the publication of his book Celebrated Crimes and Criminals, was particularly upset by the theft in May 1879 of a package containing a ‘good sage Coat’ which he had bought specially to wear at work.58 But still more disturbing was a report from William Cockerell of the China Department, of a ‘serious case of “abstraction”’. Over several days in May silver coins, a present from a member of the Siamese consular service, had been progressively removed from a case which had stood on the mantelpiece of Cockerell’s room. Alston responded by engaging Detective Inspector John Littlechild, who would later command the Metropolitan Police’s Special [Irish] Branch. This was probably unnecessary as the likely culprit soon became apparent when George Vincent, the resident head officekeeper, spotted the coins in the window of a curio shop on the south side of Westminster Bridge. The shop’s proprietor, after first stating that he had bought the coins on three separate occasions from a Mr Lawrence of Peckham, subsequently identified Batterbee as the vendor. Batterbee, who lived in the south London suburb of Peckham, did not in Alston’s opinion ‘enjoy a good character’. Nonetheless, both Lord Tenterden, Hammond’s successor as permanent undersecretary, and Lord Salisbury, the recently appointed foreign secretary, questioned whether the evidence against him was sufficient to secure a conviction. Instead, and partly with a view to avoiding a public scandal, they decided on dismissal. If Batterbee were to protest his innocence and demand an enquiry, then he was to be warned that Salisbury would have to consider recourse to a criminal prosecution. In the event, Batterbee, after undertaking to submit his defence to Alston in writing, left the Office never to return again.59 Alston hoped that this would be regarded as a satisfactory outcome of the affair and that it might be a ‘consolation to the Gentlemen who for many years past [had] been losing coats and waistcoats and other property which if Batterbee’s House and Person had been searched might possibly have been restored to them’.60 Enquiries by Littlechild at pawnbrokers in the Peckham area and a visit by him to Batterbee’s home failed in any case to recover more missing items.61 Batterbee may not, however, have been the only thief in government employ. In mid-August, a little more than a month after his discharge, a locked despatch box containing a small sum of money was reported missing.62 The box was used for collecting half-crown subscriptions for the maids who served luncheons, and was in the charge of the officekeepers during its quarterly perambulations between departments. This time, in order to avoid the risk of Ibid., Langcake to Alston, minute, 15 May 1871. Ibid., K. Howard to Alston, minute, 28 January 1878; minutes by Dashwood, 20 May 1878; Bergne, 7 June 1878; Staveley, 2 May 1879; and Maycock, 29 May 1879. Maycock, Celebrated Crimes and Criminals – The Great Bullion Robbery of 1855 on the South-Eastern Railway and Ten other Chilling Accounts of Cruel Poisonings, Memorable Frauds and Horrible Murders (London, 1890). 59 FO 366/563, Cockerell to Alston, minute, 22 May 1879; minutes by Alston and Tenterden, 29 May 1879; minute by Currie, initialled by Salisbury, 30 May 1879; memo. by Alston, 30 May 1879. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., Tenterden to Alston, minute, 23 June 1879, with undated note by Alston. 62 Ibid., minute by Newman, 19 August 1879. 57 58

 Adjusting to the New 127 adverse publicity, it was decided not to seek police assistance.63 Rooms were searched, presses and shelves emptied, and servants quizzed on when and where they had last seen the box or heard the rattle of its contents. None of this was to any avail and by the early autumn Alston had to admit that both box and money were unlikely ever to be recovered. Statements from the officekeepers appeared to indicate that just prior to its disappearance the box had been present in a ground-floor room and there was some speculation that workmen engaged in taking up carpets there might have been tempted to make off with it. Yet, as Tenterden admitted, this was pure conjecture and a less than convincing explanation given ‘the risk attendant on stealing an office box and the difficulty of carrying off one, unless in a basket or parcel’.64 None of the Office servants was in this instance thought guilty of theft. The officekeepers were, nevertheless, held collectively and individually to blame for the loss of a box, which like other such despatch boxes, had been entrusted to their safe keeping during its circulation around the Office. When questioned, some had seemed unable to recall handling it, and Alston felt them ‘not sufficiently alive to their responsibilities’. He worried lest the Office should no longer be able to rely on their intelligence and esprit de corps and that ‘higher sense of duty springing from a knowledge of the entire confidence reposed in them’. If this were the case and it were necessary to provide them with an elaborate set of instructions and ‘thus reduce them to mere machines’, then he acknowledged that the ‘old system’ would have had its day and that they might have to reconsider whether the high salaries paid to their servants were justified.65 As for the future security of the Office, Alston considered a number of options, including the locking of room doors outside working hours, the issue of passes to employees of the Office of Works, and the stationing of a policeman in or near the entrance hall. Alston doubted the practicality of any of these suggestions. He also viewed with some distaste the ‘forbidding’ aspect of having a policeman permanently in the hall. It would, he thought, both add to the gossips who frequented the place and encourage idleness amongst the doorkeepers who would delegate their duties to him. That said, he believed ‘that we should trust for the prevention of robberies to the exercise of due precaution on the part of the Servants of the Office’.66 The trouble was that the seven officekeepers, two doorkeepers and eight housemaids were, given their other duties, insufficient to maintain constant and careful watch over an expansive building in whose design security had not been a major consideration. Indeed, Alston rather regretted that in this respect the Foreign Office’s internal arrangements contrasted most disadvantageously with those of the adjoining India Office, ‘where they had an architect [Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt] who was not above paying attention to such matters’.67 The building’s large state rooms were intended for the hosting of diplomatic and other government receptions, or what Tenterden dubbed 65 66 67 63 64

Ibid., memo. by Tenterden, 22 November 1879. Ibid., memo. by Tenterden, 26 November 1879. Ibid., memo. by Alston, 29 September 1879. Ibid., memo. by Alston, 7 November 1879. Ibid. Digby Wyatt worked in conjunction with Scott on the design of the India Office and was responsible for its interiors. G. Gilbert Scott, Personal and Professional Recollections (London, 1879), p. 278.

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‘partygiving’, and preparations for such occasions almost inevitably involved the regular presence in the Office of persons employed by the Office of Works and its contractors. There was little prospect of reducing their numbers but, with a view to ensuring their ‘complete supervision’, certain structural alterations were agreed. A door into a small staircase leading to the basement and upper floors was made to open into the entrance hall, an officekeeper’s box was established at the top of the stairs on the first floor, and basement doors used by the servants were made more secure. That the oversight of visitors had previously been less than rigorous was indicated in a memorandum by Tenterden of 22 December 1879 detailing these and new regulations. ‘Everyone who is not known’, he observed, ‘will be stopped and shown by an Office Keeper to the waiting room or to the Department where he may have business, and strangers will thus no longer be able to wander about the passages unnoticed.’ Other measures aimed at ensuring ‘perfect security’ outside Office hours included instructions to clerks to lock despatch boxes in presses at the end of business, and orders to officekeepers to collect any boxes that might have been left out by mistake so that they could be locked in a safe place until once more required by departments.68 Salisbury meanwhile issued a stern reminder to the officekeepers of their responsibilities regarding the safety of boxes in circulation. That a duty might be troublesome was, he insisted, ‘no reason for shirking its performance’, and displays of ‘accuracy and intelligence’ were ‘essential conditions to their retaining the confidence of their Superiors’.69 As Alston pointed out, allowance had to be made for many of the officekeepers being new to their duties.70 Vincent, the longest-serving of their number, had been an officekeeper for fifteen years and head officekeeper since George Coxhead’s death in 1875. But Frank Hamlyn, John Middleton and Alfred Eades, the three officekeepers who were stationed on the ground floor and who were castigated for their inability even to remember their handling or seeing the missing box, had been in post respectively for four years, three years, and four months. They had not been issued with specific instructions relating to their several responsibilities and had been expected to learn these while on the job. Office servants seem in any case to have had only an imprecise understanding of existing regulations. This had become apparent almost five years before when in January 1875 Frederick Allen, Hansen’s successor as assistant doorkeeper, complained to Alston that George Coxhead, the then head officekeeper, had refused to share with him a £1 gratuity left by a visiting Japanese diplomat. Coxhead, whom Alston tackled on the subject, claimed that he was wholly unaware of Palmerston’s order of 1836 forbidding the receipt of presents and admitted that tips were occasionally offered to, and divided amongst, staff. ‘The vitality of these abuses is extraordinary’, noted the then foreign secretary, the 15th Earl of Derby (formerly Lord Stanley).71 Yet, it was also a fair indicator of a relaxed and reactive style of servant management which allowed such practices to persist.

70 71 68 69

Ibid., memos. by Tenterden, 26 November, 22 and 23 December 1879., Ibid., memo. initialled by Salisbury, 6 December 1879. Ibid., memo. by Alston, 7 November 1879. FO 366/677, memo. by Alston, 14 January 1875, with note by Derby, n.d.

 Adjusting to the New 129 That too might be said of the Office’s handling of Charles Sly, who in November 1879 was recruited to fill the vacancy left by Batterbee. The son of Jane Sly, who was for many year head nurse in the royal household, he owed his appointment as seventh officekeeper in part to the backing of the Prince of Wales. Thereafter, complaints mounted over his carelessness and inattention to duty, and in January 1882 his future in the Office was called into question when the chief clerk learnt that he had been brought to court in Richmond, Surrey, accused of stealing Brussels sprouts from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Sly, who lived with his old and ailing mother in a grace-andfavour cottage in Kew, claimed that he had gone out on Christmas Day morning with the object of finding a spray of holly for decoration and that, having spotted sprouts growing in the director’s kitchen garden, he had ‘thoughtlessly’ stooped and picked some. Caught in the act by a policeman, he was taken first to the gardens’ curator, and then summoned to appear before magistrates on 11 January. The latter accepted that his was not a deliberate felony, and he was fined 1s. for having plucked twentynine sprouts with an estimated value of 3d.72 Edward Hertslet, himself a resident of Richmond, first drew Alston’s attention to the case. Both men were in this instance sympathetic towards Sly. He, for his part, was naturally fearful of losing his position and, after interviewing him on the 12th, Alston confessed that never in his life had he seen ‘a poor fellow more upset’. In these circumstances the chief clerk was ready to condone what he assumed to be a thoughtless act, and let Sly off with the admonition that he trusted ‘he had received a lesson which would not be lost upon him and that he would endeavour by his future good conduct to merit the confidence of his Superiors’. However, only nine days later Alston was informed by Algernon Mitford of the Office of Works that Sly was a rather more dubious character than had first appeared. Sir Joseph Hooker, the director of the Botanical Gardens, suspected the errant officekeeper of other thefts and urged the lord chamberlain to have the Slys evicted from their home. And while Alston was not inclined to pursue the matter further, he came quickly to regret his earlier clemency. If Sly were ‘given to systematic pilfering’, then, he observed, he was ‘not a fit man to be retained in this office’.73 Other residents of Kew evidently thought Sly the victim of Hooker’s persecution, and the death of Sly’s mother a fortnight after his court appearance may have told in his favour.74 But there was no improvement in his approach to work. His habit of communicating with colleagues on upper floors of the Office by hollering up the lift shaft, rather than using the whistle and speaking-tube provided, was almost certainly to blame for the delayed delivery of an urgent message in November 1882; and in June of the following year his neglect of duty resulted in the late arrival of equally pressing mail. As Alston observed after taking Sly to task, he was ‘in truth a very poor creature and a bad specimen of an office keeper’.75 He was lazy, forgetful and so often in trouble FO 366/764, Sly to Granville, letter, 25 January 1882. Ibid., memo. by Alston, 12 January 1882; Mitford to Alston, letter, 20 January 1882; Alston to Sanderson, minute, 21 January 1882. 74 Ibid., Vicar and Churchwardens, Kew, to Granville, n.d., January 1882; Alston to Granville, minute, 30 January 1882. 75 FO 366/678, minutes by Alston, 9 and 10 May 1882; minutes by Henry Austin Lee and Alston, 29 November 1882; minutes by Lee and Alston, 11 June 1883. 72 73

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that in April 1888 he was put on six months’ probation in the hope that he would mend his ways. During this time there were no further complaints over his conduct, but it was evident that he simply could not be trusted to fulfil his duties.76 It is also likely that he was subject to bullying by associates who took advantage of his poor standing in the Office, and in the mid-1890s it became apparent that the unfortunate Sly was on the verge of a mental breakdown.77 So worried was Sanderson, the then permanent undersecretary, by Sly’s state of mind that in September 1894 he had him exiled to the officekeeper’s box on the first floor, and his colleagues were cautioned ‘not to be rough or rude to him, as the mistakes he [made], though provoking, [were] not intentional’.78 Eighteen months later Sly began to mix fact and fantasy in long, rambling and largely incomprehensible, letters to Sanderson and Sir George Dallas, the new chief clerk.79 ‘I am afraid’, Sanderson observed, ‘Sly has gone clear off his head.’80 Arrangements were therefore made in May 1896 for Sly to see William Wadham, the dean of the medical school at St George’s Hospital and the Foreign Office’s examining physician. It was evidently expected that even if Wadham did not certify Sly ‘positively insane’, his findings would at least permit the Office to dismiss him with a pension. The consultation seemed to go to plan and so upset was Sly that towards the end of his medical examination the police had to be called to remove him from Wadham’s presence. Afterwards Sly refused to leave the Office and to the annoyance of other officekeepers it was not until the early hours of the morning that he was persuaded to return home.81 Yet, Wadham did no more than recommend that Sly be given sick leave, and while, after two months’ absence, he appears to have regained such stamina as he once had, he proved as troublesome as ever.82 Within months of his return to work he was accused of soliciting charitable donations from people visiting the Office on business. Sly claimed that as a result of his illness he was financially hard pressed and that he had only sought contributions from the gentlemen of the Office. Sanderson thought such begging must lead to his dismissal. Sly, nonetheless, remained an officekeeper and persisted in his incompetence until January 1900 when Donald Wood, Wadham’s successor as examining physician, certified him as ‘permanently unfit for the duties of his office’. Sly was thus retired and with Treasury approval, following two decades of misconduct and negligence, he was rewarded with a pension of £42 15s. 9d. a year.83 Many as were Sly’s failings they had little bearing on the general security of the Office. The same could not be said of the night watchmen whom the Office of Works stationed at the gates of the government’s new office buildings. A drunken fracas in Downing Street during the early hours of Christmas Day 1873 hardly inspired confidence in the FO 366/764, J. Fergusson to Alston, minute, 26 March 1888; Alston to Fergusson, minute, 28 March 1888; minute by Pauncefote, 28 March 1888; Alston to Sly, minute, 2 April 1888; minutes by Alston and Pauncefote, 4 October 1888. 77 Ibid., Sly to Sanderson, letter, 13 September 1894. 78 Ibid., minutes by Sanderson, 14 September 1894. 79 Ibid., Sly to Dallas, letter, 9 January 1896. 80 Ibid., minute by Sanderson, 15 May 1896. 81 Ibid., Dallas to Sanderson, minute, 21 May 1896. 82 Ibid., minute by Dallas, 23 May 1896; Spring Rice (Treasury) to Sanderson, letter, 26 May 1896. 83 Ibid. Sanderson and Dallas, 19 February 1897; Sly to Dallas, minute, 19 February 1897. FO 366/760, unsigned minute, 27 January 1900. 76

 Adjusting to the New 131 minds of senior officials. The disturbance, as reported by a policeman, involved a guard on sentry duty, two watchmen, a bottle of brandy and an uncertain number of servants from No. 10, including a housemaid later described as a ‘female servant (thought to be Irish) short and rather stout’. In truth, the incident probably amounted to little more than high-spirited and inebriated festive jesting, but unfortunately it ended with the soldier wounding a night watchman while thrusting his bayonet through the Foreign Office gates.84 A flurry of interdepartmental correspondence followed the receipt of the constable’s report. Alston and William Brampton Gurdon, the prime minister’s private secretary, undertook an investigation; the sentry was court-martialled; and the maidservant was given a month’s notice of her dismissal.85 New measures aimed specifically at safeguarding the Foreign Office had, however, to await the revival of Irish terrorism during the following decade. On the night of 15 March 1883 a Fenian dynamite attack on the Local Government Board office, situated to the east of what is now the FCO’s main entrance, shattered windows and smashed stone copings and balustrades.86 In consequence, it was decided to place officekeepers at fixed stations in the corridors during office hours, and in June 1884, in the wake of the bombing of the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, Granville agreed to the closure of the door under the archway leading from Downing Street to the main quadrangle so as not to facilitate the endeavours of ‘persons desirous of wrecking the F.O.’87 Subsequent explosions in or near public buildings, including the House of Commons and Westminster Hall, led the Metropolitan Police to recommend the temporary positioning of two plain clothes policemen at the entrances to the Foreign Office.88 From 30 January 1885 these were stationed in the entrance hall and at the external door to the Office’s printing department. But acceptance of police advice and assistance came at a time when there was already mounting concern within the Office over individuals still gaining free access to the building and found wandering through its corridors unrecognized and unchallenged. Those thus discovered were in most instances engaged in quite legitimate activities, but fears were expressed that they might easily have been dynamiters or thieves. Francis Hyde Villiers, Clarendon’s son who, having joined the Office in 1870, had since been appointed private secretary to the permanent undersecretary, was particularly distressed at the laxity of the doorkeeper and his assistant. He had heard tell that both had been found asleep in the hall, and as far he could see they lolled and loitered about most of the day, having little else to FO 366/563, report by PC A. Honey, 25 December 1873; W. C. Harris to Tenterden, letter, 26 December 1873; statement by W. Bateman, 7 January 1874. 85 Ibid., Tenterden to Gurdon, Police Commissioner, Office of Works and Horse Guards, 27 December 1873; Lingen to Tenterden, letter, 29 December 1873; minute by Tenterden, 30 December 1873; Gurdon to Tenterden, letter, 3 January 1874. 86 R. Shepherd, Westminster: A Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Present (London, 2012), pp. 289–90. J. McKenna, The Irish-American Dynamite Campaign: A History, 1881-1896 (Jefferson, NC, 2012), pp. 30–3. 87 FO 366/724, minutes by Alston and Granville, 5 and 7 June 1884; Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 15 January 1885. 88 R. Wilson and I. Adams, Special Branch: A History: 1883-2006 (London, 2015), pp. 23–7. FO 366/393, minute by Alston, 29 January 1885. 84

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do.89 Such criticism took no account of the long hours during which the doorkeepers were on duty or the conditions under which they kept watch. Until the spring of 1883, when improved basement accommodation was found, Frederick Allen, the assistant doorkeeper, had had to spend his night shifts in a ground-floor room whose only ventilation came, in Alston’s words, from air ‘saturated by the smell of two water closets and two very badly constructed urinals’.90 Nevertheless, in February 1885 new regulations, somewhat tighter than those of 1879, were introduced governing entry to the Office. The doorkeepers were still required to respond to the bells of callers outside of office hours, but the main door was not to be thrown open until the start of business at 12.00 noon and was to be closed again at 7.00 pm. One or other of the doorkeepers was to be stationed permanently in a glass box at the entrance with full view of the main corridor, and no one unknown to a doorkeeper was to be allowed to proceed unaccompanied beyond the waiting room. Henceforth the officekeepers were to escort strangers and in no circumstances ‘were they to be left to find their own way unattended’. All workmen entering the building were to give an account of the job upon which they had come, and officekeepers were to see that they went straight to that job and nowhere else.91

Divisions of labour The new regulations went further than previous ones in clarifying the respective roles of door- and office-keepers. Two years earlier, Granville had also decided that, with a view to maintaining their authority, the doorkeepers should wear distinctive badges and chains of office.92 For his part, Alston was set upon the creation of a more flexible servant workforce, albeit within a defined hierarchical structure. There had in one sense always been a fair degree of mobility of labour. The more junior of the officekeepers seem, for instance, to have viewed appointment as a home service messenger as promotion and several secured transfers to the corps. The status of the head office porter was less certain. The post carried with it an automatic entitlement to residence, coals and candles, and, until John Catchpole’s resignation in December 1873, a salary of £230 a year, £30 more than that paid to the head officekeeper. He had once been, Alston later recalled, ‘the only Man Servant with any semblance of authority, an authority which the others were not always ready to acknowledge’. That said, John Catchpole’s son, George, having progressed from Passport Office messenger to assistant doorkeeper, and then from officekeeper to home service messenger, was a ready successor to his father.93 Disputes amongst officekeepers and between different Ibid., Maycock to Alston, minute, 4 January 1885; Alston to Pauncefote, minute, 29 January 1885; minute by Austin Lee, 29 January 1885; minute by Villiers, 29 January 1885. 90 Ibid., minutes by Alston, 18 January 1881 and 28 April 1883. 91 Ibid., directions to office-keepers and doorkeepers, 4 and 7 February 1885. 92 FO 366/678, Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 14 April 1883; L. Courtney to Pauncefote, letter, 25 April 1883. 93 FO 366/677, minute by Tenterden, 29 December 1873. FO 366/496, memo. by Alston, 29 April 1879. 89

 Adjusting to the New 133 classes of servants over who was responsible for what and who could give instructions to whom were, however, a more or less regular occurrence and had long preceded the construction of the new Foreign Office building. Technological change, more particularly the use of electric telegraphy, had necessitated a redistribution of duties. In March 1854, John Catchpole had been overwhelmed by the arrival late at night and early in the morning of ‘telegraphic Despatches’, one result of which was that he had had to chase about town in search of someone to decipher them. Yet, in that instance the only remedy of which Addington could conceive was that of extending the home service messengers’ hours of attendance.94 A more integrated domestic workforce might have been achieved had the Foreign Office not so staunchly resisted previous Treasury proposals for reform of the home service messengers. These resurfaced when in the autumn of 1858 Malmesbury announced his shake-up of messenger pay. From January 1859 current home service messengers were to receive a fixed salary of £250 per annum in lieu of all other emoluments, their actual travelling expenses, and 5s. for every night they spent away from home. Future appointees to the service would be paid only £200 per annum.95 Given that annual home service messenger emoluments could by then amount to £300, this was a substantial reduction in their income. But the Treasury wanted to go further and pressed instead for the creation of two classes of home service messengers: one with a starting salary of £100 per annum rising progressively to £125, and another with a salary of £125 rising to £150. Of equal significance, however, was the Treasury’s view that unoccupied home service messengers should be engaged in essentially domestic work. A Treasury minute of 16 December 1858 thus made the case for a more effective use of labour in each of the departments concerned. With good reason it contended: A waste of Labor [sic] must take place where Messengers are unoccupied except when they are required for out-of-door work, and the easy work indoors can best be done by the older men while the younger are chiefly employed upon the harder work outside . . . [and] all newly appointed Messengers might be appointed on the understanding that they would be available for any duty that might be required, either in or out of doors.96

Hammond was defiant. Both he and Malmesbury claimed that no analogy could be drawn between the duties of the Office’s home service messengers and those of other departments. In a private letter to Disraeli, at that time chancellor of the exchequer, Malmesbury insisted that they deserved more because of their workload and ‘the character required from the importance of these messengers’ burden’.97 Nevertheless, too rigid a division of labour amongst the Office’s subordinate staff meant that for some FO 366/496, Murray to Addington, minute, 29 March 1854; Addington to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 19 March 1854; minute by Addington, 31 March 1854. 95 Ibid., memo. by Malmesbury, 10 November 1858; Hammond to G. Hamilton, letter, 17 November 1858, and enclosed memo., 16 November 1858. 96 Ibid., Treasury minute, 16 December 1858. 97 HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/54, Malmesbury to Disraeli, letter, 19 December 1858. FO 366/496, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 31 December 1858. 94

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tasks extra assistance was not readily available even when messengers and domestic servants were otherwise unoccupied. Alston was made well aware of this when on 6 June 1867, barely six months after his appointment as chief clerk, he had to enquire into why John Bidwell Jr., the senior clerk overseeing the German Department, had on the previous day been unable to secure help from anyone in summoning a cab. Bidwell, who had been left lame by a recent paralytic stroke, had first given his instructions to an officekeeper, the former assistant doorkeeper Charles Dalbertanson. Unfortunately, Dalbertanson was unable to find either John Catchpole or his assistant, Thomas Mills, both being engaged elsewhere. The same seems to have been true of Tibbetts, a casual labourer who, though in the employ of Farmer, the coal porter, could usually be relied on for calling cabs. The request was therefore passed on to the three home service messengers then present in Whitehall Gardens. They refused to act. The exact circumstances appear not to have been explained to them, and had they been, Alston thought it unlikely that one of this ‘civil and well behaved’ body of men would not have gone in search of a cab. Yet, they stood firm on a matter of principle. Their duty was to attend on the secretaries of state and the undersecretaries, not the clerks of the establishment and, Alston subsequently reminded Hammond, in truth apart from the difference of social position arising from the circumstances that the Foreign Service Messengers are recruited from the Upper Classes, whereas the Home Service Messengers are generally taken from the better Class of Servants, there is no distinction in point of privilege that I am aware of between them, and the one is as much entitled to stand upon his rights, whatever they be, as the other.

It may not have been acceptable that Bidwell should have been left to find his own cab. However, as Alston pointed out, the responsibilities of Catchpole and Mills were ‘so multifarious’ that they could not be counted upon at a moment’s notice. Indeed, it seemed odd by any standard that the Office had become so dependent on an ‘outsider’, in this instance Tibbetts, who earned his living by ‘taking messages, calling cabs and the like’.98 Tibbetts, despite being ‘hopelessly deaf ’, was eventually taken on the Office pay roll at the cost of 14s. a week. Yet, he was to prove vital to clerical comfort when in the spring of 1879 Farmer was laid up with sciatica and the latter’s entire workload, including the distribution of coal, had to be discharged by Tibbetts with the ‘assistance of a boy out of the street’. And when Tibbetts was subsequently incapacitated, the Office had to rely on a man lent by the Office of Works. It was, however, the untimely death of George Catchpole in April 1879 that led Alston to propose a thorough reform of the structure of a servant establishment which, apart from the housekeeper and her charges, had remained unchanged for at least forty years. In a wide-ranging review, misdated 29 April, Alston pointed out that each servant ‘division’ remained independent of the other acknowledging no common head, unless it be the chief clerk himself. ‘Each’, he Ibid., memos. by Alston, Bidwell and Dalbertanson, 6 June 1867. Bodleian Library, Clarendon Papers, Clar. Dep. c.99, Robert Lowe to Clarendon, letter, 27 April 1870.

98

 Adjusting to the New 135 observed, ‘having his special duties and being careful not to entrench upon nor to be very willing to perform the duties of the other, there has not only at times been considerable friction, but each individual division being very weak, it has at times been a matter of considerable difficulty to get the duties performed.’ Meanwhile, the home service messengers were as servants of the queen and her ministers not required to act on behalf of officials below the level of undersecretaries, even when their work was of an equally confidential and important nature. The boxes containing despatches and papers upon which clerks wished to work outside Office hours had thus to be conveyed to and from their homes by the porter and his assistant, or whoever they might employ for the purpose. In one instance, when neither Catchpole nor Mills had been available, the lamplighter had had to act as courier, and since Catchpole had fallen ill Mills had, in Alston’s words, ‘been nearly worked off his legs’.99 Demands on the head porter’s time and energy had in other respects diminished: he was no longer responsible for distributing the London Gazette and the summoning of Cabinet meetings; and by the 1870s he was rarely called upon either to handle letters and parcels sent through the Office for foreign legations in London or, as in the past, to collect secret service bills from the City. He was still liable to be called out of bed at night to deal with telegrams, and on Monday mornings and on days when the Constantinople messenger arrived, he was employed for one to two hours in distributing the contents of bags. But from 10.00 am, when the officekeepers came on duty, he and his assistant had, according to Alston, ‘nothing much to do . . . beyond collecting two or three Clerks’ Boxes, delivering a few stray parcels, a journey now and then to the City after a Bill, calling a Cab or hunting up a Foreign Service Messenger’. By contrast, the duties of the home service messengers had had ‘a tendency to increase, not merely by fits and starts as in consequence of the last War, but in a more steady and constant ratio’. The Foreign Office’s business had grown sixfold since 1824, when its home service messenger establishment had been set at eight, and in recent years the messengers had had to cope with the constant circulation of telegrams and the occasional delivery of communications to newspapers. And while their remuneration had declined, they now had, in addition to the undersecretaries, two assistant undersecretaries to serve.100 With a view to rationalizing and consolidating the servant workforce, Alston therefore recommended that in future there should be only one Office porter, and that two extra home service messengers, one of whom would be Mills, should be appointed on the understanding that as a body they would be responsible for all the messenger duties which had formerly belonged to the porters. He thought the new porter should be offered a salary of £150 per annum, rather than the present £200, and that the new ‘junior messengers’ should likewise be satisfied with £150 per annum each. The home service messengers and the porter would then, along with the other domestic servants, be placed under the authority of George Vincent who, as head officekeeper, might be offered an additional £20 a year for his extra responsibilities. Alston in the meantime was looking forward to the day when Farmer could be pensioned off and the duties assigned to him and Tibbetts be provided in a more satisfactory way. He hoped that FO 366/496, memo. by Alston, 29 April 1879. FO 366/416, memo. by Alston, 20 October 1879. Ibid.

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they might eventually be replaced by ‘a couple of intelligent working men of the Class from which the Railway Porters are selected’. Then, he thought, the Office might be ‘at an end of our difficulties in getting the coal scuttles filled and the lamps cleaned and we might even hope that these men might be available to call a Cab whenever the office Porter was otherwise employed’.101 Alston’s proposals were not dissimilar in their scope and objective to those envisaged by the Treasury in 1858 for a reform of the home messenger service. Tenterden, nonetheless, thought them ‘an excellent scheme’. His only reservation concerned the role foreseen for the head officekeeper. The home service messengers travelled far and wide across the country, and Tenterden doubted whether it was in principle politic ‘to impose authority where there could be no supervision’. Some of the messengers were senior in years to Vincent and two of them earned higher salaries. Tenterden was in any case wholly opposed to imposing ‘any work in the Office’ upon them.102 Alston responded by explaining that this was not his intention. In the past the head officekeeper had been responsible for conveying to the messengers their instructions and checking on their journeys and accounts, and he simply wanted to restore to Vincent the authority his predecessors had exercised. He also added, and here he revealed his primary purpose, that the effect of the proposed reorganization would be to ‘break up . . . that feeling of exclusiveness which ha[d] at times rendered it so difficult to say what was and what was not a messenger’s duty’.103 In all this Tenterden was ready to concur, as also was the foreign secretary, Salisbury, and on 13 May 1879 a letter outlining the proposals was duly sent to the Treasury.104 A vacancy amongst the officekeepers seemed meanwhile to make the appointment of a successor to George Catchpole unnecessary. The officekeeper’s position was filled on the understanding that in return for the offer of rooms in the Office and a special allowance of £20 the new appointee, Charles Rose, would take on the duties of night porter. As Tenterden put it in a subsequent letter to the Treasury, by this arrangement Salisbury could dispense altogether with the services of the office porters as a class and appoint two junior messengers ‘without increasing the Estimate . . . as the cost of the messengerships with the allowance to the Office Keeper for doing the Night Porter’s duty [would] exactly balance that of the two Office Porters’.105 All this may have made administrative and budgetary sense, but Alston’s scheme was less than popular with the messengers themselves. They evidently disliked the dilution of their privileged status as Queen’s Messengers, and questioned the need for any increase in their number. As for the Treasury, it reverted to its former stance, and made its approval of the new arrangements conditional upon the Office agreeing that the salaries of all future appointees to its home messenger service should be limited

Ibid. Ibid., Tenterden to Alston, letter, 27 April 1879. Emphasis in original. 103 Ibid., Alston to Tenterden, letter, 28 April 1879. 104 Ibid., Alston to Tenterden, letter, 30 April 1879; Tenterden to Salisbury, minute, 30 April 1879. TNA, T 1/16324, Salisbury to Treasury, letter, 13 May 1879. 105 Ibid., Tenterden to Lingen, letter, 24 June 1879. 101 102

 Adjusting to the New 137 to £150 per annum.106 Alston was reluctant to proceed on this basis, and in October set upon initiating a partial reform: Mills was to continue with his former duties, but with the title of assistant messenger and a salary rise of £30 a year; the appointment of a second assistant messenger was deferred; and the other home service messengers were informed that they would henceforward be considered available for all outside duties, including the conveyance of the official boxes of clerks to and from their private residences.107 In the meantime Alston sought a compromise with the Treasury, proposing that only the four most senior messengers should have a salary of £200, and placing the other four on £150, the maximum earned by messengers in other government departments. When the Treasury stood firm, he resorted to Hammond’s argument that in practice Foreign Office messengers were harder worked than those in the Home and Colonial Offices and that, unlike the latter, they could still be called upon to travel overseas. Such journeys, Alston noted, involved much night work ‘and knocked their clothes to pieces’.108 At Salisbury’s behest, Tenterden also appealed directly to the chancellor of the exchequer. ‘It seems’, he wrote, ‘a tradition that Foreign Secretaries live out of town . . . and I am always sending boxes of telegrams to them at all hours, frequently late into the night.’109 Yet, valid though these arguments may have been, Home Office messengers were, like those on the Foreign Office, supposedly on duty for twelve hours a day, and the Colonial Office was about to abolish the distinction between its messengers and its other domestic servants.110 No wonder then that the Treasury maintained its objections to Foreign Office exceptionalism. Only in April 1880, following the death of two home service messengers and the prospective appointment of a successor to one of the positions on a salary of £200, was it ready to accept arrangements on the lines foreseen by Alston.111 Death in the Office also allowed Alston to press for another change in the servant establishment. Beset again by illness, in the autumn of 1879 Farmer employed a friend by the name of Roth to carry out his coaling duties. Sadly, on 16 October Roth met with a fatal accident while riding in the coal lift. A mechanical failure meant that he was unable to halt the lift’s descent, and on his attempting to jump out as it passed the first floor he became jammed between the landing and the roof of the lift box.112 A subsequent inquest returned a verdict of accidental death. But Farmer had taken on Roth without prior authorization, and his protestations that he had warned Roth against riding in the lift seem not to have been wholly believed. Farmer was in any case in his mid-sixties, having served twenty-seven years as coal porter, and he had in Alston’s words ‘been much tried of late’: he was ailing mentally as well as physically, his wife having committed suicide by jumping from a window and impaling herself on the FO 366/496, minutes by Alston and Tenterden, 7 August 1879. All of this was confirmed in instructions issued by Salisbury. FO 366/678, minute by Salisbury, 8 August 1879. 107 FO 366/496, minute by Alston for Vincent, 7 August 1879. 108 Ibid., minutes by Alston, 15 and 23 October 1879. 109 Ibid., Tenterden to Northcote, letter, 27 October 1879. 110 Ibid., minute by Alston, 23 October 1879. 111 Ibid., Alston to Currie, letter enclosing memo., 21 February 1880. FO 366/724, Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 15 January 1885. 112 FO 366/416, memo. by Alston, 16 October 1879, and undated statement by Farmer; James Monteith to John Taylor, letter, 22 October 1879, enclosed in Mitford to Tenterden, letter, 3 November 1879. 106

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railings beneath. In the circumstances, Alston thought it best to take the opportunity to retire Farmer, placing his successor in subordination to Rose, while for the moment retaining Tibbetts’s services.113 Farmer had originally been recruited from the class of ‘indoor servant’, and Alston thought the position might be better filled by a man whose lamp-lighting duties could be reduced, and who would accept less than the current rate of £1 16s. a week in pay and ‘not consider it a degradation to be clothed in corduroy’.114 But Tenterden was reluctant to deal with the case. ‘Who’, he asked, ‘is to light the lamps in future?’115 In consequence, another year passed before Farmer finally left the Office, and then in dispute with the Treasury over the basis for calculating his pension. He died in June 1881.116 The Treasury gave a warmer welcome to another of Alston’s initiatives: the further enhancement of the head officekeeper’s authority through the amalgamation of his position with that of the housekeeper following Mary Langcake’s retirement in December 1881. Alston had for several years had this in mind. In a memorandum of February 1878, relating to the implementation of draft fire regulations, he had argued that the resident head officekeeper should have undisputed sway over every other servant. ‘I myself ’, he noted, ‘should be very glad if he had that authority and if the antiquated institution of a female Housekeeper were swept away.’117 Other government departments had already effected similar mergers, and by 1881 Vincent appeared ready to assume the extra responsibilities if his wife were amenable to performing some of the everyday duties of housekeeping. Initially, her only condition was that a cook must first be appointed if she were expected to provide meals. ‘Mrs Vincent’, her husband dutifully observed, ‘thinks that the duties of the Office apart from the Kitchen would require all her time to carry on the duties satisfactorily to the Office.’118 The couple were, nonetheless, persuaded to set aside their reservations. The kitchen maid who currently did most of the cooking was prepared to stay on, and Vincent was assured that the demands of the resident clerks for dinners would not be excessive. Alston was thus able with Treasury approval to cut the servant budget by £50 a year. In addition to his head officekeeper’s pay of £200 a year, Vincent was to receive half of Langcake’s salary of £100, plus the £25 the housekeeper had previously been paid as purveyor of luncheons. These changes also opened up the prospect of more convenient catering arrangements. Alston speculated that the basement accommodation vacated by Langcake could lead to the serving of luncheons in a room closer to the kitchen. It might, he thought, even be possible to knock through one of the walls to afford easier access to the kitchen, and he suggested that the by then defunct luncheon management committee be revived with those who actually eat in the Office participating in its deliberations.119

Ibid., memos. by Alston, 20 and 22 October, and 8 November 1879. LD, Corresp., vol. 4, memo. by Alston, 15 October 1880. 115 FO 366/416., minute by Tenterden, 21 October 1879; note by Alston, 1 November 1879. 116 FO 366/678, anonymous note recording Treasury letter of 16 October 1880 and Farmer’s death on 15 June 1881. 117 FO 366/416, memo. by Alston, 9 February 1878. 118 FO 366/678, Vincent to Alston, letter, 4 August 1881. 119 FO 366/664, memo. by Alston, 15 October 1881; Tenterden to Treasury, letter, 22 October 1881; Lingen to Tenterden, letter, 8 December 1881. 113 114

 Adjusting to the New 139 Mary Langcake was the Victorian Foreign Office’s last ‘necessary woman’. But not all Alston’s reforms were to prove so long-lasting. Measures introduced in the wake of the Fenian outrages included the stationing of officekeepers at fixed points in the building, and in this they were assisted by one of the home service messengers. It was therefore decided in January 1885 that on the impending retirement of one of the senior messengers an officekeeper would be recruited in his stead. The new appointee was offered £100 a year and, as the retiring messenger had a salary of £250, this meant cutting servant costs by £150 a year. The resulting eight officekeepers were then divided into three classes, with salaries rising from £100 to £250 and with promotion dependent on ‘good conduct and the exhibition of intelligence’. Overall, the Office hoped thereby to achieve an annual saving of £450 when compared with its servant budget for 1879–80.120 The Treasury found no cause for resisting these Foreign Officeinitiated changes to pay and recruitment. Nor had it any reason to object to the Office’s decision that home service messengers would henceforth only be able to claim the cost of first-class rail travel on journeys exceeding 150 miles. Messengers were also required to travel by London’s expanding underground railway network in all cases when possible; and ministers and officials were encouraged to rely more upon the Royal Mail for correspondence.121 Welcome though such savings may have been to the Treasury, they did not entirely satisfy its quest for greater economy. Nor did they inevitably work to the satisfaction of the Foreign Office, especially when it came to retaining valued domestic staff. Senior officials were particularly concerned lest the third officekeeper, the well-regarded John Middleton, be tempted to seek an alternative and better paid position. He might, Alston suggested in a memorandum of November 1886, apply for appointment as a home service messenger whenever a vacancy occurred, leaving the Office ‘with but a very sorry lot for indoor service’ and without an eligible successor to Vincent and his immediate subordinate, Charles Rose. With this in view, Alston recommended that advantage be taken of economies arising from the prospective retirement and nonreplacement of both Mills and one of the foreign service messengers, and the Treasury’s permission sought for the raising of Middleton’s salary by £25 a year.122 But not until 20 December 1887, by which time Salisbury was both prime minister and foreign secretary, did the Treasury feel obliged to defer to the Office’s request. Even then, Sir Reginald Welby, the Treasury’s permanent secretary, was at pains to point out that he felt that the average charges of messengers, amongst whom he included officekeepers, in both his department and the Foreign Office was ‘much in excess of the ordinary rates of remuneration payable to the class to which Messengers belong[ed]’. The average pay of those beneath the head officekeeper should, Welby thought, not exceed £100 a year. There was, he concluded, ‘little doubt that Army and Navy Pensioners of

FO 366/724, Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 15 January 1885; Alston to Treasury, letter, 30 November 1886. 121 FO 366/496, memo. by Cecil Hertslet, 30 April 1888. 122 FO 366/724, Currie to Alston, letter, 29 November 1886; Alston to Treasury, letter, 30 November 1886, with undated memo.; minute by Fergusson, 10 December 1886. 120

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the highest character, could be obtained on terms much more reasonable than are at present paid’.123 The idea of re-employing pensioners from the armed forces in government departments was not new. It had been recommended by a House of Commons select committee in 1877 and by a Treasury committee in 1882, and it was endorsed by another Treasury-appointed committee in 1893. By then the Admiralty had taken on pensioner-messengers for as little as 18s. a week.124 It was not a practice for which the Foreign Office displayed any enthusiasm. Salisbury was, however, ready to contemplate more cuts in the Office’s domestic service bill. He proposed that once Vincent retired his successor as office- and housekeeper should receive a starting salary of £200, rising by increments to £250, and that the next second officekeeper might be paid £150 a year, inclusive of the £20 paid for night duty, but exclusive of the estimated benefits of office residence. There should then be two, rather than three, classes of officekeepers, with the five junior of their number on £100 a year. This, Alston reckoned, would reduce the average pay and emoluments of those beneath the head officekeeper to £120 a year.125 But there was a complication. When Vincent retired in May 1890 his heir-presumptive, Rose, was reluctant to assume responsibility for Office luncheons. He would, he told Alston, ‘rather submit to a reduction of his salary than undertake the duties of caterer’.126 Fortunately for hungry clerks, William Roberts, the head doorkeeper, whose wife was formerly a cook, was willing to take on the work. While this meant setting aside earlier compromises, Alston thought it better ‘to bend to circumstances and to select a willing rather than an unwilling Agent for the by no means unimportant function of providing for our luncheons and our teas’.127 Whether the new cook merited her appointment was another matter. Her basement fare, labelled ‘garbage’ by one of Alston’s successors, was far from appetizing, and better-off clerks were known to by-pass her kitchen by having their meals delivered daily to the Office from a top-class restaurateur.128 Roberts must have been glad to learn that as caterer he would receive the £25 annual allowance previously paid to Langcake and Vincent. But it was Rose’s wife who with the assistance of other servants saved the Office from what might have been irreparable harm on the morning of Sunday 26 October 1890. Her husband was at church and it was she who raised the alarm when she spotted water descending from her kitchen chimney. A malfunctioning ballcock had resulted in a massive overflow of water from a tank in the Office tower, and all hands and every available receptacle had to be mustered to halt the deluge and save books and papers before the arrival of a plumber.129 Devotion to duty was not, however, a sure sign of servant satisfaction. The non-resident officekeepers were particularly upset at the long hours they were generally expected to work without Ibid., Welby to Alston, letter, 20 December 1887. FO 366/760, report of Sir Charles Fremantle’s committee on messengers &c., 3 May 1893. 125 The Treasury concurred with Salisbury’s proposals. Ibid., memo. by Alston, 2 January 1888; Welby to Alston, letter, 1 February 1888. 126 FO 366/393, minute by Alston, 13 May 1890. 127 FO 366/724, minute by Alston, 7 May 1890; minute by Currie, 7 May 1890; W. F. Roberts to Alston, minute, n.d. 128 Tilley and Gaselee, Foreign Office, p. 142. M. Gilbert, Sir Horace Rumbold: Portrait of a Diplomat, 1869-1941 (London, 1973), p. 8. 129 FO 366/721, J. Fergusson to Office of Works, letter, 27 October 1890. 123 124

 Adjusting to the New 141 any additional pay. The times at which their working day began varied according to a rota so that two started at 10.00 am, two more at 11.00 am, and two at 12.00 noon; but from Monday to Saturday they were all required to be in the Office by midday and, while they were formally obliged to remain in post until 6.45 pm, they were liable to be kept later if necessary. One of them was obliged to wait on the resident clerks until 10.00 pm, or at least until such time as he was no longer required, and Sunday duties were shared amongst them. In a petition to the chief clerk of 30 July 1891 the non-resident officekeepers pointed out that the recent Royal Commission on the Civil Establishments had recommended a seven-hour day for public servants, yet their duties regularly extended over eight hours and could amount to ten to twelve hours on Sundays. Moreover, having noted that the Colonial Office, the Home Office and the Treasury granted their servants special allowances for overtime and attendance on Sundays, they asked for similar recognition of their extra duties, they ‘being incessant and requiring the most intelligent observance’.130 Henry Hervey, who was appointed chief clerk on Alston’s retirement in November 1890, was not nearly so sensitive to such requests as his predecessor had been. The petition went unanswered, as were two subsequent reminders of 18 November 1891 and 26 May 1892 and a plea to the foreign secretary, Lord Rosebery, in July 1893.131 Hervey thought that as the servants’ salaries had been settled in 1888 it would ‘apparently be useless’ to try to reopen the question with the Treasury. He also made the point that the officekeepers’ starting salary of £100 was higher than that in other government departments (£80 in the Colonial Office and the Home Office and £85 in the Treasury), as also was the maximum they might hope eventually to achieve.132 The permanent undersecretary was rather more sympathetic to the officekeepers’ case. After a further representation in January 1895, Sanderson conceded that the Office might approach the Treasury with a view to relieving the officekeepers of some of their burden. Given the size of the Office and the long hours expected of staff, he believed the Office needed at least one or two extra men.133 This he persuaded the Treasury to accept, and in July John Wright was appointed sixth non-resident officekeeper. Then in October 1898 another officekeeper, Jervis Wright, was recruited to bring their total number up to nine. Such changes were not, however, sufficient to satisfy the more disgruntled of the petitioners. Less than a month after Sir George Dallas’s appointment as chief clerk in February 1896, Sly and two of his companions returned to the fight, adding to the officekeepers’ previous plea a request that, as in the Treasury, some of them might enjoy relief from duties on Saturday afternoons.134 Dallas was no more ready than Hervey to offer any concessions with regard to Sunday duty or attendance on the resident clerks, but, following consultations with Rose, Sanderson and the Treasury, he did agree to one officekeeper on each floor being allowed to finish FO 366/393, George Sinclair et al to Henry Hervey (chief clerk), petition, 30 July 1891. Ibid., Sinclair et al to Hervey, petition, 18 November 1891 and 26 May 1892; Sinclair et al to Rosebery, petition, n.d. July 1893. 132 Ibid., minute by Hervey, 18 November 1891. FO 366/760, minute by Hervey, 8 March 1895. 133 Ibid., E. G. Pearson, A. E. Morbey and J. Smith to Lord Kimberley, petition, 12 January 1895; minutes by Hervey and Sanderson, 30 and 31 January 1895. 134 Ibid., Sly, Smith and Charles Johnson to Dallas, petition, 3 March 1896. 130 131

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work on Saturdays at 3.00 pm, in practice allowing each of them a monthly half-day holiday. But this was granted as ‘a favour, not a right, & entirely dependent on the convenience of the office’.135 More welcome was a new pay settlement which Salisbury wrung from the Treasury in November 1898 and which was intended to take account of the overtime duties regularly performed by Office servants. The starting salary of officekeepers was thus reduced to £85, but the six juniors were henceforth to receive an annual incremental rise of £5 up to a maximum of £120, and the salaries of the two seniors immediately below the head officekeeper was set at £135–150.136 Neither Rose nor Middleton stood to benefit from the new salary scales. Indeed, Middleton, by then the junior of the two resident officekeepers, had for some time been grumbling over his treatment by the Office. Unlike Rose, his immediate predecessor in the post, he was not paid an additional £20 for night porterage duties. Yet, Salisbury’s habit of conducting business from his country seat at Hatfield meant that his draft telegrams were frequently delivered to the Office late in the evening for ciphering, and Middleton had then ‘night after night’ to take them to the telegraph office for despatch.137 Extra money was eventually found for the weary officekeeper when, following the installation of a new hydraulic passenger lift in the autumn of 1897, the Treasury consented to his receiving a £20 annual allowance for turning on and off the water essential to its functioning: a sinecure ‘personal to the present holder of the Post’.138 And a year later Sanderson pressed two other resident servants, James Evans and James Brown, to relieve Middleton of his night duties twice a week and on alternate Sundays.139 Evans was messenger in the Librarian’s Department, and Brown, who had been coal porter, had only recently been appointed assistant doorkeeper. Both were disappointed when they requested more pay for their new responsibilities. In no uncertain terms Dallas reminded them that it was considered that those who resided in the Office were ‘bound to render assistance in such cases’.140 When, however, the outbreak of the South African War generated a further and more substantial increase in nocturnal correspondence, Evans’s employment for two nights a week was put on a more permanent basis and, with Treasury consent, in February 1900 he was allowed an additional £5 a year.141 The expansion of Foreign Office business also led to the Treasury sanctioning the appointment of yet another officekeeper. This was agreed towards the end of 1900, though neither of the first two applicants, both retired soldiers, was up to passing the Civil Service examination and it was not until April 1902 that Donald Rust was Ibid., Dallas to Sanderson, minute, 5 March 1896; G. S. Ryder to Dallas, 5 March 1896. FO 366/760, F. Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 4 November 1898. 137 FO 366/393, minute by W. C. Cartwright, 14 January 1892. 138 Ibid., Dallas to Rose, minute, 27 October 1897. Emphasis in original. The new passenger lift, the first so designated by the Office, replaced a private staircase which led from the corner of the ground floor, just above the Park door, to the foreign secretary’s room. Tilley and Gaselee, Foreign Office, p. 142. 139 FO 366/393, Dallas to Rose, 2 November 1898. 140 Ibid., Evans and Brown to Dallas, minute, 4 November 1898; Dallas to Evans and Brown, minute, 5 November 1898. 141 FO 366/760, Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 27 January 1900; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 2 February 1900. 135 136

 Adjusting to the New 143 selected for the post. The band of officekeepers he joined was as assertive as ever when it came to challenging pay and conditions. The business of the Office showed no signs of diminishing and from May 1903 the officekeepers were required to undertake a new duty – that of assisting the junior clerks in making up the evening despatch bags. It was not a major imposition, but it did mean some of them having to spend more time in the Office, and in January 1904 it served as a pretext for a fresh petition, this time from all seven junior officekeepers, requesting ‘extra pay for the extra duties’. Again, the petitioners cited the long hours that they worked and asked for ‘some little remuneration for Sunday Duty’, and again their claims were dismissed as beyond what the Office could hope to secure.142 William Chauncy Cartwright, who succeeded Dallas as chief clerk in May 1900, considered that they should be grateful for what they had: a salary scale which since 1898 compared favourably with other government departments; the prospects of promotion to a more senior position or transfer to a home service messengership; three weeks annual leave plus bank holidays; free uniforms since 1896; and all for what was on average an eight-hour working day and a requirement to attend for Sunday duty once in every ten weeks.143 Sanderson agreed. He thought ‘it would really be preposterous to ask the Treasury to grant an increase of wages because a man has to tie up a certain number of bags and seal them with special care’, and he dismissed the petition as a ‘very unwise production’. Yet, he had some sympathy for the officekeepers’ complaints over the late hours they were forced to work. It was, he minuted, much better for health and for the work itself to begin earlier whenever possible, and he added, ‘I should with pleasure do anything in my power to help towards early closing.’144 On other occasions too Sanderson was ready to back the officekeepers’ claims for better pay and conditions. He readily and successfully pressed their case for the annual, rather than sixteen-monthly, renewal of the coats and waistcoats issued as part of their uniforms. ‘The officekeepers here’, he noted in April 1899, ‘have long hours and the work of carrying and handling our boxes is rough.’145 And when, after his retirement as foreign secretary in November 1900, Salisbury remained prime minister, retaining rooms in the Office for himself and his private secretaries and continuing to hold Cabinet meetings there, the Treasury agreed, along with other staff changes, to grant Middleton an annual allowance of £10 for the extra attendance this involved.146 Three years later, following his father’s death, the 4th Marquess of Salisbury was appointed lord privy seal with a place in the Office, and in February 1905 three of the officekeepers requested a similar award for the additional services thereby imposed upon them. Cartwright did not think these amounted to enough FO 366/393, Charles Johnson et al to Lord Lansdowne, petition, 21 January 1904; minute by Cartwright, 23 January 1904. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid, minute by Sanderson, 23 January 1904; Sanderson to Cartwright, letter, 23 January 1904. 145 FO 366/717, minutes by Dallas and Sanderson, 22 April 1899; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 26 April 1899; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 16 May 1899. 146 The other arrangements agreed by the Treasury included the temporary appointment of one of the officekeepers as an additional home service messenger, and the recruitment of one permanent and one temporary additional officekeeper. Ibid., Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 17 November 1900; Mowatt to Sanderson, 26 November 1900. 142

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work to justify an annual allowance, and suggested that ‘possibly small gratuities might be given’ whenever Salisbury was in occupation of his rooms.147 However, despite his having a reputation amongst the junior clerks of being a ‘martinet of the old order’, Sanderson was all in favour of backing the officekeepers’ cause. Salisbury’s rooms were on a separate floor and he reckoned the officekeepers should have £18 or £20 to share amongst themselves.148 The Treasury was not so generous and in the end offered no more than £14 which was divided unequally between four officekeepers, presumably in proportion to services performed.149 The sum was small, but only slightly smaller than the £15 rise in total payment which in the same month, April 1905, was with Treasury consent offered for division amongst the Office’s ten housemaids.150 Prior to that their wages had been considerably below the regular market rate and their engagement and retention seems, as Cartwright put it, to have been dependent on ‘contributions from people in the Office’.151 Yet, even in 1911, when a further pay increase was sanctioned, the most a maidservant could look forward to earning was £22 a year in excess of her bed and board.152 Another class of women employees, the typists, hardly fared better. Sometimes referred to as ‘lady typewriters’, and otherwise known less graciously as ‘female typists’, they were first introduced into the public service in the mid-1880s on an experimental basis, and in some government departments received as little as 14s. a week. But Mrs Sophia Fulcher, a ‘lady of mature age’ who was already an experienced typist, was appointed to the Foreign Office in April 1889 on a salary of 21s. a week, and this was raised to 22s. a week in June 1890 when she was joined by a second typist, Ethel Gunton.153 Then in 1896, following a Treasury decision to regularize their employment within the Civil Service and the recruitment by the Foreign Office of two more women typists, Fulcher was appointed their superintendent on a salary rising from 26s. to 30s. a week.154 Confined at first to an attic room, they were responsible for copying nonconfidential drafts and minutes for the foreign secretary and, when time allowed, for the legal adviser and the Commercial and Consular Departments, as well ‘in special

Ibid., FO 366/393, J. Smith, M. Ling and G. Boulden to Salisbury, petition, 21 February 1905; minute by Cartwright, 24 February 1905. 148 Ibid. minute by Sanderson, 25 February 1905. F. Rattigan, Diversions of a Diplomat (London, 1924), p. 31. 149 The Treasury also continued to oppose any further rise in officekeeper salaries. FO 366/761, G. Murray to Sanderson, letter, 1 April 1905; T. L. Heath (Treasury) to Sir Arthur Nicolson, letter, 23 January 1913. 150 Housemaids’ pay henceforth ranged from £14 to £20 a year, and the total housemaids’ annual wage bill rose from £155 to £170. Ibid., Murray to Sanderson, letter, 27 April 1905. 151 FO 366/755, minute by Cartwright, 12 April 1905; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 14 April 1905. By 1900 the demand for servants in the wealthier areas of London already outstripped supply. L. Lethbridge, Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth-Century Britain (London, 2013), p. 61. 152 FO 366/761, T. L. Heath to Nicolson, letter, 29 April 1911. 153 FO 366/713, Hervey to Ryder, letter, 8 October 1892; Ryder to Hervey, letter, 10 October 1892; minute by Hervey, 24 October 1892; Currie to Treasury, letter, 29 October 1892. H. Martindale, Women Servants of the State, 1870-1938: A History of Women in the Civil Service (London, 1938), pp. 65–9. G. R. Searle, A New England?: Peace and War, 1886–1918 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 56–7. 154 FO 366/760, Treasury minute, 17 March 1894; minute by Sanderson, 19 March 1896; minute by Dallas, 21 March 1896. 147

 Adjusting to the New 145 cases’ for political departments.155 Indeed, so relieved were other staff of routine work that Salisbury volunteered a reduction in junior clerical positions in return for Treasury consent to his raising the number typists to six.156 By 1901 there were eight in all, and Fulcher had frequently to make use of her knowledge of French, while deciphering and putting in order hurriedly drafted papers.157 Yet, the typists remained cheap labour, paid below a living wage on the assumption that they would only serve for a few years before being required to leave the Office on marriage.158 Successive foreign secretaries pressed their claims for more upon a Treasury, which, despite evidence to the contrary, insisted that their remuneration was as good as could be obtained elsewhere.159 If, however, the Foreign Office was a supportive employer, it was not invariably a congenial one. Its peculiar working hours were one source of female discontent. A request from the typists in December 1907 that as Christmas Day fell on a Wednesday they, like their colleagues in other government offices, might be allowed to extend their holiday until Monday was promptly rejected. ‘Some of them’, noted the chief clerk, ‘may be allowed to be away on Saturday, Dec 28 if the work permits, but not otherwise.’160 The business of diplomacy made few concessions to the festive spirit. The regrading of subordinate staff and the reallocation of their duties may have made for a more clearly defined and efficient workforce: it did not necessarily make for a more flexible one. Servant obduracy and what higher ranking officials sometimes perceived as impertinence remained persistent causes of complaint. Typical was the failure of anyone on duty to respond to the needs of Major John Ardagh, an army intelligence officer who in 1881 was provided with a room in the Office to complete his work with the international commission redrawing Greece’s northern frontier. On arriving at the Downing Street entrance on 13 February 1882 Ardagh asked for someone to take his luggage from his cab to the hall. But while there were four servants then present, Weller, Allen, Tibbetts and Brown, not one of them was ready to assist. ‘This’, Alston fumed, ‘is one of those scandals which could be deemed incredible if it had not actually occurred.’ Weller was under strict instructions not to leave his post and so his inaction could be condoned. The same might also have been said about Allen, though, Alston observed, ‘he is always ready enough to descend the steps when he sees his way to pocketing a tip by doing so’. No excuse could, however, be offered for Brown or Tibbetts, save to say that the latter, being very deaf, claimed not to have FO 366/724, minute by Currie, 11 May 1889. H. McCarthy, Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat (London, 2014), p. 57. 156 FO 366/715, Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 5 February1896; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 11 February 1896; Sanderson to Salisbury, minute, 6 October 1896; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 8 October 1896. 157 FO 366/718, Fulcher to Cartwright, letter covering memo. from typists, 16 April 1902. 158 FO 366/717, Dallas to Sanderson, minute, 23 February 1898. 159 FO 366/715, Fulcher et al. to Dallas, letter, 2 November 1896, with minutes by Dallas, Sanderson and Salisbury; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 5 November 1896. FO 366/717, Fulcher to Dallas, minute, 5 January 1898; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 19 January 1898; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 5 February 1898. FO 366/718, Fulcher to Cartwright, letters and petition, 12 March and 16 April 1902; Sanderson to Treasury, letters, 9 and 19 April 1902. FO 366/754, Mowatt to Sanderson, letters, 4 April and 29 June 1903. FO 366/1141, Fulcher to Newman, letter, 6 February 1907; Cartwright to Treasury, letter, 8 February 1907. 160 FO 366/761, Fulcher to Cartwright, minute, 19 December 1907; minute by Cartwright, n.d. 155

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heard the request passed on to him by Weller.161 Office servants could in any case be distinctly surly when it came to responding to requests that went beyond what they considered their remit. Allen was noted for his discourtesy. When one morning in July 1886 Willoughby Maycock asked him for petty cash to pay for official cabs, so curt was his reply that Maycock was moved to threaten if Allen ‘ever speaks to me again in the same tone of voice I shall have to give it him hot & strong & straight’ (emphasis in original). Alston was more conciliatory, and while he did not condone the doorkeeper’s attitude, he doubted the wisdom of exposing him to further temptation by sending him to search for small change in the taverns of Whitehall.162 Cab hire was an enduring problem. Door- and office-keepers understood their responsibilities to be limited to the inner workings of the Office, and those home service messengers who had been appointed prior to 1879 continued to regard themselves as exempt from the performance of ‘all outside duties’. Thomas Villiers Lister, an assistant undersecretary, confessed in October 1890 that he would ‘as soon think of asking the Ld. Chancellor to appear for me in a County Court’ as ask a messenger to call a cab. ‘There are’, he protested, ‘2 Hall porters [i.e. doorkeepers] whose health wd. probably be improved by occasional excursions in search of cabs & there is an individual whose knowledge of the world seems to be confined to the gloomy arches leading to the Quadrangle whose walks might well be extended as far as the cabstand.’163 In March 1897 Dallas attempted to clarify the situation, ruling that if there were only one man in the hall, a door- or office-keeper, he must not leave it, and that it was then the duty of a home service messenger ‘to call any cab that might be required’.164 Lister had meanwhile found in the latest advance in technology a way of easing the needs of clerks and others for transportation. In 1893, at his instigation, and with broad support from other officials and the sanction of the Office of Works, a call box, the property of the District Messenger Service and News Company, was installed in the Foreign Office entrance hall. The box was a cable-connected electrical device, operated by a cranking handle or pointer, which for a small fee allowed subscribers to call a company messenger boy, contact the police or fire service, or alert the district office of their wish to hire a cab.165 The subsequent introduction of a standard telephone call box in the entrance hall may have eased matters further for those in need of transport. And in January 1906 the Treasury concurred in both the proposed installation of a Post Office ‘system of telephonic communications’ throughout the Foreign Office at an estimated total cost of £390, and the employment of a ‘female Switch Clerk’. All this was to be achieved FO 366/393, minutes by Vincent and Alston, 13 February 1882. FO 366/724, Maycock to Alston, minute, 8 July 1886; Alston to Maycock, minute, 16 July 1886; Maycock to Alston, minute, 31 July 1886. 163 Ibid., A. N. Clarke to Alston, minute, 8 October 1890. FO 366/496, minutes by Alston and Lister, 13 October 1890. 164 FO 366/760, Dallas to Rose, minute, 11 March 1897. 165 FO 366/391, Lister to Currie, letter, 20 February 1892; minute by Currie, 5 March 1892. FO 366/721, H. W. Primrose to Currie, letter, 1 August 1893. T 1/15189, passim. Following his appointment at foreign secretary in August 1892, Lord Rosebery was able to persuade the GPO to establish a telephone connexion between his home in Berkeley Square and the Foreign Office. FO 366/704, Currie to GPO, draft letter, 1 September 1892; GPO to Currie, letter, 2 September 1892. 161 162

 Adjusting to the New 147 on the understanding that the remuneration of a switch clerk would be ‘trifling’ when compared to that of a home service messenger, and that on a vacancy occurring a messengership would be abolished.166 Nonetheless, officials evidently continued to expect that messengers would be available to summon cabs at their convenience, and in January 1913 Cartwright came close to revoking Dallas’s earlier instructions on the matter. In a circular he explained that it was not part of the messengers’ duty to call cabs for everyone in the Office, and that while they did this for undersecretaries and higher officials the practice could not be applied to all clerks. Furthermore, he advised: Gentlemen must make their own arrangements with the coal porter or anyone who may be available in the entrance hall, but the doorkeeper can neither call cabs himself nor has he the authority to send the messenger out for that purpose. It may frequently happen that the doorkeeper will be unable to send anyone and that he will say so in reply to a telephone message.167

If gentlemen desired cabs, then so too it seems did messengers. In August 1912 it was reported that they were regularly hiring four-wheeled vehicles, rather than using the cheaper and equally fast underground railway, when taking despatch boxes to and from the Sloane Gardens residence of the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey. This drew from Cartwright the reminder that messengers were ‘to avail themselves of the Underground Railway whenever the distance from the Station [was] short and they [were] not entrusted with such a number of Boxes &c., as would compel the use of a Cab’.168 Old practices, like old privileges, were not readily discarded. Nor were old grievances, and foremost amongst those harboured by the home service messengers were the long hours of duty expected of them. They felt themselves particularly hard pressed when during 1897 an excess of business in the Office’s Eastern Department resulting from the Greco-Turkish War coincided with correspondence generated by the celebration of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. With Salisbury as prime minister and foreign secretary, they found themselves conveying Cabinet circulars and summonses, as well as delivering messages to the homes of government ministers, their private secretaries, and embassies and legations, some of which were located at a considerable distance from Whitehall. Messengers serving the foreign secretary at Hatfield had frequently to start early in the morning, and after returning late in the evening to London, had to set out again with boxes and pouches on further rounds of delivery. Meals were taken irregularly and during the holiday season Sunday leave was rare.169 In August 1897 Salisbury was moved to persuade the Treasury to grant each of the home service messengers a £10 gratuity for ‘extra duty’, a gesture repeated in 1911 in recognition FO 366/749, H. Babington-Smith to Sanderson, letter, 23 November 1905, with minutes by Cartwright and Sanderson. T 1/10369/22406, Villiers to Treasury, letter, 2 December 1905; E. W. Hamilton to Sanderson, letter 23 January 1906. 167 FO 366/761, circular by Cartwright, 20 January 1913. 168 Ibid., minute by Cartwright, 29 August 1912. 169 FO 366/496, petition by home service messengers, 16 July 1897; unsigned and undated memo. by home service messengers attached to minute by Sanderson, 13 May 1898. 166

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of work undertaken at the time of the coronation of King George V.170 Of more significance, however, was Sanderson’s effort to ease pressure upon the messengers by directing in May 1898 that in future all ordinary letters to foreign representatives in London should be sent by the Post Office Express Delivery Service.171 Indeed, the greater use of the telephone and regular postal services may in part explain a reduction in messenger journeys in the early years of the twentieth century. Messenger salaries remained in any case sufficiently attractive to draw officekeepers to their ranks. In January 1913 one such recruit, Jervis Wright, had the misfortune to meet with an accident while opening a cab door for the then permanent undersecretary, Sir Arthur Nicolson, and he had subsequently to be cared for at Westminster Hospital.172 Cab hire was not always as healthy an option as Lister had earlier implied.

Pestilence, redolence and sustenance The new Foreign Office building was more spacious and, with the possible exception of the compositors’ rooms, structurally sounder than its predecessor in Downing Street. Yet, it was only marginally more healthy a place of work. The domestic servants, like other staff, were exposed to the diseases and disorders of the metropolis and from time to time measures had to be taken to contain the spread of infection amongst them. Particularly alarming was the news which reached Mary Langcake in February 1877 that Mrs Bowden, the washerwoman employed to launder the Office linen, had been diagnosed with smallpox. George Buchanan was once more contacted, and on his advice clerical and domestic staff were urged to ensure that they were vaccinated against the virus. The laundress and her sick husband were meanwhile despatched to hospital, and after their recovery the foreign secretary, Lord Derby, indulged them in a ‘little quarantine in the country’ before they returned to resume their laundering at their home in Kennington. Fortunately, the infection was in this instance contained. Alston had, however, to reckon with a mounting barrage of complaints about the state of the Office’s sanitary arrangements, more especially its malfunctioning cisterns, drains and water-closets. Hardly had the Foreign Office taken possession of the new building before his attention was drawn to unpleasant smells perceived intermittently in certain rooms. Yet, an extensive programme of renovation which the Office of Works began in 1882 seems only to have exacerbated the problem. In the autumn of 1883 Lord Fitzmaurice, Granville’s parliamentary undersecretary, blamed his recent illness and his colleagues’ various ailments on the ‘horrible stenches’ arising from the contractors’ excavations and urged Alston to put a stop to the present state of things.173

FO 366/360, Mowatt to Sanderson, 12 August 1897. FO 366/761, Treasury letter, 24 October 1911. FO 366/760, minutes by Dallas, 26 May 1898; 172 FO 366/761, minute by H. J., 10 March 1913; Treasury minute, 2 April 1913. 173 FO 366/415, Alston to Russell (Office of Works), letter, 18 May 1869. FO 366/378, Granville to Pauncefote, letter, 17 October 1883; minute by Alston, 18 October 1883; Fitzmaurice to Alston, minute, 8 November 1883. 170 171

 Adjusting to the New 149 Even after the completion of the work and the closure of what Fitzmaurice described as a ‘totally unnecessary and most offensive W.C.’ the fetid odours persisted.174 Clerks employed on the western side of the building, that looking towards St James’s Park, attributed the fevers, gastric upsets and ulcerated throats from which they seemed frequently to suffer to the seepage of ‘sewer gas’ into their rooms.175 The feeling in general, Alston reported in May 1884, was that they were ‘being exposed to a noxious and pestilential atmosphere while in the necessary discharge of their duties’.176 Yet, neither the chief clerk nor the Office of Works could provide any easy answer to the problem. At one stage it was thought that the roof-top proximity of a sewerage ventilation outlet to a chimney stack might have been responsible for down-draughts of foul air.177 This, however, was discounted when the smells recurred after fires were lit in the autumn.178 A more plausible explanation was provided by a House of Commons select committee which indicated that a similar problem in Parliament might be due to the poor state of local sewers not yet under the authority of the Metropolitan Board of Works.179 Indeed, further investigations into the drains in the environs of Parliament and subsequent improvements in Westminster’s sewerage system seemed to confirm the chief clerk’s suspicions that the fault lay not with Scott’s building, but with its subterranean neighbourhood.180 Alston had at first been inclined to lay some of the blame for the foul smells upon the kitchen staff. In February 1872 Granville was much upset by culinary odours wafting up to his room, and Alston later recalled how the Office had then been ‘poisoned by the smell of mutton fat’. He likewise attributed the ‘unsavoury smell’ of which Fitzmaurice also complained to the failure of the servants to dispose properly of cabbage water, and he thought a possible remedy would be to shut off the basement corridor by a closed screen with swing doors.181 Neither Fitzmaurice nor his colleagues were convinced. Nonetheless, the smell of cooking remained an irritant, so much so that in January 1898 Sanderson was greatly upset when, just before one of Salisbury’s Cabinet meetings, he found the whole place ‘pervaded with a smell of onions . . . so thick one could cut it with a knife’. Further investigations revealed that the culprit was not a kitchen maid but a servant of one of the resident clerks. It did not deter Sanderson from issuing instructions that in future ‘cooking in the Office must be of

FO 366/378, Fitzmaurice to Alston, letter, 9 November 1883. Ibid, Dallas to Alston, letter, 19 May 1884; Mrs Robertson to Staveley, letter, 15 May 1884; Lister to Alston, letter, 21 May 1884; Dallas to Lister, letter, 21 May 1884; Charles Robertson to Pauncefote, letter, 24 June 1884; Robertson to Alston, letter, 25 June 1884; minute by Fitzmaurice, 10 October 1884. 176 Ibid., Alston to Mitford, letter, 19 May 1884. 177 Ibid., Alston to Robertson, letter, 19 June 1884. 178 Ibid., Lister to Alston, minute, 10 October 1884. 179 HC, Report from the Select Committee on Ventilation of the House (1884), p. iii. 180 FO 366/378, minute by Alston, 8 October 1884; Lister to Local Government Board, letter, 13 October 1884; Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 20 November 1884. HC, Second Report from the Select Committee on the Ventilation of the House (1886), p. iii. 181 FO 366/415, Granville to Alston, minute, 20 February 1872; minute by Alston, 20 March 1872 (misdated 1870); Alston to Office of Works, letter, 23 March 1872. FO 366/378, minute by Alston, 18 October 1883; Pauncefote to Granville, minute, 19 October 1883. 174 175

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a kind that does not poison the whole place’.182 As for the domestic staff, they had their own reasons to complain. Although it was a standing rule in the Office that only departmental heads and their assistants were allowed to have meals delivered to their rooms, by the 1890s it was becoming customary for other clerks to demand similar service. As a result, maidservants were expected to carry trays all over the Office and there were inevitable delays for those awaiting service in the luncheon room. Three maids decided that the workload was too much and quit the Office, and in December 1897 Sanderson sent round a reminder urging that the existing rule be respected and stipulating that ‘gentlemen must be satisfied with what was good enough for their predecessors’.183 Sanderson hoped that in time he would be able to find a more convenient luncheon room. Office accommodation was, however, in short supply, and the basement quarters available to resident servants left much to be desired. This was highlighted in March 1894 when one of Roberts’s children was taken ill with diphtheria and removed to the Stockwell Fever Hospital. At the request of the Office of Works his rooms were disinfected by Thomas Dee, the district sanitary inspector, who held that the current usage of two of them contravened the provisions of the Public Health (London) Act of 1891 with regard to bedrooms below ground level. Had the Foreign Office not been a government department it would, he stated, have been liable to prosecution. Enquiries revealed that there were some thirty-six domestic residents of the Office, several of whose presence was unauthorized. One of the most flagrant examples was that of Roberts, whose extended family included, besides his wife and three children, two private servants one of whom, his niece, he employed to take care of his offspring and keep his rooms clean. Another, Roberts insisted, was needed to help with the preparation of Office lunches. Evans, the library messenger, shared his five rooms with his wife, his two children and his mother-in-law; Middleton accommodated himself, his wife and two grown-up sons in four rooms; and Brown, then still the coal porter, had with him in his three rooms, only one of which was a bedroom, his wife and grown-up daughter. Rose also had a resident private servant, who slept in a room assigned to two of the Office housemaids.184 This, Sanderson minuted, was a ‘most objectionable state of affairs’, and with the support of the then foreign secretary Lord Kimberley, Hervey circulated instructions restricting residence in the Office to servants, their wives and children under the age of seventeen. Only with the sanction of the foreign secretary were older children or private servants to be permitted residence.185 The Office’s domestic staff wasted no time in responding to Hervey’s circular. The servants affected had assumed that their residential rights constituted part-payment for duties undertaken and they protested that they had had no previous intimation of rules governing the occupants of their living quarters. Roberts was ready to dispense with the services of his niece, but he was evidently put out by Hervey’s insistence that he FO 366/760, Sanderson to Dallas, 28 January 1898, minute with note by Dallas. Ibid., minute by Sanderson, 8 December 1897. 184 FO 366/378, T. G. Dee to Kimberley, letter, 8 March 1894. FO 366/670, minute by Hervey, 13 March 1894. 185 Ibid., minutes by Sanderson and Kimberley, 14 and 15 March 1894; minute by Hervey, 19 March 1894. 182 183

 Adjusting to the New 151 also remove his privately employed catering assistant.186 Evans was likewise reluctant to part with his 74-year-old mother-in-law, who was in any case physically incapacitated; and both Middleton and Brown pleaded that their grown-up children were not as yet able independently to maintain themselves. Brown’s daughter, his only child, was nineteen years of age and, like Middleton’s eldest son, in a delicate state of health.187 Kimberley and Sanderson seemed ready to overlook the presence of Evans’s motherin-law. They were also willing to allow Middleton’s sons to remain in the Office until the end of the year, and, while they objected to Brown’s daughter sharing a bedroom with her parents, they agreed that she might continue to live with them so long as she had no paid employment. However, Roberts’s basement accommodation posed another problem. There were no other convenient rooms to which the doorkeeper could be moved, and all that could be arranged was for him no longer to use for sleeping the bedroom to which Dee had objected. Meanwhile, Roberts suffered a further blow. When a year earlier Evans had been forced to lodge elsewhere for three weeks while the Office of Works completed drainage works affecting his Office accommodation he had received 30s. a week in compensation, and Roberts was led to expect that he would receive a similar refund to cover the costs of lodging himself and his family elsewhere while his rooms were inspected and fumigated. ‘I was’, Roberts later wrote in support of his claim, ‘distressed, and almost driven distracted by so much illness to myself and family (19 different attacks during nine months) the wife and myself have never fully recovered its effects.’188 Hervey was sympathetic, but the Office of Works considered itself under no obligation to pay the £9 claimed by Roberts and there was no inclination towards pressing the Treasury to sanction such a payment.189 Treasury officials were evidently sceptical about the Foreign Office’s need for so many residential servants.190 They were, nonetheless, ready to sanction improvements to staff facilities. Sanderson was able to secure Office of Works approval for transforming one of the spaces off the entrance hall into a luncheon room, and once the work was completed in January 1901 he sent round a circular urging heads of department to spare the labours of the maids and eat there ‘unless in some case of extreme pressure’.191 The death of Roberts in October 1904 also necessitated the appointment of a new caterer. One of the officekeepers, George Sinclair, volunteered his services. His wife was a cook and, in keeping with the dynastic traditions of diplomacy, she had once been a servant in Lord Salisbury’s household at Hatfield. But after nine months as caterer, Sinclair began to have second thoughts about his new responsibilities and might have given them up had his continuation in the role not been made a condition of his replacing Middleton as second resident officekeeper. In the meantime, a lady who ran a lodging house in Pimlico was offered the job. There was, however, preference in the Office for Ibid., Roberts to Hervey, minute, 20 March 1894, with note by Hervey, 22 March 1894. Ibid., minute by Middleton, 21 March 1894; Middleton to Hervey, minute, 24 March 1894; Evans to Hervey, minute, 22 March 1894; memo. by Hervey, 24 May 1894. 188 Ibid., Roberts to Hervey, letters, 16 July 1894 and 1 February 1896. 189 Ibid., Taylor to Hervey, letter, 13 August 1894 and note by Hervey; Taylor to Hervey, letter, 26 February 1896; memo. by Dallas, 16 July 1896. 190 FO 366/760, Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 27 January 1900; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 2 February 1900; undated minute by Dallas. 191 Ibid., circular from Sanderson, 9 January 1901. Tilley and Gaselee, Foreign Office, pp. 143–4. 186 187

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retaining an in-house caterer, and it was reckoned that the business was insufficient for an outside contractor.192 Instructions issued by Sir Charles Hardinge, the newly appointed permanent undersecretary, in February 1906 that the custom of clerks going out to lunch ‘should be regarded as an exception and not as a daily practice’ appear to have made little difference.193 Neighbours of the Foreign Office might indeed have been happier if more clerks had taken their custom elsewhere. On 27 March 1907 Sir Schomberg McDonnell, the secretary to the Office of Works, wrote to Cartwright of the repeated complaints he had received of ‘appalling smells in Downing Street’, which he blamed on the accumulation of kitchen refuse in the Office’s basement area. ‘I believe’, he added, ‘the person in fault is the caterer, and that he has some aged satelite [sic] or charwoman, who is described as appalling to behold, who apparently is allowed to rake over these heaps of garbage and select such portions of it as may be useful to her.’ McDonnell also recommended the regular flushing and disinfecting of the scullery sink: the smell and disposal of boiled vegetable water remained a diplomatic issue in Edwardian Whitehall.194 When finally in May 1911 a Mr Glover was engaged to provide lunches, his wish was to cater for the second-division clerks as well as those of the regular establishment. That meant finding an additional luncheon room.195 His widow who, following Glover’s sudden death in October 1912, took over his catering duties, looked elsewhere to supplement her income. She opened a bar in the basement of the Office.196 Mrs Glover was sorely in need of cash. She had not been well provided for, had five children to support, and was faced with having to pay more to the man her late husband employed as cook. Soon she was so much in debt to tradesmen that she was threatened with bankruptcy, and she was suspected of serving unauthorized persons at her bar. In May 1913 Cartwright, decided she must go.197 But the new caterer, C. Day, a Home Office servant, was also attracted by the profit to be had from liquor sales, especially in the mornings when the printer’s men and other labourers were eager for liquid refreshment. If their demands were not met at the Foreign Office, then, he argued, they would transfer their custom to the bar at the Colonial Office. Cartwright’s successor, John Tilley, would have none of this. He insisted that the bar only be open between 12.00 noon and 3.00 pm. ‘The possibility of getting drink’, he noted, ‘is a great temptation to Office Keepers and Messengers which they do not always resist, and I am not sure that workmen do not go there also at times.’ The gentlemen of the Office seemed less likely to over-indulge, and Tilley thought the caterer might therefore be authorized ‘to supply whisky, etc.’ to clerks in their own rooms if they first sent in a written order.198 What part these restrictions played in Day’s departure and the search for a successor is uncertain. However, in April 1914 a contract was agreed with a regular caterer, F. W. Bushell of the King’s Road, Chelsea, to serve luncheons and teas to all members of FO 366/760, minutes by Cartwright, 20 June and 28 July 1905. Ibid., minute by Hardinge, 28 February 1906. 194 FO 366/1141, McDonnell to Cartwright, letters, 13 March 1907. 195 FO 366/760, minute by Cartwright, 12 May 1911. 196 Ibid., Cartwright to Nicolson, minute, 7 October 1911; minute by Cartwright, 20 May 1913. 197 Ibid. 198 Ibid., minutes by Tilley, 6 January 1914 (misdated 1913). 192 193

 Adjusting to the New 153 staff for an annual remuneration of £50.199 A schedule of authorized prices was also settled, and henceforth a clerk in the Office could look forward to purchasing a oneshilling lunch which included a choice of two joints or entrée, two vegetables, a sweet, bread, butter, cheese and biscuits. If he ordered à la carte then he might choose from such delights as sausage and mash or minced beef with poached egg, both priced at 6d., stewed fruit and cream or custard at 3d., or simply four slices of bread and butter at 2d. There were also sandwiches, muffins and teacakes to be had at 2d. each, and for 3d. he could relish two sardines on toast. The modesty of the menu hardly matched the grandeur of the building. Those attending Mrs Disraeli’s reception almost a halfcentury before would certainly have fared better. But on the eve of the Great War the prospective choice of dishes on offer probably went far beyond the wildest imaginings of what Mary Langcake might once have considered it her obligation to serve.200

Ibid., Tilley to Bushell, letter, 6 April 1914. Ibid., schedule of authorized prices, April 1914.

199 200

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Managing the past The Librarian’s Department, 1868–1914

We happen to have in Sir Edward Hertslet a very exceptional man, who is wonderfully conversant with every treaty and every past question. Sir Philip Currie, 12 November 18891 But your Library is a peculiar institution. There is nothing like it, so far as I know, in any other Department; and when you are making changes it is worth considering whether it ought to continue on its present lines. Sir George Murray, joint permanent secretary to the Treasury, 19052 Edward Hertslet was highly regarded by his superiors in the Foreign Office and much respected throughout Whitehall. Not ‘even in the Philistine Treasury’ did he ‘lack appreciation’.3 In Alston’s words, a ‘man of great energy’, he had assumed his father’s duties and responsibilities with enthusiasm, continuing to expand his own thorough grasp of the diplomatic archive and readily embarking on fresh publishing ventures.4 Such indeed was his erudition that in June 1878 he was invited to join the British delegation to the Congress of Berlin, and for his services there he was duly rewarded with a knighthood. Meanwhile, he found time to father twelve children (nine sons and three daughters) and play an active part in the politics and social life of his home town of Richmond in Surrey. He was a member of the Conservative Association, as well as the cricket and rowing clubs; he enrolled in the Richmond Rifle Volunteer Corps soon after its formation in 1859, practising his drill in the dining room of his villa overlooking the Thames; and in July 1890, having been appointed provisional mayor, the 66-year-old Sir Edward fetched Richmond’s royal charter of incorporation from London, entering the borough in a carriage drawn by four greys with postilions and Fourth Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Civil Establishments of the Different Offices of State at Home and Abroad (c 6172), (1890), minutes, para. 26,053. 2 T 1/10369/4489, Murray to Sanderson, letter, 8 November 1905. 3 LD, Gen., FO Organisation, Discipline, etc, 1844–1932, Lingen to Fitzmaurice, letter, 22 December 1883. 4 HC, Report from the Select Committee on Public Offices and Buildings (Metropolis) (1877), minutes, para. 897. 1

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accompanied by a mounted military escort.5 A local eminence, he was by then master of a sizeable bureaucratic domain. Few of the Foreign Office’s workforce had stood to gain more physically from the return to Downing Street than did the Librarian’s Department. For the first time in its history the department occupied purpose-built accommodation with proper storage space. In the new building Edward Hertslet had some eighteen rooms at his disposal. These included the manuscript library and adjoining reference room, which were on the ground floor beneath the large state dining room, and the printed library and map room on the second floor. Confidential papers were lodged in eight storerooms on the third floor, and the registry was situated high in the tower on the north-western corner of the block.6 It was hoped that the new accommodation would make books and papers more easily accessible for reference. But the fact that the Librarian’s Department straddled several storeys had serious drawbacks. No fewer than 134 steps separated the manuscript library from the registry, and Mason, the library messenger, seems soon to have been worn down by his new daily exertions. When he was taken ill in the autumn of 1868 a younger man, Robert King Hall, was temporarily engaged as messenger at one guinea a week. Indeed, such were the demands upon his time that following Mason’s return to work it was decided to make permanent Hall’s position as assistant library messenger.7 This might have been less necessary had it not been for the failings of the hydraulic service lift linking the manuscript and printed libraries: the one down whose shaft Charles Coxhead, Hall’s unfortunate successor, was to fall in December 1874. It proved from the start ‘very cumbersome & unsuitable’ when conveying small parcels of books and, as there was initially no speaking tube linking the two libraries, a messenger had instead to be sent up and down stairs whenever a delivery was required or due. There was, in any case, no lift connection with the registry and the third-floor storerooms, and that between the ground and second floors was less than reliable. In one instance, in April 1869, the rope used for operating the lift broke while books were being loaded, forcing Hall to leap from the cage, and leaving Hertslet to report a steady outpouring of water.8 The Board of Works was eventually persuaded to allow the department a speaking tube, but even after the installation of a passenger lift in the wake of Charles Coxhead’s death the registry and the third-floor stores remained accessible only on foot.

Salaries, supplementals and salvation Six months prior to the move from Whitehall Gardens, Lord Stanley won Treasury consent to proposals from Edward Hertslet for tackling the backlog of unregistered correspondence. Predicated upon the prospect of more ample accommodation, the Hall, ‘Hertslet’, pp. 52–4, 60–7. The Richmond and Twickenham Times, 9 August 1902, Hertslet obituary. 6 HC, Select Committee on Public Offices and Buildings (Metropolis) (1877), minutes, paras. 948–51. 7 LD, Corresp., vol. 3, memo. by E. Hertslet, 27 April 1869. FO 366/392, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 12 May 1869; W. Law to Hammond, letter, 17 May 1869. 8 FO 366/415, Alston to Office of Works, letter, 19 April 1869; minute by E. Hertslet, 22 April 1869. 5

 Managing the Past 157 plan included the expansion of what was increasingly referred to as the supplemental or supplementary staff of the department through the recruitment of two more permanent and six temporary or supernumerary library clerks. These were to be set to work on registering and indexing arrears amounting to more than 261,000 diplomatic, and about 190,000 consular, papers, some of which dated back to 1852. Percy Carpenter, who since finishing the library catalogue had been employed in registering documents recently acquired from the State Paper Office, was retained as one of the temporary clerks, and existing library clerks were offered half a crown (2s. 6d.) an hour in overtime to assist in making up the arrears.9 In the meantime, the newly recruited registry clerks had to cope with a manageable, though hardly inspiring workload. Ensconced in the tower under the supervision of Frederick Sasse, they were better behaved than their predecessors of the 1840s. But the frequent absence from work of one of their number, Arthur Romer, soon gave Hertslet cause for concern. Romer’s excuses were bizarre. They included bilious attacks, fits, diarrhoea, rheumatism, family matters, important business, legal affairs and moving furniture. On one occasion Romer claimed that he had been taken to hospital after collapsing in the street, but when it emerged that the hospital had no record of his treatment, Romer claimed that he had given a false name. He was warned in February 1870 that he risked dismissal if he did not mend his ways, but a month later his absences began again. Romer’s mother wrote to Hertslet to explain that his non-attendance was due to the ‘disgraceful conduct’ of his wife from whom he must seek a separation; and on 14 March his wife visited Hertslet to deny the allegation and declare that her husband had left her.10 Romer’s misconduct was all too much for the foreign secretary, Clarendon, and on the 16 March the delinquent clerk was sacked. While this may have caused some disruption in the registry, it worked to the advantage of the Hertslet family. Already in April 1868 Edward Hertslet’s eldest son, (Edward) Cecil, had been appointed a thirdclass clerk in the Chief Clerk’s Department, and when the first candidate for Romer’s place failed to qualify for the temporary position, Hertslet’s second son, Reginald, was selected instead. According to Clarendon’s private secretary, Thomas Villiers Lister, the librarian had made no application on Reginald’s behalf, Lister having ‘only learned accidentally that he had a son fit for the work’.11 Two years later Reginald joined his brother in the Chief Clerk’s Department where he remained until, after a brief spell in the Treaty Department, he embarked on a consular career. In the reference room Hertslet, Green and Irving, along with the two clerks who assisted them, were kept as busy as ever. They were not only responsible for the arrangement of documents in their custody, but were expected to acquaint themselves with the contents of printed confidential and parliamentary papers, official circulars and treaties. By 1870 they had charge of about 19,000 bound volumes of manuscript correspondence, with a further 500 volumes being added each year and, despite FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 9 February 1865; Stanley to Treasury, letter, 8 November 1867; G. W. Hunt to Hammond, letter, 6 December 1867. LD, Corresp., vol. 2, draft memo. by E. Hertslet, n.d. November 1867. 10 FO 366/677, E. Hertslet to Hammond, letter, 10 February 1870; memo. by E. Hertslet with postscript, 12–14 March 1870; Hammond to Romer, letter, 16 March 1870. 11 FO 366/676, minute by Stanley, 7 April 1868. FO 366/677, minute by T. V. Lister, 3 May 1870. 9

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Hammond’s efforts to reduce the demand for library memoranda and a reiteration by Derby in November 1875 of Russell’s fifteen-year rule, the political departments continued to request reference room assistance with matters of comparatively recent date. This was partly because few current developments in diplomacy could be understood, or acted upon, without regard to their historical context. Thus, when in November 1861, soon after the outbreak of the American Civil War, the US navy had seized two Confederate diplomats on board the British mail packet, Trent, Hertslet was pressed most urgently for precedents of similar incidents at sea. And political turbulence in Europe throughout the 1860s and into the early 1870s meant that the librarian and his colleagues had increasingly to perform the duties of a modern research department. Amongst the many library memoranda drafted and printed for confidential circulation were papers on Austria’s rights and interests in Italy, the questions of Schleswig-Holstein and Luxemburg, supposed Franco-Prussian negotiations for the acquisition of Belgian territory, the extent to which Prussia was bound by the treaty of Paris of 1856, objections from Russia to a conference to consider the abrogation of the Black Sea clauses of the said treaty, and the passage of foreign ships through the Turkish straits. It also fell to the Librarian’s Department to identify and collate all relevant correspondence and precedents for the British commissioners to the Geneva tribunal which in the summer of 1871 began arbitrating United States’ claims arising from the construction in Britain of the Confederate commerce raider Alabama and other similar vessels.12 Hertslet was not exaggerating when he later asserted that in no other government office was the Librarian’s Department, so-called, required ‘to report on such questions as the right of the British Crown to islands or possessions abroad, on transactions connected with European Conferences, on the interpretation of Treaties, or such like questions of vital importance’.13 During the Near Eastern crises of 1875–8 and subsequently at the Congress of Berlin Hertslet further enhanced his own and his department’s reputation with memoranda furnishing Disraeli, Derby and his successor, Lord Salisbury, with advice on facts, precedents and procedures with which to counter Russia’s diplomatic pretensions.14 Likewise, in the scramble for empire in Africa and the Pacific, Hertslet’s detailed knowledge of past dealings, relevant maps and treaties, and his analyses of conflicting claims were to prove vital in concocting arguments in the pursuit of British commercial and strategic objectives. His papers on the status of protectorates and the formalities necessary for the effective occupation of territory delineated principles on the basis of which Britain’s delegates would negotiate at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884–5.15 In much the same fashion Hertslet was drawn into the protracted dispute between the British and Netherlands governments over the rights and interests of their FO 366/677, minute by Tenterden, 31 August 1871. LD, Corresp., vol. 4, memo. by E. Hertslet, 12 January 1884. 13 Ibid., E. Hertslet to Granville, minute, 19 March 1872. 14 Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 199–203. 15 S. E. Crowe, The Berlin West African Conference, 1884-1885 (London, 1942), pp. 185–56. However, contrary to what one of his contemporaries stated, Hertslet was not attached to the British mission to the West Africa conference. See: Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, The Life of Granville George LevesonGower, Second Earl Granville (2 vols, London, 1905), vol. 2, pp. 374–5. For a comprehensive review of the contents and significance of Edward Hertslet’s memoranda see: Hall, ‘Hertslet’, pp. 117–257. 12

 Managing the Past 159 citizens in Borneo and the delimitation of their territorial protectorates and possessions there. Finally, in July 1889, Salisbury appointed him to the commission which almost two years later would settle the boundary between the lands of the British North Borneo Company and those of the Dutch colonial administration. As one historian has commented, it was Hertslet’s ‘mastery of the intricacies of the problem which enabled him to put the case clearly and to be ever resourceful in suggesting solutions to the difficulties which arose during the course of the discussions’.16 Hertslet regarded the preparation of archive-based reports and memoranda as the ‘most important and responsible duty’ performed by his department, and during the eight years 1875–83 he and his colleagues drafted no less than 1,260 such papers, about 200 of which were printed for the Cabinet. This and a trebling since 1842 of Foreign Office correspondence provided him with ample ammunition to press again for more staff and some improvement in his department’s standing in the Office.17 But in the early 1870s he was spurred into action by the mounting dissatisfaction of Francis Irving with his comparatively poor pay and even poorer prospects of promotion. ‘I can’, Irving complained in November 1870, ‘confidently assert that there is no clerk in the Public Service employed upon work of similar importance and of a service of 25 years who is placed in the same position as I am, and in receipt of only £360 a year.’18 After consulting Hammond about Irving’s position, Hertslet resolved to appeal to Granville, the new Liberal foreign secretary, for salaries and status commensurate with the Office’s diplomatic establishment. In a twenty-one-page printed memorandum of 18 January 1871, he presented his case in much the same terms as he had done nearly ten years before. It was, he reasoned, ‘difficult to explain’ why his department still occupied an inferior position when the work entrusted to it could ‘not possibly be said to be less confidential or less responsible, or require a less amount of intelligence to discharge its duties than that required of other Departments’. And echoing an argument very often used by the Office in its exchanges with the Treasury, he stressed how it was impossible to compare the responsibilities of himself and his staff with those of the librarians of other government offices. Not only were they engaged in preparing analytical reports, they had also to handle international issues which because of their sensitivity required more care than purely domestic ones. ‘Under these circumstances’, he observed, ‘the importance of having in the Foreign Office a Department from which Precedents and information on every variety of subject can be quickly, readily, and accurately obtained, cannot be over-estimated.’ The librarian must have a general knowledge of ‘all the most important events of the day, as well as those which [had] occurred at least during the last half-century in every portion of the globe’, as well as such a knowledge of reference as would enable him to produce quickly any precedent required. Yet, Hertslet wanted more than just recognition of his and his department’s intellectual contribution to the work of the Office. He argued that: (1) he himself should receive £1,000 a year, the maximum salary of a senior clerk and the equivalent of what was paid to those responsible for archives in government service elsewhere; (2) the sub-librarian Green Ibid., p. 254. LD, Corresp., vol. 4, memo. by E. Hertslet, 12 January 1884. 18 LD, Corresp., 1865–89, Irving to Granville, draft letter. 4 November 1870. 16 17

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should be on the same scale as an assistant clerk in the political divisions (i.e. £550 to £650 a year); and (3) Irving, Sasse and Walmisley, the second-class library clerks, should be placed on the same footing as the first-class junior clerks of the political establishment (i.e. £350 to £545 a year). The position of others in his department should, he argued, likewise be generally improved.19 Within the Foreign Office there was considerable sympathy for the case presented by Hertslet. On 27 January nine senior and assistant clerks, including three future permanent undersecretaries (Tenterden, Currie and Sanderson), wrote to Hammond urging that Granville ‘strongly recommend’ Hertslet’s case to the Treasury.20 And Hammond gave Hertslet his backing, though he was pessimistic about the likely Treasury response and warned Granville that the supplemental clerks of the Chief Clerk’s and Treaty Departments would also expect equivalent salary rises. Moreover, much to Hertslet’s evident irritation, Granville preferred to wait until the parliamentary select committee then examining the state of the country’s consular and diplomatic services had completed its work.21 In consequence, Granville delayed acting for another eleven months and, though impressed by and grateful for, all the hard work the Librarian’s Department put into preparing for the Geneva tribunal, it was only on 2 December that he submitted Hertslet’s memorandum to the Treasury.22 Unfortunately for Hertslet and his colleagues the Treasury was not in a generous mood, and on 29 December 1871 Granville was informed in no uncertain terms that their lordships did not consider the salaries of the Librarian’s Department to be inadequate and that the distinction between the department and the general establishment of the Foreign Office did not in their opinion appear ‘to be in itself a reason for raising the lower scale of salaries’.23 Framed in these terms, it was a decision which left Hertslet flabbergasted. On what ground, he asked Granville, might his claim be advanced, for all such claims must be based ‘either on their own merits or by comparison with others’? The Treasury seemed to be saying ‘no matter how intellectual, confidential, arduous, or responsible might be the duties of the Librarian’s Department, or how highly attested’, they could ‘never give to those who serve[d] in that Department any claim to a higher rate of remuneration than that which they now receive[d], and which [was] only equal, in many instances, to the salaries assigned to clerks holding far inferior positions in other offices whose duties [were] mechanical rather than intellectual’.24 Hertslet’s language drew upon that of the Northcote-Trevelyan report which, in advocating a more meritocratic civil service, had emphasized ‘the importance of establishing a proper distinction between intellectual and mechanical labour’.25 Acting in the spirit of that report Robert Lowe, the Liberal chancellor of the exchequer, LD, Corresp., vol. 3, E. Hertslet to Hammond, letter, 17 December 1870. FO 366/677, memo. by E. Hertslet, 18 January 1871. 20 LD, Corresp., vol. 3, Tenterden to Green, letter, 24 January 1871; T. V. Lister to Hertslet, letter, 24 January 1871; Alston to E. Hertslet, letter, 27 January 1871. LD, Corresp., 1865–89, H. W. Wylde et al to Hammond, letter, 27 January 1871. 21 Ibid., minutes by Hammond and Granville, 29 January 1871. 22 Ibid., minutes by Enfield and Granville, 31 August 1871. 23 FO 366/432, W. Law to Hammond, letter, 29 December 1871. 24 FO 366/677, E. Hertslet to Granville, letter, 9 March 1872. 25 S. Heffer, High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain (London, 2014), pp. 472–3. 19

 Managing the Past 161 had won Gladstone’s support for the order-in-council of 4 June 1870 that required appointments to specified government departments to be made by means of open competitive examination. This the Foreign Office resisted. Granville maintained that candidates competing for clerkships must first be nominated, and that only young men whose antecedents and character were thoroughly known could be entrusted with the delicate and often confidential business of his office.26 The ensuing dispute bore upon Hertslet’s claims for improved remuneration for himself and his subordinates. When in the spring of 1872 Granville again pressed their case upon the Treasury, this time stressing the value of Hertslet’s abstracts and memoranda for himself and the Cabinet, he also requested commensurate rises for staff in the Chief Clerk’s and Treaty Departments.27 Meanwhile, in the hope that if more money were not forthcoming for his department his own ‘humble Services’ might be honoured with a knighthood, Hertslet drafted and had printed a twenty-three-page memorandum containing excerpts from articles, letters and minutes praising his and his father’s achievements as librarians and publicists. And while Hertslet was anxious that Hammond should not see the paper, he was encouraged by another of his contemporaries, Robert Meade, the assistant undersecretary at the Colonial Office, to press his case. The keeper of the public records and the librarian of the British Museum had been so honoured and, as Hertslet later observed to Lord Odo Russell, the British ambassador to Germany, he did not think there would be ‘any great presumption in [his] asking for a similar Reward, some day’.28 Hertslet had to wait another six years for the arrival of that day. He had to wait barely five months for a pay rise. But while in August 1872 the Treasury conceded that the present librarian and sub-librarian should be placed on the same pay scales as senior and assistant clerks of the regular establishment, it was not prepared to enter into a more extensive review of clerical pay ‘except as part of a general inquiry into its reorganization for the purpose of more fully applying to it the Principles of the Order-in-Council of 4 June 1870’. That implied the Office’s adopting recruitment by open competition and Granville, on Hammond’s advice, refused to accept this since those appointed to the Librarian’s Department would have access to ‘most secret and confidential transactions’.29 Hertslet, though still disgruntled at having another eight years to go before he received the maximum for his grade, had, however, achieved what had long been denied his father, the prospect of a salary for his work as librarian equivalent to that of other divisional heads. Irving, who shared many of the responsibilities of the librarian and sub-librarian, was by contrast left frustrated and disheartened with the income of a second-class supplementary clerk. A victim of interdepartmental squabbling over Civil Service reform and a prejudice which favoured the generalists of the clerical establishment over those with specialist knowledge and J. Roach, Public Examinations in England, 1850-1900 (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 210–11. LD, Corresp., 1865–89, Granville to Treasury, letter, 16 May 1872. 28 FO 918/40, memo. by E. Hertslet, 13 March 1872; E. Hertslet to O. Russell, letters, 26 December 1872. 29 LD, Corresp., 1865–89, Lingen to Hammond, letter, 10 June 1872; Hammond to Treasury, letter, 20 June 1872; Treasury to Hammond, letter, 12 August 1872. Anderson, ‘Edmund Hammond’, pp. 198–9. 26 27

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skills, he remained on a lower footing than supplementary clerks of other departments who had served less time than himself.30 His seniors were nonetheless supportive. Although Hammond was reluctant to reopen his case with the Treasury, in March 1873 he facilitated his transfer to a better paid position as assistant to George March, who had once been his junior in the library, but had recently risen to be superintendent of the Treaty Department. It was unfortunate that he there encountered the journalist Charles Marvin who, after exposing Salisbury’s secret diplomacy, went on in 1879 to publish a self-serving memoir in which he mocked Irving as the ‘impetuous Hervin . . . for twenty years the prop and pride of the Library and now Deputy-Chief of the Treaty Department’.31 Irving was not alone in feeling that he had been hard done by. Most, if not all, of the permanent staff of the Librarian’s Department nursed a grievance over their supplemental status and the way in which they were treated as inferior to clerks employed in the Office’s political divisions. Although the standards set in the qualifying examination for their entry into the Foreign Office were somewhat lower, they had otherwise been recruited in much the same manner.32 Their work was hardly less intellectual, and certainly bore little resemblance to the more mechanical duties of the supplementary clerks of other government departments. Yet, as Augustus Oakes, a recently promoted second-class library clerk, pointed out in a memorandum of June 1874, after sixteen years’ service he was earning £265 per annum and must wait seven more years before he received a salary of £360, the maximum for his grade. Meanwhile, a clerk in one of the political divisions who had joined the Office a year later than himself enjoyed a salary of £440 rising to £545, and stood first in line for promotion to an assistant clerkship.33 Hammond may have come to think highly of the Librarian’s Department and, on learning in February 1874 of Hertslet’s appointment as a companion of the Order of the Bath (C.B.), he wrote in a congratulatory letter that he hoped the award would satisfy members of his division that their importance was ‘appretiated [sic]’.34 However, the library clerks wanted more than appreciation and reflected honour. Their opportunities for career advancement within the Office were strictly limited and, towards the end of 1873, Sasse and Walmisley, both long-standing second-class library clerks, appealed to Granville for some improvement in their pay and standing.35 The moment was propitious. Work on making up the registry arrears was due for completion in June 1874, and that would mean the departure of temporary staff, the end of allowances paid for overtime and superintendence, and a net saving to the Treasury of £970 a year. Lord Enfield, Granville’s parliamentary undersecretary,

Ibid., Irving to Hammond, letter, 3 September 1872, attaching draft letter to Treasury. Ibid., Hammond to Irving, minute, 27 June 1872; Irving and Oakes to Hammond, minute, 17 February 1873. FO 366/677, minute by Granville, 11 March 1873. C. Marvin, Our Public Offices: Embodying an Account of the Disclosure of the Anglo-Russian Agreement and the unrevealed Treaty of May 31st, 1878 (London, 1879), pp. 206–7. 32 Jones, Foreign Office, p. 61. 33 LD, Corresp., 1865–89, memo. by Oakes, 1 June 1874. 34 Ibid., Hammond to E. Hertslet, letter, 24 February 1874. 35 Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 4 July 1874. 30 31

 Managing the Past 163 therefore proposed to the Treasury that this might be a fitting occasion for regrading Sasse and Walmisley as first-class supplementary clerks.36 The Treasury was not unsympathetic to what barely qualified as a modest reform. But rather than dealing with the issue in a piecemeal fashion, it preferred to defer any review until the end of June when, it informed the Office, the Librarian’s Department’s ‘entire staff [could] be put upon a footing which [might] not require alteration for some considerable time’.37 This allowed Hertslet time in which to take further soundings of his clerks. They urged on him the need for a thorough reconstruction of the department, and in a memorandum of 4 July 1874 Hertslet returned to his proposal of January 1871 for the reclassification of library clerks on the same salary scales as those of the first-, second- and third-class junior clerks of the political divisions. While in some cases this would have involved a reduction in current income (a problem which Hertslet thought might be overcome by the grant of additional personal allowances), it held out the prospect of substantial rises.38 The hopes of Hertslet and his staff were, however, soon to be dashed. Derby, Granville’s Conservative successor, chose to ignore Hertslet’s recommendations and, with Treasury approval, decided to implement Enfield’s original proposals, raising Sasse and Walmisley to the level of first-class supplementary clerks, but leaving Oakes and the other permanent library clerks in their current grades. Moreover, the Treasury seemed to close any prospect of advancement. ‘Their Lordships trust’, stated the Treasury letter of 16 September, ‘that no further increase or change in the Librarian’s Department of the Foreign Office may be necessary for some considerable time.’39 One other clerk stood nonetheless to benefit. The energetic Percy Carpenter was still a temporary library clerk, his hopes of returning to Windsor Castle as librarian having been dashed when in 1869 Clarendon declined to recommend him for the post because he had another candidate in mind.40 Four years later, when, for want of space, it was decided to transfer the Board of Trade’s library to the Foreign Office, the size of the department’s printed collection doubled from approximately 30,000 to 60,000 volumes, and the task of handling the new books and updating the library catalogue fell to Carpenter. Impressed by his work, Hertslet thought his position should be made permanent and that he should in effect have charge of the printed library, and with Treasury consent Carpenter was from 1 July 1874 ranked alongside Oakes as a second-class supplementary clerk.41 Oakes and others amongst his junior colleagues may have been disappointed with a settlement which brought no improvement to their pay and grading. But natural causes 38 39

Ibid., Enfield to Treasury, letter, 12 January 1874. Ibid., Law to Tenterden, letter, 24 February 1874. Ibid., Walmisley et al. to E. Hertslet, minute, 6 April 1874; memo. by E. Hertslet, 25 June 1874. Ibid., Tenterden to Treasury, letter, 17 July 1874; William Law (Treasury) to Tenterden, letter, 16 September 1874. 40 Bodleian Library, Clarendon Papers, Clar. Dep. c. 503, Hammond to Clarendon, letter with note, 30 October 1869. 41 LD, Corresp., vol. 3, W. Law (Treasury) to Hammond, letter, 29 January 1873; memo. by E. Hertslet, 13 November 1873. LD, Corresp., 1865–89, memo. by E. Hertslet, 25 June 1874. In 1908 the Board of Trade at last found space in which to accommodate its library, which was subsequently transferred to its offices in Whitehall Gardens. FO 370/18, L1786, H. Llewellyn Smith to C. Hardinge, letter, 16 January 1908; Walter Langley to Llewellyn Smith, letter, 30 January 1908. 36 37

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and promotion by seniority soon worked in their favour. Green took ill in the summer of 1875 and his death that autumn was followed by the appointment of Walmisley as sub-librarian, and Oakes then joined Sasse as a first-class supplementary clerk with a prospective maximum salary of £500 a year.42 When Sasse died in June 1879, Oakes was left the senior of his grade, and on Walmisley’s retirement in 1889 he was made sub-librarian and henceforth Hertslet’s assumed successor.43 He and Walmisley, nevertheless, continued to resent the inferior treatment so frequently meted out to them. In 1878 they agreed to take on the task of seeking out and editing for printing law officer reports from 1869 to 1877. This involved their researching departmental registers; identifying reports in bound volumes; drafting explanatory footnotes and marginal comments; and proofreading and checking the printed texts. And since their days were already fully occupied in the reference room and with the preparation of abstracts and memoranda, almost all of the work on the reports had to be done in their own time, including their holidays. Yet, after spending three years in completing the project, they learnt in June 1881 that Tenterden had recommended to the Treasury that they should each receive £50 as a gratuity for their efforts. The sum was rather less than the £60 usually awarded to clerks of the political departments for extra labour and amounted to barely £17 a year. It could, Oakes and Walmisley protested to Hertslet, ‘scarcely be considered an adequate compensation for a work where accuracy and precision [were] so indispensably necessary’.44 Perhaps Oakes and Walmisley would have been less dissatisfied had they, like another of their number, set aside the pursuit of earthly riches and devoted themselves to the achievement of heavenly salvation. During the late 1880s Maximilien Carden, a library clerk since 1876, underwent a religious conversion and joined the Salvation Army. This would not have mattered to the Foreign Office had he not taken first to wearing in his button hole a large brass ‘S’ badge inscribed with the Army’s motto ‘Blood and Fire’, and then to interrupting work in the long room adjoining the reference room by singing hymns and preaching aloud at set hours in the afternoon. Persuaded by his colleagues to abandon this practice, in October 1889 he decided to advertise his faith by donning his blue Salvation Army cap on his journeys to and from the Office in the belief, he informed Hertslet, that in so doing he would attract ‘drunkards and other bad characters to the Army barracks’. Hertslet feared that if Carden were permitted to wear his cap within the precincts of the Office he would soon adopt a militarystyled tunic as well. Alston agreed. He found ‘any peculiarity of dress’ objectionable at a government office, and affirmed that he would certainly remonstrate if one of his ‘young men came to work in knickerbockers’. Sir Philip Currie, who was by then permanent undersecretary, thought no exception could be made to the rule against ‘wearing any other than ordinary dress’ while in the department. Diplomacy might yield to Treasury constraints, but there would be no surrender to evangelical ardour.45 FO 366/667, minutes by Derby, 8 October, 13 and 17 November 1875. FO 366/678, minutes by Tenterden, 4 June 1879, and Alston, 17 June 1879. FO 366/724, minute by Currie, 15 July 1889. 44 LD, Corresp., 1865–89, Oakes and Walmisley to Hertslet, letter, 18 June 1881. 45 LD, Corresp., vol. 4, E. Hertslet to Alston, minutes, 27 October and 11 November 1889, with minute by Alston; Carden to E. Hertslet, letter, 11 November 1889; Currie to E. Hertslet, minute, 12 42 43

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Archives, arrears and registers In consenting to the gratuities sought for Oakes and Walmisley, Sir Ralph Lingen, the Treasury permanent secretary, expressed his department’s satisfaction at learning that no such arrear was again likely to occur in the law officers’ reports and that the librarian had ‘undertaken personally to superintend (during Office hours) the printing, registering and indexing of them in future’.46 The management of Foreign Office records was a matter of some concern to the Treasury. Hertslet’s division may have been what the Treasury described as a ‘Dept. of Record & Research, & of editing’, but it seemed incapable of keeping up with an ever-expanding inflow of correspondence. Moreover, even in the mid-1880s there remained departmental records which were outside its administrative purview. Willoughby Maycock, who was responsible for the registration and arrangement of the papers of the Commercial Department and for the preparation and indexing of commercial reports for publication, was on the Treasury’s insistence ranked as a second-class library clerk. However, Maycock, formerly a supplementary clerk in the Chief Clerk’s Department, was never considered a member of Hertslet’s staff.47 The Slave Trade Department had likewise once been custodian of its own records. Since its inception in the 1820s the department had overseen the Office’s correspondence relating to British efforts to suppress slave trafficking, publishing much of this in the form of parliamentary papers. Yet, while, following the retirement of Bandinel in 1845, its records had been lodged with the Librarian’s Department, they had not been entered in the register there and by 1876 their indexing was some thirty years in arrears. Pressed on the matter, the Treasury agreed to the employment of two temporary clerks to bring the indexes up to date. The Treasury was nevertheless clearly of the opinion that in future the responsibility for registering and indexing the slave trade correspondence lay with the Librarian’s Department.48 This Hertslet resisted. He claimed that his department was only organized to deal with the political, commercial and consular correspondence of the Office, and that if that of the Slave Trade Department continued, or increased, it was impossible to promise that further assistance might not be required. Indeed, it was difficult to see how the existing registry clerks could cope with current demands upon their time. The number of Foreign Office papers sent and received annually had risen to about 70,000, and by December 1883 there was already a backlog of 563,703 papers awaiting registration.49 Yet, Lingen, who was opposed to sanctioning any large addition to Hertslet’s staff, questioned both the significance of the arrears and the registering procedures of the Foreign Office. If such a large backlog of unregistered papers had accumulated without bringing the Office to a halt, then Lingen suggested, ‘its continued growth must be a less formidable danger than it looks’. Might not, he speculated, a large portion of the November 1889. FO 366/678, Lingen to Tenterden, letter, 22 July 1881. 47 LD, Corresp., 1865–89, Welby to Pauncefote, letter, 6 November 1885. London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Maycock Papers, F/MCK/22, Index to Diplomatic and Consular Reports; Newspaper Notices; Minutes &c., passim. 48 LD, Gen., FO Organisation, Discipline etc., 1844–1932, memo. by F. H. Villiers, 10 November 1883. 49 Ibid. 46

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papers be destroyed at a comparatively early date, and the Foreign Office adopt the registry practice of the Treasury and other ministries? Treasury correspondence was first entered in a general registry, then distributed to divisions for minuting, and finally sent to a paper room for indexing and safe keeping. From the viewpoint of the Treasury it seemed as though the Foreign Office were operating a system of dual registration. There each department filed its own archives for the current and preceding year, with a brief summary of each paper being entered in a diary. Papers were then delivered, along with the diaries, to the Librarian’s Department where they were re-arranged and prepared for binding. Indexed registers were then compiled, providing detailed and more elaborate summaries of volume contents in order to facilitate retrieval and research.50 Hertslet accepted that there was scope for reducing the number of papers sent to his department for preservation. He thought that consular returns on fees and shipping and their covering despatches, as well as statements of leave of absence, quarterly accounts and so forth, might conveniently be disposed of, as could other papers which departments might mark for destruction. This, however, would hardly have affected the great bulk of the correspondence reaching the library registry, most of which was political and commercial, and the indexing of which was considered vital. The main cause of the arrears was, Hertslet pointed out, ‘the constant and almost daily employment of some of the Registering Clerks in searching through the Departmental diaries for information which [was] required in the various Departments of the Office’.51 And while a general registry would relieve clerks of the political departments of the drudgery of keeping up the diaries, it could not, in Hertslet’s opinion, be established ‘without bringing about a complete revolution in the whole system of the Foreign Office’.52 It was, for instance, less than obvious as to who would man it. Francis Hyde Villiers assumed that it would be staffed by lower-division clerks, a relatively new class of civil servants whose work was meant to be primarily mechanical and who ranked beneath the clerks of the regular establishment and their supplemental colleagues.53 Six-lower division clerks, recruited in 1882, had been divided equally amongst the Commercial, Consular and Chief Clerk’s, Departments. Their duties extended beyond the copying of documents for signature, and their contribution to the smooth running of the Commercial Department was particularly valued.54 There was, however, considerable reluctance in the Office to allowing lower-division clerks to handle secret and confidential material, and Villiers rejected the idea of having them register and index political correspondence.55 The librarian was less emphatic. On a memorandum by Oakes, in which the latter seemed to accept that the only expansion of the Librarian’s Department acceptable to Ibid., Lingen to Fitzmaurice, letter, 22 December 1883. FO 97/505, memo. attached to Pauncefote to Salisbury, minute, 24 March 1887. 51 LD, Gen., FO Organisation, Discipline, etc., 1844–1932, memo. by E. Hertslet, 5 January 1884. Emphasis in original. 52 Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Establishments (C 6172) (1890), minutes, para. 27,546. 53 Ibid., memo. by Villiers, 7 January 1884. 54 FO 366/678, minute by C. Kennedy, 5 December 1882. 55 LD, Gen., FO Organisation, Discipline, etc., 1844–1932, memo. by Villiers, 7 January 1884. 50

 Managing the Past 167 the Treasury must involve the recruitment of lower-division registry clerks, Hertslet pencilled in the margin: ‘If the Treasury appoint them, I have no objection to offer, but I would not like to have the responsibility of recommending that Lower Division Clerks should be employed upon such Confidential Work as this.’56 What Oakes had in mind was: the recruitment of five lower-division clerks solely for work in the registry; the early retirement of three of the present supplementary clerks in order to offset any increase in costs; the transfer of the remaining registry clerks to the reference room; and the imposition on consulates and smaller missions of an obligation to complete detailed returns of their correspondence so that these could be bound with the registers and subsequently indexed. He also urged that in view of future savings which might thereby be achieved, the salaries of library clerks should be fully assimilated with those of the regular establishment of the Office.57 There was little immediate prospect of such a scheme being endorsed by the Treasury. Only in June 1886 was the staffing of Hertslet’s department referred, along with matters relating to the increase in the general and legal business of the Office, to a joint Foreign Office/Treasury committee. By then, Hertslet was so anxious to ‘stem the tide of arrears’ that, while he feared for the future efficiency of the Office, he was ready to have papers registered and indexed by whatever method the Treasury might propose. A general election and a change of government delayed matters further and the Treasury stalled in responding to repeated requests for more library clerks.58 Finally, in June 1888, Salisbury, who was by then both prime minister and foreign secretary, lost patience with Treasury officials and had Sir Julian Pauncefote, the permanent undersecretary, demand the employment of four lower-division library clerks, and an additional ten temporary ones to deal specifically with almost a million unregistered papers. The situation was urgent since, except in the case of three countries up until 1881, there was no library register or indexes for the previous ten years. ‘The current business of the Office’, Pauncefote wrote, ‘depends entirely upon the memory, fortunately extensive, of Sir Edward Hertslet and his staff. It is naturally, for many reasons, not safe to rely upon this resource.’59 The Treasury lords did not doubt Hertslet’s competence. They did question his department’s methods. Thus, in assenting to the proposed staff increases, they cautioned that ‘it would be wiser to defer permanent addition to the establishment until the future organisation of the Librarian’s Department [had] been definitely settled’.60 This the Office chose to ignore, and in the autumn of 1888 four lower-division clerks joined ten temporary employees. Under the superintendence of Percy Carpenter, the latter were set to work on making up the arrears of the years 1868–81, a task which LD, Corresp., 1865–89, marginal annotation by E. Hertslet on memo. by Oakes, 19 January 1884. Emphasis in original. 57 Ibid. 58 Hertslet reckoned that four clerks could register and index 42,400 papers a year. But in the three years 1883–5 his department received an average of 75,000 papers annually. LD, Corresp., vol. 4, E. Hertslet to Pauncefote, letter, 3 March 1886; memo. by E. Hertslet, 3 November 1886. FO 366/724, Pauncefote to Treasury, letters, 21 and 27 July, 21 December 1886, and 24 May 1887; H. H. Fowler to FO, letter, 2 August 1886; C. G. Barrington to FO, letter, 13 January 1887; memo. by Villiers, 27 April 1887; Welby to FO, letter, 30 June 1887. 59 Ibid., Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 4 June 1888. 60 Ibid., W. Jackson to FO, letter, 9 July 1888. 56

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by December 1892 they were close to completing well ahead of schedule; and during the remaining months of their five-year contracts they assisted their lower-division colleagues registering and indexing correspondence of the mid-1880s. No restriction was initially placed on the papers entrusted to temporary and lower-division clerks for registering and indexing. But Pauncefote’s successor, Currie, ruled that their indexing should be confined to ‘Commercial, Consular, South American, Chinese & Japanese, and other Papers of minor political importance’. In consequence of these strictures and the deployment of other library staff elsewhere, by June 1895 some 951 volumes of pre-1890 political correspondence were still awaiting registration.61 Meanwhile, the administration of the Librarian’s Department was scrutinized by the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments which, under the chairmanship of Sir Matthew Ridley, enquired into the workings of both the Foreign Office and the diplomatic service. The Ridley Commission’s report of 1890 could hardly have been congenial to Hertslet and his colleagues. Little heed seems to have been paid to Hertslet’s assertion that his department’s arrears were due to delays in providing him with sufficient staff. Indeed, in line with Treasury thinking, the commission concluded that the existing library registry system stood ‘self-condemned’ and should be scrapped, and it recommended that henceforth each Foreign Office department should take responsibility for keeping a regular register of its papers. Papers would then be entered up and indexed daily by departments, and at the end of two years they, the registers and indexes, were to be handed to the Librarian’s Department for custody and eventual binding. At a departmental level such work, it was thought, would ‘be useful training for the junior political clerks and diplomats, provided they were not kept at it for too long a period’. The Commission’s report also favoured the progressive phasing out of the supplementary clerks in what it termed the ‘subsidiary or nonpolitical departments’ and their replacement with those of the second (i.e. lower) division. Staff officer posts, higher-grade appointments to which second-division clerks could aspire, might, the Commission suggested, gradually be substituted for the more senior of the supplementary positions.62 The Foreign Office’s adoption of the Commission’s proposals regarding the registration of papers meant a diminution in the work of the Librarian’s Department and a parallel reduction in staffing. Carpenter retired in January 1892 and, with Hertslet’s concurrence, Villiers announced in June that the vacancy thus created would not be filled, and that, while all the department’s remaining supplementary clerks would stay in post until they too were pensioned off, their number would be progressively reduced from seven to four.63 Apart from Carpenter’s departure, there was barely any change in the size and composition of the Librarian’s Department until 1895 when Sanderson, Hervey and The temporary clerks were engaged from 29 October 1888 to 28 October 1893. LD, Corresp, vol. 5, minutes by Carpenter, 29 November and 2 December 1892; minute by E. Hertslet, 29 December 1892; memo. by E. Hertslet, 4 June 1895, and undated return of political correspondence for registration. 62 Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Establishments (c 6172), pp. 6–7. 63 FO 366/713, memo. by Villiers, 27 June 1892; minute by Currie, 29 June 1892; Currie to Treasury, letter, 11 August 1892; Welby to Currie, letter, 12 August 1892. 61

 Managing the Past 169 Sir Francis Mowatt, the Treasury’s new permanent secretary, formed a committee to oversee the implementation of the Commission’s proposals with regard to the phasing out of supplementary clerks.64 Oakes, with an eye on his bureaucratic inheritance, was determined to have a say in the matter. Far from happy with recommendations whose acceptance would, he feared, ‘amount practically to the absolute obliteration of the [Librarian’s] Department’, he revived earlier ideas for amalgamating the library’s supplementary clerks with the regular establishment of the Office. In a memorandum of 28 December 1894 he outlined a scheme for a rebranded ‘Library and Intelligence Department’, in which the remaining supplementary clerks would become first- and second-class junior clerks, and a second-division clerk would be charged with the superintendence of the printed library. Two or three other second-division clerks would then handle the non-confidential work of the department, such as those relating to parliamentary papers and the cataloguing of books, manuscript volumes and maps. Echoing sentiments previously evoked by both Lewis and Edward Hertslet, he reminded Sanderson and Hervey: ‘The existence of a central source of information embracing every subject and covering every quarter of the Globe cannot fail to be acknowledged to be of importance by those who have the knowledge and experience to appreciate it.’65 Hervey had no objection to the principle involved in Oakes’s scheme. He did not, however, go so far as to give explicit support to the full amalgamation of the library clerks with those of the political departments. Rather, he favoured making the higher posts in the supplementary class staff appointments and assimilating ‘their rank & pay to that of the rest of the Office’.66 Salisbury, after his return to the Foreign Office in June 1895, was similarly anxious to protect the pay and promotion prospects of longserving supplementary clerks. As a second-class library clerk, Gaston de Bernhardt, the son of the passport clerk Frédéric de Bernhardt, might for instance quite reasonably have expected that on Hertslet’s forthcoming retirement he would be promoted to a first-class clerkship with a salary advancing by annual £20 increments from £400 to £500 a year. Yet, if he were appointed a staff officer, his salary would be on a scale rising from £300 to £450 with annual increments of only £15. Salisbury also insisted on the need to have, besides the librarian and sub-librarian, three clerks of at least staff officer rank. Otherwise, Sanderson informed the Treasury in a letter of 27 January 1896, it would be impossible ‘to guarantee that the work of the Department which [was] of great importance [could] be efficiently and satisfactorily conducted’.67 The Treasury, whose interests lay not just in reforming the administrative structure of the Foreign Office, but also in saving public money, was ready to concede. The career prospects of the most senior of the current supplementary clerks were guaranteed, and Salisbury was allowed the three staff officers he wanted for the Librarian’s Department. Hertslet’s third son, Godfrey, who had joined the department as a third-class supplementary clerk in August 1890, was nevertheless disappointed to learn that he would have to FO 366/760, Sanderson to Salisbury, minute, 14 November 1895. LD, Corresp., vol. 3A, Oakes to Sanderson, letter, 28 December 1894; memos. by Oakes, 24 and 28 December 1894. 66 Ibid., minute by Hervey, 3 January 1895. 67 LD, Corresp., vol. 5, Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 27 January 1896. 64 65

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await a vacancy amongst the staff officers if he were ever to secure promotion. The department which five years earlier had, in addition to the librarian and sub-librarian, included eight supplementary clerks, four second-division clerks and ten temporary clerks, would, once the Treasury plans were put fully into force, be reduced to the librarian and his assistant, three staff officers and five second-division clerks.68 These cuts were predicated on the optimistic assumption that papers could be fully and effectively registered and indexed by the clerks of the political departments.

Publishing the record The registers and indexes were not all that had fallen into arrear. Robert Wilson’s death in 1839 had deprived Lewis Hertslet of assistance on which he had come to rely, and in consequence he had been unable to maintain a steady output in compiling the British and Foreign State Papers. No more than two volumes of the series were completed during the following decade, and Volumes 28 and 29, which appeared in his final year as librarian, did not extend documentary coverage beyond 1841. The publication was increasingly more of historical than current political significance, and it failed to satisfy parliamentarians seeking readier access to records bearing on Britain’s role in international diplomacy. Speaking in the Commons on 12 February 1857, Disraeli urged that Foreign Office ‘show a little more energy in the production of their valuable collection’.69 Edward Hertslet threw himself into the task. He frequently began work at 6.00 am, and devoted on average four hours of his leisure time a day to the series, all in the hope of compiling three volumes a year.70 This he achieved in 1865 when Volumes 44–6 were completed, covering the years 1853–6, and, although the rate of production soon dropped back to two volumes a year, those that appeared in 1870 brought documentation up to 1866. Hertslet also published a general index to the collection, and he supported a reduction in the price of volumes from 30s. to 10s. He could not, however, escape censure in Parliament. On 6 April 1865 two Liberal MPs, Henry Seymour and James White, launched a blistering attack upon the scope, price and contents of the volumes. A great portion of the work, Seymour claimed, ‘was perfectly valueless, and ought never to have been published at the public expense’. And at a time when the Schleswig-Holstein question was high on the European political agenda, White asserted that he had been unable to find the Danish Succession Treaty of 1852 in a volume published in 1863, and he instanced one of those of 1865 as being ‘stuffed with details of palavers and agreements in reference to the slave trade, made

FO 366/760, E. W. Hamilton to Sanderson, letter, 7 February 1896. Godfrey Hertslet had hoped that the resignation of Carden, then the most senior of the second-class supplementary clerks, would lead to his own promotion. FO 366/715, E. Hertslet to Oakes, letter, 17 March 1896; Oakes to Dallas, letter, 21 March 1896; Dallas to Sanderson, minute, 21 March 1896; E. Hertslet to G. Hertslet, letter, 25 March 1896. 69 Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, HC Deb (3rd series), 12 February 1857, vol. 144, cc. 593–6. 70 FO 83/287, memos. by E. Hertslet, 26 July 1862, 21 July 1864, and 21 March 1865. 68

 Managing the Past 171 ten years previously with . . . petty chiefs on the West Coast of Africa; not one of whom was able to write his own name’.71 Pained by these criticisms and disturbed by Seymour’s call for Parliament to stop funding the printing of the volumes, Edward Hertslet drafted memoranda in defence of his own and his father’s labours. He admitted that with additional help he might be able to bring out volumes covering the immediately preceding year, but that would probably mean having to resort to supplementary volumes to include documents not available at the time of publication.72 The Danish Succession Treaty had, for example, not been made public until 1864 and if White had cared to look he would have found it printed in the State Papers of that year. He also rejected claims that much of what was contained in the volumes was trivial or irrelevant. Seymour’s disparaging of the inclusion of treaties between the US government and various Indian tribes, he countered with the argument that these had an obvious bearing on boundaries, trade and other intercourse between Britain and its neighbours in North America. Likewise, he insisted on the relevance of the slave trade treaties for British naval commanders.73 Neither the passage of time nor the illiteracy of some of the parties to these accords had diminished their importance for the political geography of West Africa. The information and precedents provided by the State Papers were indeed much appreciated by diplomats, historians and international lawyers alike. John Russell, the foreign secretary, and his undersecretaries, Hammond and Layard, agreed on the merits of the series, and William Vernon Harcourt, the future Liberal home secretary, was fulsome in his praise of Edward Hertslet’s work as editor. Using the pseudonym ‘Historicus’, Harcourt wrote to The Times in praise of the librarian and those who laboured with ‘unwearied and disinterested assiduity in preparing the materials which other minds [were] enabled to work up’ and who seemed ‘among the most meritorious, but the least rewarded among the toilers in the vineyard of literature’.74 Hertslet hoped that the ‘small nest of “conspirators”’ who had assailed him in the Commons would ‘not again dare to show their faces’.75 That, however, they did. On 1 June 1865 Seymour and White resumed their offensive, again emphasizing the apparent irrelevance of much of Hertslet’s compilation. As in April so in June Layard rose to Hertslet’s defence. But in his reply he was reported in The Times (though not in Hansard) as having told the Commons that ‘he did not say that they [the State Papers] were by any means perfect or could not be improved’.76 It was a remark which further upset Hertslet who was ‘at a loss to suggest any improvement in the work’.77 Seymour, nonetheless, had grounds for questioning the true value of volumes purporting to be a ‘selection of the most important Documents which [bore] upon the Political and 73 74

HC Deb (3rd series), 6 April 1865, vol. 178, cc. 789–92. FO 83/287, memo. by E. Hertslet, 21 March 1865. Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, n.d. April 1865. Ibid., minutes by Hammond and J. Russell on memo. by E. Hertslet, 7 April 1865; letter from Historicus, The Times, 25 April 1865. 75 Ibid., E. Hertslet to Harcourt, letter, 25 April 1865. 76 Ibid., extract from The Times, 2 June 1865. Hansard recorded Layard as having said that Seymour ‘had very much underrated the value and importance of these papers, although they might not be perfect’. HC Deb (3rd series), 1 June 1865, vol. 179, cc. 1140–2. 77 FO 83/287, E. Hertslet to J. Russell, letter, 2 June 1865. 71 72

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Commercial Relations of Foreign Powers towards each other’.78 Their contents had, after all, already been published in one form or another, and some of the printed documents were unlikely to be of more than ephemeral interest to even the most earnest students and practitioners of international affairs. Hertslet himself doubted the merits of continuing to include resumés of the public accounts of Britain, France and Belgium, particularly when these dated from ten or more years previous, and he agreed that these should be omitted from future volumes.79 In any event, the Commons did not return to the subject; Parliament continued to meet the cost of printing volumes; and the series remained in production until well into the second half of the twentieth century.80 When Seymour first raised the issue of the future of the State Papers he also enquired after the status of Hertslet’s Commercial Treaties. This, however, was still a private undertaking and, up until the appearance of Volume 11 in 1867, it remained the responsibility of Lewis Hertslet.81 Thereafter, Edward Hertslet took over the copyright of the series, making a small profit and recouping the costs of printing and publication from Stationery Office sales to the Foreign Office and other government departments. He also went on to edit and sell a number of separate country-specific volumes.82 In 1865 Seymour seemed ready to acquiesce in Layard’s assurance that the Commercial Treaties were ‘purely a private work’.83 Almost two decades later an economizing Treasury was less easily satisfied with this state of affairs. An Admiralty request in May 1883 for sanction to purchase 565 current and past volumes of Commercial Treaties, the lowest tendered cost of which came to £528 18s. 9d., was met with consternation in the Treasury. In Lingen’s opinion the price charged for the books was too high. Volume 14 of the series, the latest edited by Edward Hertslet, appeared, he claimed, to be ‘nothing but a compilation of official documents’, which could have been printed by the Stationery Office at a third of the cost departments were now expected to pay. He therefore asked in a letter to the Foreign Office whether in the event of another volume being called for ‘it should not be prepared as a strictly public document, and printed by the Stationery Office’, leaving open to question whether the editor, as a public servant, should receive any special remuneration.84 A series which Lewis Hertslet had once hoped could ‘be recognised and treated as an Official Work’ might in effect become just that.85 Edward Hertslet naturally resented Lingen’s description of his volumes and, as he pointed out in a memorandum of 11 May 1883, there was much more to editing the Commercial Treaties than simply assembling a collection of official documents. Indexing was itself a time-consuming business and, along with other editorial work, Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 7 April 1865. Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, n.d. April 1865. 80 Between his father’s retirement in 1857 and March 1877 Edward Hertslet compiled and published thirty-five volumes of State Papers, bringing the series down to 1871. LD, Corresp., vol. 3, memo. by E. Hertslet, 18 March 1877. 81 FO 83/636, E. Hertslet to G. W. Clarke, letter, 1 October 1867. 82 Hall, ‘Hertslet’, pp. 299–303. 83 HC Deb (3rd series), 6 April 1865, vol. 178, cc. 789–92. 84 FO 83/1274, Lingen to Pauncefote, letter, 5 May 1883. 85 FO 83/636, memo. by L. Hertslet, 24 August 1855. 78 79

 Managing the Past 173 was accomplished at Hertslet’s home and outside office hours. As for the remuneration he received from volume sales, that in Hertslet’s opinion was ‘by no means excessive’ and but a fair reward for the labour involved and the financial risks incurred. If, however, Granville agreed that the government should itself publish a work similar to his own, then Hertslet was prepared to consider any proposition made by the Treasury for purchase of his copyright and the remaining stock of volumes.86 That was unlikely, more especially as Granville thought there could be ‘few civil servants more worthy of their cost to the state than Sir E. Hertslet’.87 But it was Pauncefote, formerly the Office’s legal undersecretary, who, apart from Hertslet himself, was the most outraged by the Treasury’s proposal. He thought the government very fortunate to have the volumes at their current price, and minuted in no uncertain terms: The copyright belongs to Sir E. Hertslet, & it would be Piracy to reprint them (as suggested by the Treasury) in order to get the benefit of his skill and labour at a cheaper rate. I never heard a more shabby proposal from the Treasury or any other public body. It is bad enough to scrape the incomes of public servants, but to endeavour to make a profit by scraping their brains is a refinement of economy, not hitherto attempted.88

Duly informed of Foreign Office thinking on the subject, the Treasury desisted from pressing its case.89 Hertslet, nonetheless, stood to lose £500, for in August he learnt that the Admiralty was cancelling its order and that it was improbable that it would require any more volumes for some considerable time. There had, Hertslet believed, been ‘some underhand work going on somewhere’, and he suspected someone in the Treasury was to blame.90 When two years later the Treasury again tried to curb departmental spending on his volumes, Hertslet believed himself a victim of official persecution, subject to such ‘perpetual attacks’ as denied him all pleasure received from ministerial approval of his work.91 That said, after his retirement as librarian in 1896 Hertslet was eager to part with his interest in the series. He offered both the copyright and his remaining stock of 3,401 volumes to the government for £1,500. The Treasury offered £850, a figure based on an assumed value of 5s. per volume, and made no mention of the copyright. This, Hertslet informed Sanderson, he was ready to accept ‘without a murmur’. But there were discrepancies in the number and quality of volumes available and consequential delays in the settling of accounts. Godfrey Hertslet acted as an intermediary, and in late September 1897 a cheque was finally despatched in payment for the precious books.92 Henceforth the Commercial Treaties, 88 89 90 91 92 86 87

FO 83/1274, memo. by E. Hertslet, 11 May 1883; minute by E. Hertslet, 20 October 1885. Ibid., minute by Granville, 20 May 1883. Ibid., minute by Pauncefote, n.d. May 1883. Ibid., Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 6 June 1883. Ibid., H. R. Yorke to Alston, letter, 20 August 1883; Hertslet to Alston, minute, 21 August 1883. Ibid., G. S. Ryder to Pauncefote, letter, 16 October 1885; minute by E. Hertslet, 20 October 1885. FO 83/1585, E. Hertslet to Sanderson, letter, 1 July 1897; J. J. Anderson (Stationery Office) to E. Hertslet, letter, 16 August 1897; E. Hertslet to G. Hertslet, letters, 18 and 26 August, 17 and 21 September 1897; G. Hertslet to E. Hertslet, letters, 20 and 23 September 1897; G. Hertslet to Anderson, letter, 24 September 1897; Anderson to G. Hertslet, letter, 25 September 1897.

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like the State Papers, were to be printed and published by the Stationery Office. Their editing was to remain the responsibility of the Foreign Office with the joint editors receiving annually an average of £185.93 The State Papers and the Commercial Treaties were works which Edward Hertslet inherited from his father, and which in time two of his sons, Cecil and Godfrey, would take a hand in editing. However, prior to his appointment as librarian Edward Hertslet had also become an editor of the Foreign Office List. The latter, an annual publication which eventually listed all appointments and promotions in the Foreign Office as well as those of the diplomatic and consular services, and which provided detailed information on the staffing of departments, was the brainchild of Francis Cavendish, who had been appointed a junior clerk in 1848. Surprised to discover that there was no printed diplomatic list equivalent to Henry Hart’s New Annual Army List, Cavendish, a general’s son, compiled and in May 1852 published his first Foreign Office List: ‘an unpretentious little brochure of thirty-two pages, in a light brown cover’. Two years later Edward Hertslet joined him in editing the series. But while Malmesbury and Palmerston praised the volumes which were soon put to official use, their sale did not prove particularly remunerative. Nor did senior staff, who were already doubtful about the first edition’s inclusion of personal family details, favour the Office assuming any responsibility for the series. Addington had thought Cavendish’s project of ‘insufficient practical utility’ to merit public expenditure. There were also doubts about affording the general public so much information, and only in 1856 did the editors succeed in securing an Office subvention of £61 to cover their losses to date. Cavendish and Hertslet hoped for more, and in June 1858 they petitioned Malmesbury for funds to cover their printing costs (estimated at £20–30 per edition), leaving the profits of sale to themselves. Malmesbury declined official recognition, maintaining that they stood ‘better as independent & public-spirited authors than they wd. do as salaried editors of the work’. Likewise, Hammond, who thought the publication ‘certainly convenient’, was reluctant to have the List ‘in anyway recognized by the Office’ for it contained ‘a great deal of matter which the F.O. ha[d] no official cognizance of ’. Nonetheless, in August 1859 John Russell agreed to put this ‘entirely unofficial publication’ on a sounder financial basis, by instructing the chief clerk to pay the printer annually a sum not exceeding £30. 94 Edward Hertslet’s partnership with Cavendish lasted less than ten years. Injuries sustained in a riding accident compelled Cavendish to retire, and in December 1863 he made over all his rights in the Foreign Office List to Hertslet.95 Meanwhile, official attitudes towards the volumes became more supportive. When in December 1869 the Audit Office queried the Foreign Office contribution to the cost of printing them Hammond insisted that the ‘work was of the greatest use to the office, which would

Hall, ‘Hertslet’, pp. 279–80. FO 366/760, Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 16 July 1897. Cavendish, Society, Politics and Diplomacy, pp. 234–6 and 342–3. Hertslet, Recollections, pp. 245–7. FO 366/392, memo. by Cavendish and E. Hertslet, 2 June 1858; minute by Malmesbury, 24 June 1858; minute by Hammond, 7 August 1859; J. Bidwell Jr. to Cavendish and E. Hertslet, minute, 9 August 1859. 95 Cavendish, Society, Politics and Diplomacy, pp. 358–9 and 375. 93 94

 Managing the Past 175 be much inconvenienced without it’.96 Then in the spring of 1874 Derby proposed, and the Treasury agreed, that the £30 grant for printing should be paid directly to Hertslet and henceforth be counted as part of his salary.97 But a reform-minded Treasury soon found cause to press for the discontinuance of the grant. In December 1875 it proposed that both the Foreign Office List and the similarly funded Colonial Office List, should either be treated as departmental handbooks compiled by staff without ‘special remuneration’, or be regarded as ‘popular gazetteers’ published for private profit and without need of public subsidy. ‘Gratuitous work of this kind’, the Treasury opined, ‘is no more than may be looked for from zealous public servants, and arrangements should be made in every office for preparing such documents as opportunities offer.’98 Tenterden’s response to Treasury efforts to reduce expenditure on the Foreign Office List was delayed by discussions on the financing of another of Edward Hertslet’s publishing enterprises, his three-volume compilation, The Map of Europe by Treaty.99 The idea of assembling a work which, through treaties, associated declarations and engagements, maps and editorial text, would document political changes in Europe since 1814, first occurred to Edward Hertslet in the aftermath of the Crimean War. Its potential value became all the more apparent after his appointment as librarian, when he had frequently to respond at a moment’s notice to the queries of secretaries of state and parliament regarding international boundaries and treaty commitments. And with registry arrears evidently in mind, he noted on 19 December 1859, ‘I should perhaps not have felt the necessity for such a Work were the Library in a less deplorable state.’100 As with the Foreign Office List, John Russell was sympathetic to the project, and Hertslet was instructed to proceed with its compilation. Given Hertslet’s other commitments and his assurance that the work would be confined to his leisure hours, it is hardly surprising that it was not until the summer of 1875 that he was ready to submit his finished volumes for the Office’s approval.101 The completed work was in Hertslet’s own words ‘the concentrated essence of the “State Papers”’, with cartographic additions, plus an exhaustive and much-valued index. Ministers, officials and the press were quick to heap praise upon the volumes. However, since Russell had not sought Treasury sanction for the project, it fell to Derby, as foreign secretary in Disraeli’s second administration, to reach an understanding on how Hertslet’s expenses should be met. Hertslet expected the government to pay his production costs, including those for paper, printing, binding, map-engraving, clerical assistance and translations. He also hoped that he might receive a substantial portion of the proceeds from volume sales which, he estimated, could amount to as much as £2,850.102 He must therefore have been disappointed when, after the Treasury agreed to cover his costs and the

FO 366/392, G. Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 29 December 1869, with minute by Hammond; Hammond to Treasury, letter, 5 January 1870. 97 Ibid., Tenterden to Treasury, letter, 28 April 1874; Treasury to Tenterden, letter, 14 May 1874. The Colonial Office List was compiled by a clerk and published annually from 1862. 98 Ibid., W. Law to Tenterden, letter, 29 December 1875. 99 Ibid., pencil note by Tenterden on Law’s letter, 10 February 1876. 100 FO 83/1655, memo. by E. Hertslet, 19 December 1859. 101 Ibid., E. Hertslet to Tenterden, letter, 2 July 1875. 102 Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 18 December 1875. 96

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Stationery Office took over the sale of the books, he was awarded £1,200, a sum far short of what he had originally reckoned his just desert.103 Hardly had The Map of Europe by Treaty appeared in print before upheavals and wars in the Balkans seemed to make necessary consideration of a further tome. On his return from the Congress of Berlin in July 1878 Hertslet impressed on Tenterden the value of a fourth volume detailing the latest changes in the frontiers of south-eastern Europe. Tenterden put the matter to Salisbury, and he in his turn indicated that he favoured such a publication. Yet, despite an assurance previously given by Derby that there would be no further ‘irregularity’ in obtaining Treasury sanction for future publications, and a promise from Tenterden that he would discuss the proposed volume with Lingen, the Treasury was not informed of the Hertslet’s intentions. This did not obstruct his compilation of the volume. About 600 pages of selected documents were set in type, maps were prepared, and, apart from the absence of Treasury approval, all that stood in the way of the volume’s completion was the slow progress of the commissions established by the Congress to delimit frontiers and agree a new regime for the navigation of the Danube.104 Hertslet’s ambitions meanwhile expanded, so that when in August 1884 Pauncefote at last wrote to the Treasury requesting its consent to the publication, he also sought prior approval for similar projected volumes dealing with the political geography of Africa, Asia and the Americas.105 The Treasury did not reply. Already smarting over the ‘heavy loss’ it had incurred on the sales of the first three volumes, amounting, when editorial and publishing costs were taken into account, to well over £2,000, plus the fact that over 600 copies remained unsold, it was justly irritated at not having been kept abreast of Hertslet’s intentions. Hertslet for his part threatened in the absence of further progress to have the type of the new volume broken up, and to abandon his publishing plans. However, in October 1885, under pressure from Salisbury, the Treasury conceded that in view of the value attached by the Foreign Office to such works, it would sanction the new volume. The only condition set was that its costs should not exceed proportionally those of the preceding three.106 Hertslet did not need much persuading to continue with Volume 4. He blamed poor sales of earlier volumes on the Stationery Office’s failure to advertise in the press and its reluctance to supply review copies to periodicals.107 He was also justly irritated by the time it took to pay the cartographer, Edward Stanford, for maps first ordered in July 1878: a delay the Stationery Office’s controller, Thomas Digby Piggott, attributed to the Treasury treating the Foreign Office ‘as a hopeless incorrigible’ when it came to observing proper contractual procedures.108 Only in January 1888 did Stanford at last

Ibid., Tenterden to Treasury, letter, 10 February 1876; undated minute by E. Hertslet. Ibid., E. Hertslet to Tenterden, letter, 12 April 1880; minute by E. Hertslet, 12 April 1880; memo. by E. Hertslet, 4 August 1881; E. Hertslet to Tenterden, letter, 4 August 1881. 105 Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 27 March 1884; Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 23 August 1884. 106 Ibid., minutes by Pauncefote and Salisbury, 10 October 1885; FO to Treasury, unsent draft letter, October 1885; Mowatt to Pauncefote, letter, 15 October 1885. 107 Ibid., minute by E. Hertslet, 21 October 1885; Pauncefote to Treasury, letter, 2 November 1885. 108 Ibid., Stanford to E. Hertslet, letter, 25 November 1887; Stanford to Alston, letters, 10 May and 1 December 1887; Alston to Reid, letter, 2 December 1887; T. Digby Pigott to Alston, letter, 5 December 1887. 103 104

 Managing the Past 177 receive the £146 then owing to him.109 The volume itself was not ready for publication until the summer of 1891, and by then Hertslet, faced with his own impending retirement, was eager to proceed with his long-planned complementary work, The Map of Africa by Treaty.110 This he had first proposed in December 1876 with a view to providing full and precise guidance on African frontiers particularly with regard to British treaty rights in Sierra Leone and adjacent territories.111 By the 1890s, with the European partition of Africa well underway, the project seemed of even greater relevance to international diplomacy and Salisbury gave Hertslet his backing.112 But the Treasury baulked at footing the bill. It now estimated that after deducting the receipts from sales the four volumes, The Map of Europe by Treaty, had cost over £3,000, and it expressed the hope that the Foreign Office might be able to suggest a ‘more economical arrangement’ for the completion of the librarian’s latest scheme. Hertslet had received £1,690 for his previous volumes, and Mowatt wondered whether he might be persuaded to take on responsibility privately for the publication and sale of the proposed volume as in the case of his Commercial Treaties, or merge work on it with the ordinary duties of his department.113 Predictably, neither of these options appealed to Hertslet. He was still irritated by the ‘unpleasant correspondence’ which had passed between the Foreign Office and the Treasury over the future of the Commercial Treaties, and he was certain that during the working day the Office could not afford him that ‘perfect quiet’ required for close application to editing over many consecutive hours. Hertslet was, however, prepared to settle on a lower rate of remuneration, and in March 1892 it was agreed that the Treasury would meet the cost of paper, printing, binding and the preparation of maps, and that over two years Hertslet would be paid £100 per annum for his editing, and £50 per annum for clerical assistance.114 Hertslet assured the Treasury that his new work would be ‘within the compass of one thick octavo volume of 1,400 pages’.115 It was, however, eventually decided that two somewhat slimmer volumes would make for ease of reference. Moreover, although these were delivered to the Stationery Office in December 1894 and were well-received by the press when they were published in February 1895, within weeks the Foreign Office insisted on their withdrawal from sale and distribution.116 A general map of Africa, which Hertslet had obtained from Stanford and inserted in the work, was found to define too precisely undelimited spheres of influence, and on further inspection several inaccuracies were discovered in other maps. Hertslet’s preface explained that the general map’s boundaries were only approximate, and that he alone was ‘responsible Ibid., Stanford to E. Hertslet, letter, 26 January 1888. Ibid., E. Hertslet to Alston, minute, 7 July 1891. 111 FO 83/1718, memo. by E. Hertslet, 13 December 1876. LD, Corresp., vol. 3, memo. by E. Hertslet, 18 March 1877. 112 FO 83/1718, Currie to Salisbury, minute, 17 June 1891; Salisbury to Currie, minute, 18 June 1891; minute by Hertslet, 23 October 1891; Currie to Treasury, letter, 5 Nov, 1891. 113 Ibid., Mowatt to Currie, letter, 30 January 1892. 114 Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 9 February 1892; E. Hertslet to Currie, 12 February 1892; Currie to Treasury, letter, 18 February 1892; Mowatt to Currie, letter, 18 March 1892. 115 Ibid., memo. by E. Hertslet, 9 February 1892. 116 Ibid., Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 12 December 1894; minutes by G. Hertslet, 19 and 20 February 1895; E. Hertslet to Anderson, letter, 19 February 1895; minute by Kimberley, 22 February 1895; minute by Oakes, 23 February 1895; Sanderson to Stationery Office, letter, 23 February 1895; 109 110

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for the selection of the Documents’ and accompanying editorial notes.117 But with the map of Africa still very much in flux, Sir Percy Anderson, the head of the Office’s African Department, was reluctant to see an official publication lend credence to as yet unsettled territorial claims.118 The War Office’s Intelligence Division was charged with supervising the correction of the maps, and by January 1896 these were ready in proof.119 Hertslet meanwhile added new material and by his retirement on 1 February 1896 the documentation had been brought up to date and the compilation extended to three volumes. Unfortunately, the Stationery Office seemed in no hurry to proceed with the work, and political and territorial changes in East and West Africa meant that Hertslet’s ‘blessed Book’ risked being in arrear before it appeared in print.120 There were further delays to publication. Anderson wanted information in the table of contents incorporated with the alphabetical index; Hertslet decided on more corrections and revisions; and the preface to the new edition was radically amended. As a result, it was not until January 1897, more than twenty years since the project was first conceived and almost a year since Hertslet’s retirement, that this revised, or second, edition was put on general sale.121

After the Hertslets Salisbury was saddened by Hertslet’s departure from the Office. ‘The loss of Sir E. Hertslet’s services to the department is’, he lamented, ‘very serious and much to be deplored.’122 But Hertslet retired only two days before his seventy-first birthday, six years beyond the by then compulsory age of retirement for civil servants. Successive foreign secretaries, Salisbury in January 1891, Rosebery in February 1894, and finally Kimberley in January 1895, had each managed to persuade the Treasury to make an exception of Hertslet and extend his period of employment.123 There was, Parliament was told by way of explanation, ‘nobody that under[stood] treaties past and present, as Sir Edward Hertslet [did]’.124 Some of his subordinates, the advancement of whose careers and fortunes had been slowed by his long retention of office, may have had less cause to regret his going. Oakes, Hertslet’s immediate successor, had joined the Librarian’s Department in March 1858, yet, had not the Treasury granted him a substantial incremental pay rise from 1901, he would have been unable

E. Hertslet (ed.), The Map of Africa by Treaty (3 vols, London, 1894–96), vol. 1, pp. xvi–xvii. FO 83/1718, minutes by Sanderson and Kimberley, 28 March 1895. 119 Ibid., Anderson to E. Hertslet, minute, 6 April 1895; minute by E. Hertslet, 23 January 1896. 120 Ibid., E. Hertslet to Oakes, letter, 8 July 1896. 121 Ibid., minute by Sanderson, 21 December 1896; minutes by Oakes, 23 December 1896 and 7 January 1897. 122 FO 366/760, Sanderson to Salisbury, minute, 1 February 1896, with undated note by Salisbury. 123 FO 366/724, Salisbury to Treasury, letter, 2 January 1891; Welby to Currie, letter, 23 January 1891. FO 366/760, minute by Rosebery, 3 February 1894. FO 366/714, Rosebery to Treasury, letter, 5 February 1894; Welby to Sanderson, letter, 14 February 1894; minutes by Hervey and Sanderson, 15 November and 3 December 1894; Kimberley to Treasury, letter, 28 January 1895. 124 LD, Corresp., vol. 3A, extract from HC, Fifth Report of the Committee of Public Accounts (1895). 117 118

 Managing the Past 179 to earn the maximum salary for his grade before reaching sixty-five.125 He and his assistant, Frederick Streatfeild, had also to confront the consequences of departmental restructuring and changes in registry practices which in his later years Hertslet had shown little inclination to resist. Almost six years on from the adoption of the recommendations of the Ridley Commission report, it was only too apparent that the reform of the system of registering and indexing papers was less than satisfactory. True, the indexes were now kept up to date. Those of the 1890s were, however, embodied in a multiplicity of volumes, often all too hastily prepared by hard-pressed junior clerks in busy political departments. Searchers in the reference room were thus hampered by inconsistent and insufficient subject entries, some of which were in Oakes’s words ‘rendered unreliable and practically useless’. At the same time they had to reckon with registers which bore more resemblance to the cursory departmental diaries of old than to the volumes painstakingly compiled by Hertslet’s methodical minions.126 All this Oakes explained in a memorandum he submitted to Sanderson on 22 November 1897 outlining a possible solution to the problem. There could, he admitted, be no return to the former system. Nor did he think it practical to consider the establishment of a ‘Central Registration Department, in which every paper arriving at and leaving the office would be at once registered, and registers subsequently indexed, by permanent staff ’. Like his predecessor, he thought that would involve ‘the practical reconstruction of the whole office’. Consideration would also have to be given to the ‘class of men’ employed in such work, since much of it would relate to current topics and be of a highly confidential nature. He therefore thought that for the moment it would be better if departments were to continue to register their papers, but according to the same principles and in the same format as the Hertslets had established, leaving the Librarian’s Department to resume its responsibility for their eventual indexing. For this Oakes wanted the recruitment of at least three more men, and, he stressed, it was essential that these should be specifically selected for the task. ‘It is’, he observed, ‘not easy to make a really good index, and the work is so laborious, and at the same time so monotonous, that it requires a moderately able man to perform it as it should be done.’ And drawing on both his own long experience in the Office and his department’s collective memory, he pointed out that such a man was unlikely ‘to devote himself to a life of drudgery unless he be either well paid or have good prospects of advancement to higher posts’. Otherwise, he would probably ‘soon degenerate into a mere drudge, taking no interest in his work and only anxious to get through the day and depart’.127 Oakes, who also set out the high levels of educational attainment he expected of these men, evidently, as Sanderson suspected, hoped for the appointment of new clerks ‘on a footing somewhat similar to the political establishment’. It was a proposal that Sanderson knew he could not support with any prospect of success. Nor would he have felt justified in so doing.128 FO 366/717, memo. by Oakes, 31 May 1897; Oakes to Sanderson, letter, 17 June 1897; Oakes to Sanderson, letter, 1 October 1900; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 10 November 1900; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 17 November 1900. 126 LD, Corresp., vol. 5, memo. by Oakes, 22 November 1897. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid., minute by Sanderson, 31 May 1898. 125

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Sanderson was, nevertheless, ready to assist. At his instigation Dallas and Oakes undertook a detailed investigation of the departmental indexes for 1897, and when their report of 15 June 1898 confirmed the librarian’s misgivings Sanderson concluded that the indexing of papers of the political departments should revert to the Librarian’s Department.129 Henceforth, while individual departments remained responsible for keeping their registers, the indexes were to be compiled by second-division library clerks ‘after the lapse of a year or such further interval as [might] be considered sufficient to divest the correspondence in part of its confidential character’. To this end Sanderson sought and secured for Oakes the appointment from January 1899 of two additional second-division clerks.130 These seem only to have provided partial relief. Hardly were they in post before Salisbury won Treasury approval for two more second-division library clerks specifically ‘to docket and distribute non-confidential correspondence from other public offices and private individuals’.131 Even this rapid expansion of staff numbers failed to overcome the eternal problem of indexing and registry arrears. The departmental registers remained insufficiently detailed to permit the preparation of trustworthy indexes, and whenever other non-political departments were overstretched, they felt free to borrow from the librarian’s pool of second-division clerks. Moreover, these same departments began to look to Oakes to take on the job of indexing their correspondence. By June 1901 the Treaty Department had yet to complete its index for 1898–9 and wanted to transfer the work to the Librarian’s Department. Oakes, though in principle ready to take on the task, could offer no assurance that his present staff was ‘sufficient to keep pace with the existing amount of work’.132 He was no better placed when the Commercial Department subsequently delivered its index for his upkeep.133 The increased number of second-division library clerks also made more apparent how limited were their opportunities for advancement in a department which had only three allotted staff officer posts. Already in May 1899 George Badrick, the most senior of the second-division clerks, had complained to Sanderson that as superintendent of the department’s ever more congested collection of printed works he was shouldering responsibilities previously borne by a better paid supplementary clerk. Fortunately for Badrick, after an eighteen-month delay Sanderson was able to persuade the Treasury to consent to his appointment in April 1901 as a temporary staff officer, a position he held for two years before being reclassified as a higher-grade second-division clerk.134 But clerical dissatisfaction with career prospects in the Librarian’s Department was matched by growing frustration elsewhere in the Office with the way in which highly educated junior clerks still spent much of their time engaged in essentially mechanical tasks. Ibid., report by Dallas and Oakes, 15 June 1898. FO 366/717, Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 10 October 1898; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 18 October 1898. 131 Ibid., Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 23 February 1899; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 27 February 1899. 132 LD, Corresp., vol. 5, Robertson to Villiers, minute, 27 June 1901; minute by Oakes, 4 July 1901. 133 LD, Corresp., vol. 3A, Oakes to Sanderson, minute, 16 March 1903. 134 FO 366/715, Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 13 January 1897. FO 366/717, Badrick to Sanderson, letter, 17 May 1899; Oakes to Dallas, letter, 11 September 1899; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 13 November 1900; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 19 November 1900. 129 130

 Managing the Past 181 Villiers, who since 1896 had been an assistant undersecretary, aptly summarized the situation when he remarked ‘we get clever young men & then for years give them work totally below their capacity’. In a letter to Sanderson of 27 April 1903 Villiers outlined possible changes which he hoped might remedy the deficiency. These included: the greater devolution of duties from undersecretaries and heads of department to their subordinates; the establishment of separate sections for ciphering and the preparation of parliamentary papers; the making up of despatch bags by officekeepers rather than junior clerks; and the transfer of ‘ordinary work’ to the non-political departments.135 Sanderson gave qualified approval to these proposals. He fully supported the idea of more of the Office’s correspondence being delegated to the non-political departments, and he went further than Villiers in specifying that the Librarian’s Department might in future deal with requests for ‘miscellaneous information’. ‘This’, he noted, ‘would give us good ground for asking for an additional Staff Officer for that Department.’136 It did, the Treasury conceded, and in September 1903 Badrick was again promoted and his re-appointment as a staff officer this time made permanent. Another seconddivision clerk was meanwhile recruited to the Librarian’s Department.137 Lord Lansdowne, Salisbury’s successor as foreign secretary, was an enthusiastic proponent of reform. Unlike Salisbury, who had tended to rely on his own memory and the advice of a few of his senior staff, he wished to encourage expertise amongst those more junior in the Office and was ‘absolutely persuaded of the soundness of the policy of devolution’.138 To this end in June 1903 he had Sanderson draft for circulation papers which foresaw the eventual implementation of much of what Villiers had envisaged.139 At the same time proposals for the establishment of a general registry were resurrected. As in 1884, Villiers had toyed with the idea, but like Edward Hertslet and Oakes, ended by dismissing it as ‘entirely subversive’ of present arrangements.140 Sanderson was of much the same opinion. He recognized that a general registry could be advantageous: papers would be registered methodically by experts with greater uniformity of detail. But he feared that this would lead to delays in dealing with correspondence, and mean that second-division registry clerks would have a ‘more complete knowledge of the general tenour [sic] of current diplomatic negotiations than [was] now possessed by anyone except the Secretary and Under-Secretaries of State’. They were, he observed, exactly the class ‘whose discretion we are least able to trust’. Besides which, Sanderson did not consider that ‘keeping a register of political correspondence during part of the day [was] unimportant work and petrifying to the intellect’.141 It was, nevertheless, difficult to see how the junior clerks could be allowed more time in which to develop their drafting and specialist skills without a thorough LD, Corresp., vol. 3A, Villiers to Sanderson, letter, 27 April 1903. Ibid., minutes by Sanderson, 2 and 13 May 1903. 137 FO 366/754, Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 12 June 1903; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 28 July 1903; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 19 November 1903. 138 Ibid., minutes by Lansdowne, 22 May and 20 June 1903; T 1/10369/22406/05, G. H. Duckworth to Austen Chamberlain, minute, 3 July 1905. 139 LD, Corresp., vol. 3A, circular minute by Sanderson, 17 June 1903; minute by Sanderson, 20 June 1903, covering sketch of proposed new arrangements for the FO. 140 Ibid., vol. 3A, Villiers to Sanderson, 27 April 1903. 141 Ibid., minutes by Sanderson, 2, 25 and 27 May 1903. 135 136

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overhaul of the current registry system. The arrears which had so beset both Lewis and Edward Hertslet served in this sense as a further stimulus to change not only in the Librarian’s Department but in the Office as a whole. Lansdowne was determined that there should be some consideration of arrangements for the keeping and registering of papers.142 And, despite his own misgivings, Sanderson organized a small committee, made up of Cartwright (the chief clerk), Oakes and three senior clerks, to look into the whole question.143 It examined registry practices in other government departments, and its report of 18 May 1904 recommended the establishment of a central registry, whose clerks would be responsible for jacketing, numbering and summarily entering, papers. Those of an especially confidential nature would then be sent directly to the proper department. Others would be distributed, first to three sub-registries (one on each of the Office floors) for docketing and rough indexing, and then to the relevant departments. Separate registers would be kept for each country, and from these and departmental abstracts the final alphabetical indexes would be compiled.144 Doubts previously expressed about second-division clerks handling the Office’s confidential correspondence were set aside. Other government departments accepted the practice, and in November 1903 the committee, at Sanderson’s instigation, proposed that a second-division library clerk might be employed experimentally in arranging the papers of a political department. Even then, the committee pointed out that that this would have ‘the manifest disadvantage of bringing a man of the Second Division into the room where men of the First Division work’. But with Lansdowne’s assent, a seconddivision clerk was sent to the Eastern Department to assist with an accumulation of confidential print.145 In its report the committee concluded that the bulk of registry work could best be done by second-division clerks, there being ‘relatively few Foreign Office papers which [might] not be put into the hands of the older and tried men of that Division’.146 This was endorsed by Sir George Murray, who, having started his career as a Foreign Office clerk, had transferred to the Treasury where he had risen to be joint permanent secretary. On reading the committee’s report, which Sanderson, after a long absence with shingles, communicated to him in November 1904, he expressed himself strongly in favour of making no distinction between one class of clerks and another, especially in a comparatively small department like the Foreign Office. ‘The character of the man, his mode of life and his domestic surroundings are’, he observed, ‘of much more importance than his status.’147 As had previously been apparent, the Treasury had less faith than the Foreign Office in the superior virtues of gentlemen. The Treasury was also more concerned than the Foreign Office about the likely cost of the projected reforms. Cartwright’s committee estimated that the new registries would be manned by about twenty men, including a chief registrar and his deputy, Ibid., Lansdowne to Sanderson, minute, 25 May 1903. Ibid., minute by Sanderson, 17 June 1903. Steiner, Foreign Office, pp. 77–9. 144 T 1/10369/4480/05, Report on the Registration and Keeping of Papers in the Foreign Office, 18 May 1904. 145 LD, Corresp., vol. 3A, memo. by Oakes et al., and minutes by Sanderson and Lansdowne, 13 November 1903. 146 T 1/10369/4480/05, Report on the Registration and Keeping of Papers in the Foreign Office, 18 May 1904. 147 T 1/10369/2246/05, Murray to Sanderson, letter, 8 November 1904. 142 143

 Managing the Past 183 and that this could be achieved with the abolition of six junior clerk posts and the appointment of six or eight second-division clerks. Yet, Murray thought that prima facie the Foreign Office ought not to want any additional force. ‘You are’, he observed, ‘only going to do properly in one Department what is now done imperfectly in several.’ He could not see why the Office required three sub-registries, and believed that that much of the registry work could be done by boy clerks, ‘or creatures inferior to the Second Division’. The latter (young men of between fifteen and eighteen years of age), he opined, were safer than their elders when it came to handling confidential papers: ‘they don’t know what things mean and have no curiosity to find out’. There was finally the question of the future of the Librarian’s Department. Murray was well aware that the department was a unique institution in Whitehall, and quite reasonably wondered whether it might not be more convenient to effect a merger between it and the proposed general registry.148 Eyre Crowe, the energetic assistant clerk whom Sanderson entrusted with elaborating and carrying through the registration scheme, gave short shrift to this idea. He mistook Murray’s suggestion to mean that he was looking towards ‘weakening, not to speak of abolishing, our Library Establishment’, whereas he understood that it was intended that the Librarian’s Department would continue to make the final index of correspondence. A good and full index was, Crowe believed, essential to the successful work of the Office, and he upheld the committee’s recommendation that consideration be given to the adoption of a card index system. Given that about 105,000 papers a year would need indexing, he reckoned that the number of library staff employed in this should not fall below nine. ‘The Librarian’s Department’, Crowe noted, ‘will, of course, continue to have other important duties to perform, although it will be relieved, like the other Departments, of the work connected with the registration of current correspondence.’149 Crowe was not, however, merely concerned with improving the quality of the indexes and registers. He too wished to see a ‘real and needed extension of the scope of duties of the whole [Foreign Office] staff, commensurate with modern developments and the growing complications of international relations’. He therefore opposed any compensatory reduction in the number of junior clerks. That, he feared, might negate the advantages to be derived from the creation of a general registry and work against the planned devolution of business. And while he rejected the notion of the Office acquiring a separate intelligence division, he hoped for greater collation and coordination of information within departments. Schooled in Germany and familiar with Marxist historicism, in a memorandum of 5 January 1905 Crowe postulated that there was a real need for the ‘application of a little more historical spirit’: missions abroad should provide annual reports and young diplomats be encouraged to contribute papers on matters of public interest, and these in turn might be drawn upon for the preparation of running histories of Britain’s external relations. Histories of a larger scope would require ‘more special training and gifts’, and in this context he saw an expanded role for the Librarian’s Department. Was it ‘too much to hope’, he asked, that the Office might see a ‘number of young university men having such an historical training employed in Ibid. T 1/10369/2246/05, memo. by Crowe, n.d., 1905.

148 149

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our library charged with the duty of compiling histories of certain periods, events or incidents of importance’, not for publication, but for the information and guidance of the foreign secretary and the department as a whole? In Murray’s opinion it was a ‘great deal too much’ to hope.150 Indeed, it was not until after the outbreak of the Great War that academic historians were introduced into the Office.151 On a more practical level, Crowe thought that Cartwright’s committee had underestimated the staff needs of a general registry. A registrar, four staff officers, and twenty-four second-division clerks would, he believed, be essential to its proper functioning. All this inevitably met with Treasury resistance. Statistics were traded and papers drafted to demonstrate how relatively understaffed and under-equipped the Foreign Office was to deal with a multitude of increasingly globalized economic and political issues. But only in August 1905, following the personal intervention of Sanderson and Lansdowne, was it at last settled that in January 1906 the Foreign Office would be able to proceed with the organization of its general registry on lines similar to those foreseen by Cartwright’s committee and with staff equivalent to that required by Crowe, save for the appointment on Treasury insistence of four boy clerks to assist the registrar, himself a former lower-division clerk, with the initial distribution of papers.152 The Librarian’s Department, which under the Hertslets had served as the Office’s registry and whose clerks had since acted as registrars of last resort, was left to adjust to a bureaucratic innovation in part intended to draw a clearer distinction between the creation and the ultimate custody of the archive.153

Custody, research (and arrears) In January 1905, a year prior to the establishment of the central registry and its subregistries, Oakes left the Foreign Office and retired to his home at Tanglewood, East Grinstead. His successor, Richard Brant, had joined the department in September 1872 and replaced Streatfeild as assistant clerk in June 1900.154 A keen mountaineer, he was fortunate to survive when that same summer he and his companions were Ibid., memo. by Crowe, 5 January 1905, annotated by Murray. K. Hamilton, ‘The Pursuit of “Enlightened Patriotism”: The British Foreign Office and Historical Researchers during the Great War and Its Aftermath’, Forging the Collective Memory: Governments and International Historians through Two World Wars (Oxford, 1996), ed. K. Wilson, pp. 192–229; and ‘Falsifying the Record: Entente Diplomacy and the Preparation of the Blue and Yellow Books on the War Crisis of 1914’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 18, no. 1 (2007), pp. 89–108. E. Goldstein, ‘“A prominent place would have to be taken by history”: The Origins of a Foreign Office Historical Section’, Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern Diplomatic Practice (Dordrecht, 2012), ed., T. G. Otte, pp. 83–102. 152 The negotiations between the Foreign Office and the Treasury over the establishment and financing of the new registry system are considered in detail in Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 111–35. On Crowe’s role in this administrative reform see: S. Crowe and E. Corp, Our Ablest Public Servant: Sir Eyre Crowe, 1864–1925 (Braunton, 1993), pp. 88–97. See also: M. Moss and D. Thomas, ‘How the File was Invented’, Administory: Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsgeschichte 4, issue 1 (2018), pp. 28–52. 153 On the immediate impact of the reform see: Steiner, Foreign Office, pp. 81–2; and Neilson and Otte, Permanent Under-Secretary, pp. 101–2. 154 Sanderson thought Brant a ‘thoroughly competent’ librarian, who had done ‘some excellent work’ as Oakes’s assistant. FO 366/761, minute by Sanderson, 11 January 1905. 150 151

 Managing the Past 185 stranded on the Weisshorn, and a decade later he suffered severe scalp wounds when, while travelling by express to Chamonix, his train ploughed into the rear wagons of another.155 His role as librarian was less perilous, but it was not without misadventure. The Librarian’s Department still had to work up indexing arrears dating from the 1890s and early 1900s, a task which even in 1911 was far from complete, and it struggled to impose uniformity of method upon the new sub-registries in the preparation of the card indexes of current correspondence for the collation of which it retained responsibility.156 In consequence, no progress was made with plans to proceed with the five-yearly printing of an amalgamated index.157 The department was in the meantime saddled with the extra duty of having to respond to miscellaneous queries regarding British institutions and their administration. These were numerous and diverse, ranging in 1909 from an Austrian enquiry about legislation governing the protection of picturesque neighbourhoods to a request from a Danish naval officer to study the use of training ships for the ‘education of vicious children’. Four years later, the Russian embassy applied for access for one of its nationals to inspect criminal lunatic asylums in Britain, and the Belgians sought information on the regulation of black smoke emissions from factory chimneys.158 Brant had also to make do with reduced numbers. Crowe may have considered the registry a ‘sub-department of the library’, but for Brant it represented a drain on his resources.159 In 1906 two of his second-division clerks were allotted to the General Registry, and other sections of the Office continued to poach library staff whenever their needs dictated.160 Men deemed failures in the subregistries were thus exchanged for abler and better trained library clerks. ‘In no case’, Brant later protested, ‘ha[d] the exchange been in the favour of the Library, nor [had] these men ever been re-transferred from the Library back to the Registry.’161 As a result of Brant’s complaint, in 1911 a clerk was returned from registry duties to the Librarian’s Department and additional, though temporary, second-division library clerks were recruited, so that by 1913 there were in all eleven. The librarian was, nonetheless, later blamed both for not having exercised sufficient superintendence over the custody, registration and indexing of papers, and for his failure to ‘draw effectual attention’ to the understaffing of the registries.162 Alwyn Parker, who in 1918 would himself take on the mantle of librarian, was as a clerk in the Eastern Department particularly impatient with delays he suffered in securing information and soon earned a reputation for venting his displeasure on library staff. Matters came to a head when at about 2.40 pm on 10 April 1909, the Saturday before Easter, he burst into the reference LD, Corresp., vol. 5, excepts from The Standard, 30 July 1900, and The Daily Telegraph, 30 January 1911. 156 Ibid., memo. by R. Dickie, 9 November 1909. 157 Fifth Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Civil Service, 1914-16 (c 7749), minutes, paras. 37,859–60. 158 FO 370/26, 28 and 63, passim. 159 Fifth Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Civil Service, 1914-16 (c 7749), minutes, para. 36,852. 160 LD, Corresp., vol. 5, memo. by Brant, 30 November 1908. 161 Ibid., Brant to Francis Campbell, minute, 18 November 1911. 162 LD, Gen., FO Organisation, Discipline etc., 1844–1932, report by interdepartmental committee on the reorganisation of the FO registries, 14 November 1918. 155

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room and demanded that he be supplied by 3.00 pm with a precedent for a note he was drafting to the Austro-Hungarian ambassador recognizing his government’s abrogation of the Berlin treaty of 1878 and its annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Had Edward Hertslet still been in charge he might perhaps have been able to recall one. But Gaston de Bernhardt, who had been promoted to assistant librarian, could not. He, with the help of Godfrey Hertslet and Robert Dickie, one of the most reliable of the second-division clerks, searched in vain, only to be rebuked by an ill-tempered Parker for not possessing a sufficiently detailed index to the records. Parker denounced the department as a ‘disgrace and a scandal’, adding, de Bernhardt subsequently noted, that ‘if the Library of the British Museum was managed as ours was, there would be a general outcry throughout the country’. All this Brant reported to Francis Campbell, his superintending assistant undersecretary, and Campbell in his turn reprimanded Parker for not having made his complaint through his own departmental head.163 Parker was not, however, alone in questioning the efficiency of Brant’s department, and while the offensive tone of his language could not be excused, it may well have been symptomatic of wider concerns about the library’s contribution to diplomacy. One area in which the Librarian’s Department seemed increasingly active was in overseeing the access of researchers to Foreign Office correspondence at the Public Record Office (PRO). At the time of Brant’s appointment as librarian Britain’s diplomatic records were open to public inspection up until 1780, and to scholars with Foreign Office permits up until 1850. Historians had, however, to submit any notes taken to censorship, first by the PRO and then by the Librarian’s Department. It was a time-consuming process, and Brant would personally have favoured the PRO acting as sole censor, consulting the Foreign Office only on particularly sensitive issues. Crowe agreed. Diplomatic history was at that time very much the domain of German scholars and Crowe, who in 1906 was made senior clerk in the Western Department, was anxious to shift the intellectual balance by encouraging research on the basis of British records. As the Foreign Office representative on an interdepartmental committee set up in 1908 to consider a relaxation in the rules relating to the opening of public archives, he proposed that historians be admitted to Britain’s diplomatic records up until the ‘Bismarck era in foreign politics’, and suggested that no difficulty be placed in the way of distinguished British historians being allowed privileged access to those of a ‘much more recent period’. ‘We have’, he claimed in a memorandum of 17 November 1908, ‘nothing to lose as a nation, and a good deal to gain, by the widest possible publicity being given to our transactions with foreign countries.’164 In accord with the committee’s report, the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, consented to the opening to the public of Foreign Office correspondence up until the end of 1837, and to restricted access for scholars with permits up until the end of 1860. But Brant was unenthusiastic about Crowe’s notion of having historians peruse records of an even later date. Although he approved the proposal in principle, he maintained that in practice he had neither sufficient staff to assist and supervise researchers nor the space LD, Corresp., vol. 5, de Bernhardt to Brant, minute, 13 April 1909; Brant to Campbell, minute, 13 April 1909, with note by Campbell, 14 April 1909. 164 FO 370/16, L40126, memo. by Crowe, 17 November 1908. K. Hamilton, ‘The Pursuit’, pp. 193–4. 163

 Managing the Past 187 in which to accommodate them. Indeed, the extended opening of the archives in itself added to the work of the Librarian’s Department. The Office’s legal adviser was anxious that law officers’ reports should not be available for public inspection: otherwise an opinion given many years earlier on a point of international law might, it was feared, all too easily prejudice current negotiations.165 With Treasury consent, it was therefore decided in June 1909 that Brant would be afforded temporary assistance while one of his second-division clerks, Albert Airey, was despatched to the PRO to spend up to eighteen months extracting the reports from the bound volumes of the Office’s general correspondence.166 The Librarian’s Department meanwhile maintained a steady output of its historical memoranda and continued to assist in compiling official documents for publication.167 At least one of the former, Gaston de Bernhardt’s substantial paper on the Falkland Islands, would remain relevant to the diplomacy of comparatively recent times. The memorandum, dated 7 December 1910 and extending over forty-nine printed pages, was drafted in response to the publication by the committee organizing Argentina’s centenary celebrations of a map depicting the islands as part of the republic. De Bernhardt did not take a firm position on rival claims to the British-administered islands or attempt any analysis of the current situation, but confined himself to the detailed chronicling of their disputed possession since Europeans first discovered them some three and a half centuries before. His account, nonetheless, implied that there were weaknesses in the traditional British case for sovereignty, and that the Argentinians might not unreasonably have regarded Britain’s occupation of the Falklands in 1833 as a seizure of territory which was legitimately theirs. On reading it, Gerald Spicer, the senior clerk in charge of the Office’s American Department, commented: ‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Argentine Govt’s attitude is not altogether unjustified & that our action has been somewhat high-handed’. The memorandum, which drew upon both archival and published sources, was, in any case, an impressive piece of research. Louis Mallet, Spicer’s superintending assistant undersecretary, found it most interesting and thought it ‘reflect[ed] credit’ on its author.168 Similar in style, though not in scope, was de Bernhardt’s memorandum of 3 January 1913 summarizing the history of the British government’s dealings with William Knox D’Arcy, whose oildrilling concession in Persia evolved into the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) and whose rights and extended interests figured large in subsequent

Ibid. FO 370/16, L40126, minute by Brant, 20 November 1908. FO 370/23, L7526, Campbell to Treasury, letter, 24 May 1909; L21311, G. Murray to Hardinge, letter, 5 June 1909; Campbell to deputy keeper of the Public Records, letter, 11 June 1909. 167 See, for example: G. de Bernhardt (ed.), Handbook of Commercial Treaties, &c., between Great Britain and Foreign Powers (London, 1908 and 1912). 168 FO 371/824/19596, W. Townley to Grey, tel. No. 17, 1 June 1910. FO 371/824/44753, memo. by de Bernhardt, 7 December 1910, with minutes by Spicer and Mallet. For recent citations of de Bernhardt’s memorandum, see: P. Beck, The Falkland Islands as an International Problem (London, 1988), p. 42; and L. Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, vol. 1, The Origins of the Dispute (London, 2005), p. 9. 165 166

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diplomacy. Essentially a working document, the memorandum has since proved a valuable source of reference for historians of the company, period and region.169 Some may have hoped for more from the Librarian’s Department than such matter-of-fact summaries of diplomatic correspondence. Crowe, with an ever-vigilant eye on the mechanics of the Office, had already concluded ‘that the Library ha[d] not, for some time past, been found to be in a position to take a large and effective share in the general work of the Foreign Office as [was] rightly held to be due to the importance of the functions which it theoretically exercise[d]’. This he attributed largely to the inadequate numbers and organization of staff and in a certain measure to the department’s dual function as custodian of books, maps and records, and as, in effect, the Office’s research section. In a memorandum, probably prepared during the winter of 1909–10 and ostensibly drafted with a view to deciding how in the near future to fill the posts presently held by ‘clerks forming a class intermediate between the diplomatic establishment and the Second Division’ (i.e. those who had once been classed as supplementary), Crowe proposed to the chief clerk a comprehensive reform of the Librarian’s Department along with the Office’s other non-political divisions. While he accepted that the care, arrangement and cataloguing of books and records and the associated reference work might be left to second-division clerks under the superintendence of the librarian, he argued that the latter’s business was, or should be to write papers recording and elucidating the events of recent or contemporary history in foreign countries, involving much and comprehensive reading, to prepare reasoned summaries of past diplomatic negotiations or discussions, to lay his hands on legal or commercial precedents, and to call attention to matters settled by compromise or concessions, or left in dispute.170

This was a job description which would doubtless have suited Edward Hertslet. Oakes might also have subscribed to it. What Crowe evidently felt to be in question, was whether, given the growing workload of the Office and the fact that the Librarian’s Department was still mired in the indexing arrears of an earlier decade, it was a remit that Brant and his senior colleagues had the energy and intellectual capacity to fulfil. Crowe thought the Office’s needs might in future be met by providing a renamed ‘Librarian and Master of the Archives’ with two assistants: one, still to be known as the assistant librarian, would be responsible for managing the department’s printed and manuscript collections; and the other would have the title of ‘Deputy Master of the Archives’ and would assist in the provision of research papers. A former staff officer could, Crowe suggested, be appointed assistant librarian and second-division clerks would be able to aspire to eventual promotion to the post. It was less obvious as to where the Office might find suitable candidates to fill the positions of master and FO 371/1720/2770, memo. by de Bernhardt, 3 January 1913. See also: R. W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 1, The Developing Years, 1901-1932 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 48–66; and F. Venn, ‘In Pursuit of National Security: The Foreign Office and Middle Eastern Oil, 1908-39’, Fisher, Pedaliu and Smith (eds.), The Foreign Office, Commerce and British Foreign Policy, pp. 69–87. 170 FO 366/782, memo. by Crowe, with notes by Cartwright, n.d. 1910. 169

 Managing the Past 189 deputy master of the archives. Suitably qualified candidates might, Crowe thought, be recruited from outside the Office: there would then ‘be the gain generally attending the infusion of new blood, and the vivifying of the dry bones of an old-established routine’. However, while Crowe continued to favour the introduction of historians into the library and was convinced that the new appointees must have a ‘certain fund of historical and geographical learning’, he also believed that they would require a knowledge of foreign relations and a practical understanding of the ‘higher principles of international law and policy’. Historians [Crowe averred] are notoriously bad at understanding and advising on current political questions, and, as a matter of fact, the habit of carefully following the trend of contemporary foreign affairs, and the art of writing intelligently on the subject, are, outside the various Foreign Offices, practically confined in most countries to men who follow the profession of journalism.171

The employment of a gifted and reliable journalist as librarian was, nevertheless, likely to prove more expensive than the Treasury would sanction, and Crowe set aside another option, the possible appointment of a lawyer, since that might lead to friction with the legal advisers. Indeed, his rigorous dialectic led him almost inevitably to the conclusion that, except in those circumstances where an exceptional candidate could be found elsewhere, both the master and deputy master of the archives must be drawn from the Office’s political establishment and rank with the Office’s other senior and assistant clerks.172 There was no little irony in the fact that during the previous century three generations of librarians had repeatedly urged that they and their clerks should be given pay and status equivalent to those of the political departments. Crowe’s proposals were, in so far as the Librarian’s Department was concerned, of no immediate consequence. His projected reorganization of the Office was meant to be self-financing and could not even be partially implemented before the departure in September 1913 of Maycock, who, having escaped the ‘tremendous drudgery’ of commercial work, had risen to be superintendent of the Treaty Department and had taken on with Brant the co-editing of the State Papers.173 Brant would, in any case, not reach the usual retirement age of sixty-five until August 1917 and Crowe, who was promoted to assistant undersecretary in 1912, seems to have been in no hurry to press for his replacement. Early in 1913 he joined the permanent undersecretary, Nicolson, in a successful bid to win Treasury approval for an improvement in the pay scales of the librarian and his assistant, which had again fallen behind those of their peers in other divisions. Henceforth they were to be assimilated with those in the Treaty and Chief Clerk’s Departments: an award which raised Brant’s current salary to £1,000 a year, and de Bernhardt’s prospective maximum to £750, £50 more than he

Ibid. Ibid. 173 Crowe and Corp, Crowe, p. 97. LMA, Maycock Papers, F/MCK/27, Maycock to R. Synge, letter, 15 September 1896; F/MCK/105, memo. by Maycock, 7 July 1913. W. Maycock, With Mr Chamberlain in the United States and Canada (London, 1914), pp. 90–1. 171 172

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was then earning.174 Yet, the political departments seemed less inclined to rely on the librarian for historical memoranda. When in 1912 Alwyn Parker, who had assumed responsibility for negotiations relating to the Baghdad railway project and other matters concerning Turkey in Asia, required a detailed report on the long-standing Ottoman-Persian frontier dispute, he turned not to Brant for assistance, but set about researching and writing a paper himself, albeit with the aid of Edward Parkes, a staff officer in the Librarian’s Department.175 None of this, however, explains why in February 1914 Brant decided suddenly to retire. Ill health had forced him to take five months leave in 1909 and it may be that after forty-one years’ service in the Foreign Office he simply wanted to enjoy the pension to which he was entitled.176 Of more significance was Nicolson’s recommendation to Grey that as no suitable successor could be found in the Office, the post should be offered to Edward Blech, the consul-general at Port Said.177 On paper, Blech’s only qualification for the job was that he had once been a much-valued dragoman-archivist at the British embassy in Constantinople.178 Gaston de Bernhardt, who might reasonably have expected the appointment, was persuaded to accept the consulship at Nantes, and Godfrey Hertslet, who was next in order of seniority, was shipped off to Austria as consul-general in Trieste.179 In their stead and in part fulfilment of Crowe’s projected reform, Parkes and Hugh Ritchie, a staff officer in the Treaty Department, were promoted to be Blech’s two assistants. For the first time since 1801 the Librarian’s Department of the Foreign Office was without a Hertslet, and when in May 1914 the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, chaired by Sir Schomberg McDonnell, began its enquiry into the Foreign Office it was Parkes whom Blech designated to answer questions on the workings of the department.180 The old order had at last given way to the new. But old problems persisted and with the onset of the Great War these worsened. The registry clerks proved insufficient to cope with a 400 per cent increase in papers received; the Central Registry acted as a bottleneck, delaying the passage of urgent correspondence; and, as so often in the past, indexing and registry arrears accumulated. In retrospect, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Brant and his senior colleagues took more blame than they deserved for a registry machine which was less than perfectly designed and almost certainly undermanned, and over which they were incapable of exercising direct control. An interdepartmental committee, chaired by Crowe and including LD, Corresp., vol. 5, de Bernhardt to Nicolson, letter, 12 February 1913; Brant to Nicolson, letter, 14 February 1913; minute by Cartwright and Nicolson, 15 February 1913; minute by Crowe, 19 February 1913; Crowe to Treasury, letter, 21 February 1913; F. L. Heath (Treasury) to FO, letter, 8 March 1913. 175 Ibid., Nicolson to Brant, minute, 16 November 1912. For Parker’s memo. see G. P. Gooch and H. W. V. Temperley (eds.), British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (London, 1926–38), vol. 10, pt. 2, No. 55. 176 LD, Corresp., vol. 5, de Bernhardt to Nicolson, letter, 1 January 1911. 177 FO 366/761, Nicolson to Grey, minute, 2 February 1914. FO 800/105, W. Tyrrell to Blech, tel., 4 February 1914. 178 G. R. Berridge, British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present: A Study in the Evolution of the Resident Embassy (Leiden, 2009), p. 70. 179 D. C. M. Platt, The Cinderella Service: British Consuls since 1825 (London, 1971), p. 70. 180 Fifth Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Civil Service, 1914-16 (c 7749), minutes, para. 37,838. 174

 Managing the Past 191 Parker, recommended in November 1918 that in future the ‘Registry should form a section of the Library, under the direct supervision of an Assistant Librarian, and under the general supervision of the Principal Librarian’, a return in principle to the system over which Edward Hertslet had once presided.181 In one other respect the past seemed to prevail. On the retirement of Brant on 31 March 1914 the Foreign Office had expected the Treasury to award him a pension calculated on the basis of his final salary of £1,000 a year. However, the Treasury claimed that the pay rise and extra incremental benefits granted to the librarian in 1913 had placed him in a different ‘class’ and that his pension must therefore be based on his average earnings over the previous three years. Indeed, the pension offered to Brant was a little smaller than that he would have received had he remained on his original salary scale. The Foreign Office urged that the matter be referred to the law officers of the Crown and Treasury officials, sensing their opponents were ‘anxious for a fight’, stubbornly refused to give ground.182 Only in the late autumn did the dispute peter out when Grey decided that for the moment other battles demanded his attention.183 Pay, pensions, private profit and public parsimony were the stuff of Office and inter-office politics. They too were part of the Hertslets’ enduring legacy.

LD, Gen., FO Organisation, Discipline, etc., 1844–1932, report by inter-departmental committee on the reorganisation of the FO registries, 14 November 1918. On the post-war reform of the Foreign Office’s registry system see: Ephraim Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 19191926 (Brighton, 1994), pp. 24–6; and T. G. Otte, ‘The Diplomatic Digestive Organ: The Foreign Office as the Nerve Centre of Foreign Policy, c. 1800-1940’, British World Policy and the Propagation of Global Power (Cambridge, 2019), ed. T. G. Otte, pp. 90–110. 182 Brant was awarded a pension of £613 17s. 9d. per annum. T 1/11708/3406, Grey to Treasury, letter, 13 February 1914; J. Bradbury to Nicolson, letter, 17 March 1914; J. L. Heath to Nicolson, letter, 24 April 1914. T 1/11708/9635, Nicolson to Heath, letter, 6 May 1914; Bradbury to Nicolson, letter, 13 June 1914. T 1/11708/13229, Nicolson to Bradbury, letter, 25 June 1914; minute by Armitage Smith, 4 October 1914; Bradbury to Nicolson, letter, 17 November 1914. 183 T 1/11708/27775, Nicolson to Bradbury, letter, 8 December 1914. 181

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Delivering the message The foreign service messengers, 1858–1914

It is obvious that the departure of Messengers should be ruled by the amount of business required; whereas the converse has, often during quiet times, been the case, and the number of Messengers dispatched has regulated the amount of business. Lord Malmesbury, 25 September 18581 There is no doubt that we should do better with fewer messengers. W. C. Cartwright, 29 November 19102 Lewis Hertslet’s retirement as superintendent of the Queen’s Messengers came at a testing time for those on foreign service. The war in Crimea and the subsequent peace negotiations placed new demands upon a corps, whose duties extended to the conveyance of military and naval, as well as diplomatic, correspondence, but whose management remained primarily the responsibility of the Foreign Office. The messengers were also exposed to new dangers, particularly when travelling between Constantinople and Marseille on steamers laden with sick and wounded troops, many of whom were suffering with cholera.3 To cope with the additional workload, which included six journeys a month to Constantinople, four temporary extra messengers were recruited and more home service messengers than usual were required to undertake duties abroad.4 Meanwhile, though Hammond was at first disdainful of electric telegraphy, an invention which, he claimed, left ‘every person in a hurry’ and tempted ill-considered responses, the telegraph came into regular international usage and the Foreign Office’s messenger fund was saddled with the associated costs.5 3 4

FO 83/348, Malmesbury to British ministers, circular, 25 September 1858. FO 366/761, memo. by Cartwright, 29 November 1910. FO 366/675, J. Moore to Malmesbury, letter, 28 November 1858. The extra messengers were awarded a salary of £250 a year. They were also reimbursed the actual sums paid by them for their travelling by land and sea, and received 10s. a day for time spent travelling between London and Marseille. FO 83/348, ‘Allowances to Extra Messengers’, unsigned memo., 4 January 1855. 5 HC, Report from the Select Committee on Foreign Office Re-construction, minutes, para. 121, 13 July 1858. FO 83/348, memo. for L. Hertslet, 7 March 1854. HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/20, Hammond to Malmesbury, letter, 17 September 1858. 1 2

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Expenditure on the foreign service messengers rose from £21,431 before the war to £32,243 after it, while the number of despatches passing annually through the Office doubled from about 30,000 in1852 to more than 60,000 in 1857.6 It was the sheer cost of the messenger service, a somewhat exaggerated belief that the ready availability of messengers encouraged unnecessary correspondence, and his assumption that better use might be made of the telegraph and an expanding postal network which, two years after the restoration of peace, impelled Malmesbury to embark on a policy of retrenchment and reform. As he explained to Henry Bulwer, the newly appointed ambassador at Constantinople, he expected to save £15,000 a year ‘by cutting down these useless and overpaid couriers’.7 This raised again questions about the social status of messengers and once more pitted the Foreign Office against the Treasury in a dispute over pay, grading and recruitment. The foreign service messengers may have been servants of diplomacy, but they remained gentlemen, and, as such, they were in their own eyes and in those of some of their employers deserving of appropriate incomes and respect.

Rewarding gentlemen Malmesbury considered the telegraph an ‘invaluable instrument’ which his diplomats should use ‘without scruple’.8 He also believed that many of the despatches sent and received by the Office were unnecessary, and that considerable economies could be achieved by reducing the number of foreign service messengers from eighteen to fourteen and restricting the frequency and distribution of their regular journeys. Eight of them might thus be assigned to periodic journeys, with five or six residing abroad. Letters for Constantinople could, he speculated, be carried by the India Mail service via Marseille and Malta, with Valletta-based messengers responsible for onward and return deliveries.9 Such thinking met with some resistance from Hammond. Quite apart from his personal distaste for telegrams and the insufficient explanations they afforded, he was particularly conscious of how hard pressed the messenger service had been during the recent war with Russia and how his colleagues had sometimes been at their ‘wits’ end to find a messenger for an emergency’. Messengers, he protested, were subject to bona fide illnesses and entitled to leave of absence, and if the Office were left with too few for unscheduled journeys, it might be necessary to have recourse to employing travelling couriers who were ‘mostly foreigners and therefore not very eligible’.10 Hammond was, nonetheless, equally anxious to see messenger expenses R. A. Jones, The British Diplomatic Service, 1815–1914 (Waterloo, 1983), p. 122. H. Maxwell, The Life and Letters of George William Frederick, fourth Earl of Clarendon (2 vols, London, 1913), vol. 1, p. 11. FO 83/348, Malmesbury to British ministers, circular, 25 September 1858. 7 HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/54, Malmesbury to Bulwer, letter, 27 July 1858; Malmesbury to Queen Victoria, letter, 17 September 1858. On the extension of the electric telegraph network to Turkey, see: Berridge, British Diplomacy in Turkey, pp. 109–14. 8 HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/55, Malmesbury to Bulwer, letter, 9 February 1859. 9 Ibid., 9M73/54, Malmesbury to Hammond, letter, 2 August 1858. 10 Ibid., 9M73/20, Hammond to Malmesbury, letters, 9, 17 and 28 September 1858. 6

 Delivering the Message 195 curtailed, and he readily assisted the foreign secretary in refining arrangements outlined in a circular sent to British representatives abroad on 25 September 1858. This announced that in future messengers would be despatched to Paris only twice a week; to Constantinople, Copenhagen and St Petersburg once a month, instead of once a week; and to Vienna every alternate week, rather than weekly. The British legation at Dresden could still expect calls from foreign service messengers en route between Berlin and Vienna, but those at Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart and subsequently Berne would have to rely for the periodic despatch and delivery of their bags on individuals engaged by the consul at Cologne; those in Italy and at Madrid must likewise depend on arrangements made by the consul at Marseille; and the messenger to The Hague was ‘abolished altogether’. None of this precluded the use of special couriers or the ‘ordinary post’, and the telegraph ‘if judiciously employed’ should, Malmesbury assumed, reduce the costs of correspondence. But in a sentence which bore the imprint of Hammond, ambassadors and ministers were reminded that the telegraph was a new invention and ‘far more difficult to make perfect use of than it appear[ed] at first’.11 Of more pressing concern to the messengers themselves was Malmesbury’s subsequent decision to make drastic changes to their pay and allowances: changes which the foreign secretary hoped would result in an annual saving of £5,400. Figures collated for the three years 1855–8 indicated that foreign service messenger earnings averaged about £800 a year, a sum twice as high as that on which their superannuation was calculated and, in Malmesbury’s opinion, out of all proportion to the nature of the service which they [were] called upon to perform, the severity of which . . . [was] . . . considerably mitigated now that their journeys [were] performed almost entirely by railway or steamboat, by which they [were] conveyed with greater rapidity, and with no demand upon their personal exertion for the acceleration of their journeys.

Indeed, the rise in messenger costs in peacetime could be almost wholly attributed to the speed with which long distances were by then covered by train and a consequent increase in mileage profits. As in the case of the home service messengers, Malmesbury thought the solution lay in the substitution of a fixed income for their current pay and emoluments. He, therefore, informed them in November 1858 that from January they would receive £500 per annum, a salary on which their pensions would be based, plus their actual travelling expenses; and that, in order to avoid any disincentive to the performance of their duties, a medical officer would be appointed to certify any cases of ill health.12 Hammond did not question the ‘reasonableness’ of Malmesbury’s It was also arranged in November that messengers stationed at Berlin, Copenhagen, St Petersburg and Vienna would in future be relieved at two-month intervals. FO 83/348, Malmesbury to British ministers abroad, circular, 25 September 1858; memo. establishing the routes of station messengers, 3 November 1858; Hammond to Harris (Berne), letter, 5 November 1858. HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/20, Hammond to Malmesbury, letters, 24 August, and 1 and 9 September 1858. HC, Report of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Constitution and Efficiency of the Present Diplomatic Service of this Country (1861), minutes, para. 3510. 12 FO 83/348, memo. by Malmesbury, 4 November 1858; Malmesbury to Treasury, letter, 2 December 1858. 11

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‘arrangement’. He had himself reckoned foreign service messenger incomes to be nearer to £1,000 than £800 a year, and he considered it a ‘preposterous sum to pay for a trustworthy person’ who would be amply rewarded with half that figure. Yet, he would have preferred to achieve this by introducing a reduced mileage allowance so as to offer a more equitable return for journeys undertaken.13 Hammond rightly anticipated ‘a great outcry on the part of the Messengers’ over the threat Malmesbury’s decision posed to their pockets and their privileges.14 In a memorial submitted to Malmesbury on 6 December, they highlighted the distress they would suffer from loss of income. Since a messenger’s living expenses while on duty abroad amounted to not less than £1 a day, and since he was likely to be so employed for nine months of the year, he would, the memorialists asserted, be left with no more than £220 per annum ‘for his labours, the support of his family, the education of his children, house-rent, income tax, and other rates and taxes, life assurance as provision for his family in the event of his death, and other incidental expenses’. Moreover, the £500 on offer seemed to them small recompense for their ‘constant exposure in all climates and seasons, . . . continually out of their beds during winter nights in Russia, and in the heat of the East, sometimes travelling in open sledges, on horseback, in steamboats, and on railways’, and their subjection to the ‘heavy expenses’ of continental hotels.15 As Lewis Hertslet had pointed out a decade earlier, ‘Being gentlemen, they [did] not put up at inferior places.’16 But none of this persuaded Malmesbury to change his mind. Much of the memorial was, he thought, founded on erroneous data which exaggerated their costs and the number of days spent on duty, and, as he pointed out, other public servants, including army officers, could only hope to achieve a salary of £500 after many years of duty. Messenger journeys were in any case nowhere near as arduous as they had once been. While travelling by train or steamer, messengers were, Malmesbury observed, ‘almost always able to enjoy uninterrupted rest, instead of being obliged, as formerly, to be constantly on the alert, in order to stimulate the exertions of the postillions and hostlers’. All he was ready to concede was that they might be offered an additional £25 per annum, the equivalent of 2s. 6d. a day for an average of 200 days a year, in order to cover extra subsistence charges while in service on the Continent.17 Much as Malmesbury’s initiative was welcome to the Treasury, the guardians of the public purse favoured further prospective reductions in salaries. They suggested that for new appointees £500 should be the maximum annual salary ‘to be ultimately attained as the reward of long and good services’, and that foreign service messengers should be divided into two classes with a minimum and maximum rate of pay and an annual increase applicable to each class.18 Hammond was, as ever, disappointed by the Treasury’s response. He thought there could be no diminution of the proposed £500. ‘It would never do’, he minuted, ‘to pay our messengers less than what is sufficient HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/20, Hammond to Malmesbury, letters, 1, 9 and 27 September 1858. 14 Ibid., Hammond to Malmesbury, letter, 13 October 1858. 15 FO 83/348, memorial by foreign service messengers, 6 December 1858. 16 HC, Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure (1848), minutes, para. 5,554. 17 FO, 83/348, memo. by Hammond (for Malmesbury),10 December 1858. 18 FO 366/496, Trevelyan to Hammond, letter, 11 December 1858. 13

 Delivering the Message 197 for their maintenance in the position they occupy now as Gentlemen, officers on ½ pay &c, allowing for their expenditure for subsistence and also for remuneration for their services.’ To put the foreign service messengers on a ‘stinted allowance’ would, he feared, be ‘to open the door to corruption’, and he urged resistance to the Treasury’s general theory regarding a graduated scale of paying public servants, which might ‘be applicable to clerks, but would . . . be wholly inapplicable to messengers’.19 This was a curious argument as only ten years earlier Lenox-Conyngham had, when questioned by the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure, been quite emphatic in rejecting the notion that it was important that foreign service messengers be drawn from the officer class.20 And Malmesbury himself admitted that he much regretted Palmerston’s decision to raise the class from which messengers were recruited: ‘if the class of persons formerly employed were reverted to’, then he thought, ‘it might be possible to obtain good men for £400 a year’. That said, Malmesbury foresaw difficulties in trying to reintroduce the lower orders to the service. There would, he noted, then be two categories of messengers, ‘one of Gentlemen invited to the Minister’s table, the other in the position of servants wh[ich] during the transition period w[oul]d occasion disagreeable scenes’.21 Perhaps Malmesbury had heard of Fricker’s fracas with Wright and was worried lest class warfare put more of the office furniture at risk. The Treasury was unimpressed by the Foreign Office’s stance. Hammond’s contention, in a letter drafted at Malmesbury’s request, that it would be neither right nor prudent to expose messengers to ‘temptation which [might] readily be held at them’ should their allowances be insufficient to maintain that ‘position in society to which their birth and previous employment in Her Majesty’s Service, and their habits of life entitle[d] them to hold’ seemed wholly to contradict the department’s reformist agenda.22 As Trevelyan explained in a letter of 12 January 1859, ‘to employ a higher description of agency than the nature of the work require[d] [was] objectionable on financial as well as other grounds’. The Foreign Office, he observed, would simply have to live with the inconvenience ‘attendant upon the return to a just system’.23 That was not to be. Hammond considered Trevelyan’s response ‘really too bad’, and Malmesbury instructed him not to reply and then proceeded with the projected adjustment of messenger pay.24 The Office had still, however, to contend with messenger dissatisfaction with what Charles Townley later denounced ‘as an unjust measure carried out in a very harsh way’.25 In April 1860 the messengers urged Malmesbury’s Whig successor, John Russell, to re-examine their plight, once more emphasizing both the stressful nature of rail travel and the hardships to which they had been exposed through loss of earnings. They protested against the ‘unfairness’ of a system which might impose upon one messenger an absence from England of 300 days in the year, while another might Ibid., Hammond to Malmesbury, minute, 13 December 1858. HC, Report from the Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure, Minutes of Evidence (1848), paras. 2202–4. 21 FO 366/496, Malmesbury to Hammond, minute, n.d. December 1858. 22 Ibid., Hammond to Hamilton, letter, 16 December 1858. 23 Ibid., Trevelyan to Hammond, letter, 12 January 1859. 24 Ibid., notes by Hammond and Malmesbury. 25 HC, Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Constitution and Efficiency of the Present Diplomatic Service of this Country (1861), minutes, para. 3067. 19 20

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earn as much for being on duty for only 150 days. Once more figures were inflated and facts distorted. As Hammond indicated in a memorandum drafted in response to their claims, the notion that the health of messengers was severely impaired by continuous rail travel seemed ludicrous when their earlier travails were borne in mind. Prior to the coming of the railways, the overland journey to Constantinople had taken about seventeen days, the last six of which were on horseback; and that to Vienna, which had once occupied around seven days and nights of uninterrupted travel by a horsedrawn carriage, now kept a messenger out of bed for just three nights and allowed him a fourteen-hour rest in Berlin. Russell, nonetheless, recognized that the system introduced by Malmesbury was open to the objection that messengers were not paid in proportion to the duties they performed. He was, therefore, ready to consider altering their allowances so that, while there would be no increase in the overall messenger budget, there would be recompense for those serving for longer periods abroad.26 The primary interest of the messengers lay not in incentives of the kind suggested by Russell, but in restoring their overall level of remuneration.27 Yet, discussion of messenger pay both within and without the Office tended to centre on how individual messengers might best be rewarded for extra effort. When in the spring of 1861 Townley appeared before a parliamentary select committee on the diplomatic service, he contended that mileage profits were an inducement to hard work and that their absence led messengers to shirk their duties. Fixed salaries, he claimed, offered a ‘premium for idleness’.28 Malmesbury, who was examined by the same committee, was surprised by Townley’s evidence. Gentlemen messengers, drawn from society of a ‘highly respectable kind’, were evidently not expected to ‘shirk their duty’.29 There was, however, evidence to suggest they did just that. Already in January 1859 Malmesbury’s attention had been drawn to the disproportionate number of foreign service messengers applying for sick leave, and, in consequence, messengers were warned that those whose general state of health obliged them frequently to seek relief from duty risked dismissal from the service.30 On one notorious occasion, in June 1860, neither of the two messengers who were first and second on the duty roster, Cecil Johnson and Richard Webster, turned up when required. This was wholly contrary to the existing regulations which stipulated that two of the three messengers first upon the roll must be constantly in attendance at the Office every day between 12.00 noon and 6.00 pm, and that all three should be in attendance from 6.00 pm until the close of business. In consequence, LenoxConyngham, who made no attempt to disguise his anger, had to despatch the third duty messenger to Madrid and a home service messenger on the once highly profitable, and therefore highly prized, journey to Constantinople. Johnson, it was reported, had repaired to his family home in Calais, where he was laid low by a cold; and Webster, reputedly a ‘boon companion’ of Philip Currie, having been absent on leave for four weeks, had arrived late at the Office and appeared quite satisfied that someone else had FO 83/348, minutes by Hammond, 5 November 1860. Ibid., foreign service messengers to Russell, letter, 27 December 1860. 28 HC, Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Constitution and Efficiency of the Present Diplomatic Service of this Country (1861), minutes, paras. 3064–71. 29 Ibid., paras. 3512–13. 30 FO 366/471, FO circular, 19 January 1859. 26 27

 Delivering the Message 199 undertaken his work. Both men were initially punished with the loss of one month’s salary, but these fines were later quashed when they submitted what were deemed credible explanations of their conduct.31 Hammond personally favoured a reversion to some form of mileage allowance as a means of avoiding such neglect of duty, as also did Lenox-Conyngham, though he thought messengers were well paid with a salary of £525.32 Russell was of much the same opinion.33 However, he was persuaded that their fixed salaries were insufficient to cover the rising costs of accommodation and subsistence, and in June 1861 he agreed to a compromise proposal whereby their salaries were to be set at £400 a year, with an additional allowance of £1 for each day spent abroad, a sum which would be rounded up to an average of £200 a year, or £600 in all.34 This the Treasury accepted, but with the proviso that while existing messengers might base their claims for superannuation on their present salary of £525 per annum, the pensions of new appointees must, in compliance with recent legislation, be based on their fixed salary of £400. The Foreign Office claimed that the additional £200 was intended to cover living expenses abroad and should therefore be regarded as part of the regular salary of messengers, while the Treasury insisted that it should be viewed as reimbursement for travel expenses which did not qualify for superannuation.35 As with other wrangles of this kind, the Treasury eventually gave way, accepting in November 1861 that payments made to messengers in excess of £400 and up to £525 a year should be accepted as emoluments and therefore count towards their pensions.36 The gentlemen of the corps might not have gained all that they had hoped for, but they had achieved far more than Malmesbury had contemplated and more too than Russell had originally been ready to concede.

Here today but gone tomorrow Malmesbury had, according to Hammond, been too optimistic in assuming that the Foreign Office needed no more than fourteen foreign service messengers. At a time when Europe had seemed relatively tranquil, Hammond had accepted the inevitable delays in delivery of correspondence which accompanied the curtailment of direct and distinct services for Constantinople, Madrid and the British diplomatic missions to the still-independent Italian states. Three messengers were thus stationed at Marseille, and each of these was, in turn, responsible for the onward delivery by steamship of bags to and from Ottoman Turkey, the ports of Italy’s western seaboard, and Alicante in Spain. FO 366/675, Malmesbury to Lenox-Conyngham, minute, 19 January 1859; memo. by LenoxConyngham, 27 June 1860; minute by Wodehouse, 29 June 1860; minute by Hammond, 16 April 1861, with notes by Wodehouse and J. Russell, 17 and 18 April 1861. W. S. Blunt, My Diaries (2 vols, London, 1919–20), vol. 1, p. 401. 32 HC, Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Constitution and Efficiency of the Present Diplomatic Service of this Country (1861), paras. 570–2, 589, 3041. 33 FO 366/675, minutes by Wodehouse and J. Russell, 29 June 1860. 34 FO 366/496, memo. by Russell, 6 June 1861. FO 366/434, Russell to Treasury, letter, 8 June 1861. 35 Ibid., Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 20 August, with minute by Hammond, 19 September 1861; memo. by Hammond, 19 September 1861; Hammond to Treasury, letter, 19 September 1861. 36 FO 366/675, Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 1 November 1861. 31

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This meant that it took eight days for a despatch to reach Madrid from London, almost twice as long as it might take a messenger travelling by rail through France and malleposte across and beyond the Pyrenees. And with Italy in political ferment, following the opening of hostilities between Austria and Piedmont, and Spain at war with Morocco, it was settled in November 1859 that there would henceforth be a fortnightly messenger service to Naples, via Turin, Leghorn (for Florence) and Civita Vecchia (for Rome), and a monthly one to Madrid via Paris and Bayonne. Henry Elliot, the recently appointed envoy to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was irritated by the slow pace of his communications with London and was doubtless relieved at being better able to keep up with his government’s policy towards a monarchy which Garibaldi’s rebels were about to render defunct.37 The Civil War in America and the absence of any functioning transatlantic telegraph cable led likewise to the stationing there of messengers on six-monthly tours of duty to ensure the safe conveyance of diplomatic bags between New York and the British legation in Washington.38 Meanwhile, the presence in Germany of two of Queen Victoria’s daughters, the Crown Princess of Prussia and the Princess Louis of Hesse; the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark; and the queen’s own visits to the Continent placed new demands upon the foreign service messengers. In July 1861 the queen insisted on having a weekly messenger for Darmstadt, the grand-ducal capital of Hesse, to ensure the delivery of her letters, and attendant government ministers and other senior members of the royal family could be every bit as exacting.39 During John Russell’s stay with the queen at Coburg in the summer of 1863, messengers were despatched there three times a week and were instructed that on their passage through Darmstadt they should take charge of any letters Princess Louis might send to the station.40 It was no wonder that the messengers found that, despite their reduced remuneration, they were expected to do more with fewer numbers.41 Fortunately for the Office, the Treasury was in an accommodating mood and, on Russell’s application, in July 1863 it sanctioned a reversal of Malmesbury’s cuts and the recruitment of two additional messengers.42 Even so, at the commencement of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870, Robert Morier, the legation secretary at Darmstadt, was at first dependent

In March 1861 Russell decided that there would be a weekly messenger service to Turin and a fortnightly one to St Petersburg. Eighteen months later the Turin messenger service reverted to being a fortnightly one. FO 83/348, FO to HM Consul, Marseille, draft despt., 5 November 1858; memo. by E. Hertslet, 17 November 1859; J. Murray to Hammond, letter, 21 November 1859; Hammond to Murray, 22 November 1859; memo. by Murray, 24 November 1859; minutes by Morier, 11 and 21 March 1861; minute by Lenox-Conyngham, 4 September 1862. 38 Ibid., Hall to E. Hertslet, letter, 20 December 1862. 39 Ibid., note by J. Russell, 6 July 1861. FO 366/496, Hammond to Hamilton, letter, 25 June 1863. Before leaving for Copenhagen in April 1900, the Prince of Wales made it plain to the Foreign Office that he ‘want[ed] a messenger as often as he [could] get one’. FO 83/1760, minute by E. Barrington, 29 March 1900. 40 FO 366/675, minute by Hammond, 11 August 1863. 41 FO 83/348, J. Ridgeway to Hammond, letter, 15 January 1862. 42 FO 366/675, J. Russell to Treasury, letter, 25 June 1863. FO 366/496, Hamilton to Hammond, letter, 8 July 1863. 37

 Delivering the Message 201 on a partner of the British consul at Frankfurt for the transmission of correspondence to London.43 War and civil disturbances, as ever, continued to provide the foreign service messengers with solid grounds for complaint. Cecil Johnson, who was despatched to Washington in the spring of 1861, just weeks after the bombardment of Fort Sumter by southern artillery, was disappointed to find that he would not be returning soon to England. The railway line linking Washington to New York became a bone of contention between the two armies, and Lord Lyons, the British minister there, wanted Johnson for work that could not be left to legation couriers. Hardly had he arrived before he was instructed to take correspondence to the governor-general in Quebec, and he was subsequently put on orders, first for the South and then for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Washington he found too hot, excessively expensive and ‘crowded with troops of the filthiest of description’, and his duties he described as ‘unpleasant and often hazardous’. If a replacement foreign service messenger were sent from London then, Johnson informed Edward Hertslet, he should be advised to bring furs, waterproofs and riding equipments – arms he will not want, as he would have no chance against a Yankee who wanted to borrow a dollar, and he would be able to pick up a wheelbarrow full of revolvers, bowie knives and rifles, at the first skirmish.44

One of Johnson’s successors, Captain Conway Seymour, had soon to demonstrate his equestrian skills. With a diplomatic crisis pending, in December 1861 it fell to Seymour to deliver Russell’s despatches demanding the release of the Confederate envoys seized upon the Trent. Unfortunately, Seymour’s train broke down some hours after departing Boston and the messenger had to commandeer a horse, ride through the night to Baltimore, and there charter a special train to Washington.45 Other messengers travelling between America’s Atlantic seaboard and Washington found much to complain about. Major Herbert Byng Hall thought particularly odious the classless and comfortless railway carriages in which he was cast in ‘among a motley crowd of politicians and place-hunters; women called ladies’ and ‘drunken men in blue coats miscalled soldiers’.46 By contrast, his colleague Robbins appeared to have been enchanted by his American sojourn. Admittedly, he was on station there in the spring and summer of 1865 and by then the North’s victory seemed certain. He also spent a good deal of his time in New York, a place which Johnson much preferred to Washington and which Robbins himself described as ‘one of the jolliest Cities in R. Wemyss, Memoirs and Letters of Sir Robert Morier from 1826 to 1876 (2 vols, London, 1911), vol. 2, p. 155. 44 FO 83/348, Johnson to E. Hertslet, letters, 13 June and 16 July 1861. Haworth, Silver Greyhound, p. 220. 45 Lord Newton, Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy (2 vols, London, 1913), vol. 1, p. 61. B. Jenkins, Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War (Montreal and Kingston, 2014), pp. 174–83. A. Foreman, A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (London, 2010), p. 189. 46 H. Byng Hall, The Queen’s Messenger or Travels on the High-Ways and Bye-ways of Europe (London, 1865), pp. 367–72. 43

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the World’. He delighted in the ease with which the eight-hour journey to and from Washington could be accomplished and was ecstatic about how much there was to see and relish. ‘On the Queen’s Birthday’, he recalled, ‘the Consul gave a Picnic at West Point at which we were and enjoyed ourselves amazingly.’ Indeed, had it not been for the rheumatism and neuralgia from which he suffered and the prospect of his being posted to Vienna ‘before the Season [was] over’, and of there being able to take the sulphur baths at neighbouring Baden, Robbins would have been pleased to extend his American tour of duty.47 In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Washington legation reverted to employing its own agents for the overland transmission of diplomatic bags. Then, as had remained the practice when messengers were stationed there, the bags were entrusted to the pursers of British ships in New York for their safekeeping during their Atlantic passage. The ease with which secure communications could thus be maintained was indicative of how in peacetime the Foreign Office might manage with a less costly and cumbrous messenger system. Already in April 1864 it had been decided to abandon monthly messenger journeys to Madrid on the grounds that correspondence with the legation there could always be sent by the ordinary post, or via the French and Spanish diplomatic bags. If the British minister had anything confidential to report, he could resort either to ciphered telegrams or to the services of a trustworthy individual.48 An article in The Daily Telegraph of 24 June 1869 made much the same point. It claimed that the French foreign ministry had under consideration the scrapping of its couriers de cabinet and speculated on whether the Foreign Office could not rely more on ordinary postal and telegraph services. The ‘inviolability of letters sent through Continental post-offices is’, it confidently asserted, ‘beyond suspicion, and even despotic Russia has abandoned her nasty tricks of tampering with seals or opening gummed envelopes by means of a jet of steam’. The foreign service messenger, the article suggested, was the product of an earlier age: he belonged ‘by caste, if not by wealth, to the Upper Ten Thousand’; he was ‘intimately acquainted with the shady side of Pall-mall’; and he was ‘treated as an equal by the Attachés and the secretaries of legations abroad’. A ‘being set apart, . . . here today but gone tomorrow’, his days, the newspaper opined, were evidently numbered.49 Clarendon, another economizing foreign secretary, may have harboured similar thoughts. He considered that twelve foreign service messengers could meet diplomacy’s needs and, after his return to office in December 1868, he set about limiting and rerouting their journeys, and under Alston’s auspices a new and more formalized system for the submission and inspection of individual messenger accounts (memoranda of service) was introduced.50 Retirees were not replaced, and by the spring of 1870 they were down again to fifteen, with only six cities counting as regular messenger stations: Berlin, Constantinople, Florence (since 1865 the capital of a partially united Italy), Paris, St Petersburg and Vienna. Berlin served as a hub with a weekly service and with messengers from there travelling every other week to either FO 83/348, Robbins to E. Hertslet, letter, 9 June 1865; Robbins to Lenox-Conyngham, letter, 15 September 1865. 48 Ibid., minutes by J. Woodford, 13 April 1864. 49 Ibid., excerpt from The Daily Telegraph, 19 June 1869. 50 FO 366/471, minute by Alston, 4 February 1869. 47

 Delivering the Message 203 St Petersburg or Vienna. Journeys to Constantinople and Florence were again reduced from twice to once a month.51 Perhaps surprisingly, Hammond did not initially oppose these cuts. He informed Clarendon in August 1869 that while the ambassador at Constantinople might have only one ‘safe communication a month’, he could otherwise utilize the ‘French Packets, and, whether they are secure or not, it matters less while we are on good terms with France’. If Britain could reckon on the continuance of peace, then he thought that the foreign service messengers could safely be reduced by three.52 Yet, he continued to doubt the wisdom of this course. He felt that the Office was depriving itself of the means of obtaining important information, especially, he told MPs, ‘as so many things [were] going on in Italy’.53 Moreover, railways had not yet wholly replaced older means of transport: as late as March 1869 a messenger journey to and from Florence and Rome could still include the hire of carriages, horses and sleighs with which to cross Mont Cenis.54 Critics of the Office were, nonetheless, puzzled as to why the foreign service messengers were drawn from so high a social class and why they were paid so much more than their home service colleagues. When on 21 March 1870 Hammond was questioned on this last point by the select committee on the diplomatic service, he replied that the foreign service messengers needed to be conversant with foreign languages and continental travel, and had ‘harder work to perform, and . . . [were] persons who [might] be exposed to great difficulty and great danger’.55 This was true. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1 members of the corps demonstrated their resilience and zeal and risked their own safety in maintaining communications with the British embassy to France. The GPO had previously taken on responsibility for transmitting Paris-bound diplomatic bags by rail and packet boat to Calais for onward delivery by a Paris-based foreign service messenger. However, as the German forces advanced, the ambassador and his staff moved first to Tours and then to Bordeaux, and in November 1870 Odo Russell was sent on special mission to the Prussian headquarters at Versailles. As many as five messengers were sometimes employed to maintain communications, and new routes by rail, hired carriage or crowded diligence had to be found. The messengers’ regulation caps, which resembled those worn by Prussian staff officers, hardly assisted their cause and messengers passing through provincial France were suspected of being foreign spies, and occasionally arrested and threatened with execution.56 Robbins, who was carrying letters from the North German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, to Granville, only just managed to escape a firing squad by misleading his guard and slipping away early from an inn in which he was held

HC, Select Committee on the Diplomatic and Consular Services (1870), minutes, paras. 1437–8. Bodleian Library, Clarendon Papers, Clar. Dep. c. 503, Hammond to Clarendon, letters, 14 and 20 August 1869. 53 HC, Select Committee on the Diplomatic and Consular Services (1870), minutes, para. 1441. 54 FO 366/266, memo. of service, C. Johnson, 18 March 1869. 55 Ibid. 56 Wynter, Queen’s Errands, pp. 181–9. Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 96–9. Haworth, Silver Greyhound, pp. 221–39. Jenkins, Lord Lyons, p. 361. FO 366/471, minute by Alston, 19 July 1870. FO 391/13, Lyons to Hammond, letter, 22 December 1870. K. Urbach, Bismarck’s Favourite Englishman: Lord Odo Russell’s Mission to Berlin (London, 1999), pp. 54–74. 51 52

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captive overnight.57 Yet, once peace had been restored, the Treasury refused its consent to a Foreign Office request that, in keeping with earlier practice, a £650 gratuity be divided amongst the then thirteen foreign service messengers in recognition of the extra workload they had borne and the stress to which they had been exposed. As Lingen explained: A gentleman who under takes this duty knows that it is not limited to times of peace, and that the salary attached to it represents an average of the work to be done, that is to say, sometimes much and sometimes little, sometimes ease and safety, sometimes discomfort and danger.58

That, after all, had in substance been the justification offered by Hammond for the difference in pay between foreign and home service messengers.

Testing their worth During the war in France the foreign service messengers demonstrated their worth. There were other instances too when political upheaval necessitated the revival of former periodic journeys, and messengers were still occasionally instructed to embark on arduous and dangerous ventures. With Spain divided and disrupted by the third Carlist War (1872–6), it was decided in January 1875 to reintroduce a fortnightly messenger service for Madrid.59 Some messengers were thus forced to make their way across the Bay of Biscay by tugboats, ‘devoid of all proper accommodation’ and laden with seasick passengers ‘many of whom were of the lowest class’.60 Then in the autumn of 1877, following the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, Lieutenant St Aubyn H. Player, a veteran of the Anglo-Ashanti War of 1873–4, was despatched to Bucharest to facilitate communications with the British military attaché accompanying the Tsar’s army in Bulgaria. Player had, in consequence, to hire a dragoman to act as guide and interpreter, as well as horses and carriages for transportation. He had also to purchase camping equipment, cooking utensils and rugs for those nights when shelter was difficult to find. Amongst the latter items were a camp bed, three blankets, a pair of long boots, a lanthorn (lantern), an etna (spirit burner) and a broken saucepan, all of which Player was asked to place at the Office’s disposal in order to secure payment of his expenses.61 Deprived of the substantial mileage profits on which they had once been able to count, messengers tended not to favour travel in the Balkans. But since by the mid-1870s the Black Sea port of Varna could be reached by rail and the journey to Constantinople thus accomplished faster than by steamship from Marseille, it was Cecil, ‘The Foreign Office’, Cambridge History, vol. iii, pp. 560–1. FO 366/432, Enfield to Treasury, letters, 22 July and 24 August 1871; Lingen to Enfield, letters, 26 July and 23 September 1871. 59 FO 366/677, minute by H. C. Eliot, 18 January 1875. 60 Ibid., memo. by Derby, 6 May 1876. 61 FO 366/499, Player’s answers to queries relating to his journeys to the Russian HQ in Bulgaria, 20 January 1878; Player to Alston, letter, 5 February 1878. 57 58

 Delivering the Message 205 the route which the Foreign Office preferred. Messengers had, therefore, to cope with chaotic railway stations, filthy trains and the rapacity of local boatmen and sledge drivers when the Danube froze and regular ferry services were suspended between the Bulgarian and Romanian railheads.62 There was confusion too at Varna if voyages to and from Constantinople were delayed by late trains or stormy weather and bags were loaded before messengers had time to board.63 Conway Seymour was particularly distressed to learn in January 1877 that a large leather pouch, containing bags crosslabelled by the embassy in Constantinople to indicate that they contained important confidential documents, had gone astray. He had registered it in Bucharest for delivery to Vienna, but the luggage van in which it was conveyed was separated from the train and days passed before the pouch could be recovered.64 Seymour’s load had been substantial. In addition to the pouch, he had been instructed to take from Constantinople one bag for Vienna, five for London, two packets for Vienna, one packet for Bucharest and another for London, and, as he explained in his report to the Foreign Office, no one who had not travelled in Romania in the winter could ‘have any idea of the state of the roads, and the want of organisation which prevail[ed] at the railway stations’.65 Seymour was, nevertheless, regarded as having failed to comply with a well-understood principle that cross-labelled bags must invariably receive the special care and attention of messengers. Moreover, the mishap had wider repercussions since it reignited a long-simmering debate within the Foreign Office and missions abroad over the size and quantity of bags that could safely be entrusted to messengers, and the circumstances in which messengers might be permitted to pay for extra seats to ensure cross-labelled bags never left their sight. Despatch clerks and envoys were reminded that crossed labels should be reserved for bags containing strictly confidential papers, and new forms and procedures were devised to record the sanctioning of payment for second seats.66 Then, four years later, a more rigorous and detailed scrutiny of way bills was introduced to combat the inflated claims which messengers were suspected of making for the registration and carriage of excess luggage by rail.67 Yet, even when not overburdened, messengers could still fail to deliver their precious diplomatic consignments. In September 1874 Captain William St James Ball, whose reliability had already been called into question, was robbed of an unlocked canvas bag while travelling by train from Berlin to Brussels. After having smoked a cigar, he had dozed off and awoke beyond Minden to discover that the bag, which amongst other things contained his dressing case, his money, his cigarettes, two illustrated books of flowers and correspondence for the British legation at Brussels, had been taken from the luggage rack opposite his seat. Fortunately, Ball had at least had the good sense to FO 366/677, memo. by Derby, 6 May 1876. FO 366/499, Leeds’s answers to queries relating to his journeys to and from Constantinople, 8 January 1880, and 27 January 1884. 63 FO 366/678, minute by Currie, 1 April 1881. FO 366/471, memo. by Alston, 14 April 1881. 64 FO 366/498, Conway Seymour to Dashwood, letter, 1 January 1877; Buchanan to Alston, tel., 3 January 1877. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., minutes by Alston and Tenterden, 1 January 1877; Derby to Elliot, despt. No. 9, 4 January 1877; Elliot to Derby, despt. No. 35, 13 January 1877. 67 FO 366/471, minutes by Newman, Alston and Granville, 4 and 17 May, and 1 June 1881. 62

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use a bag containing confidential despatches as a pillow, and it had remained firmly wedged behind his head. When, however, some nine months later, news of the theft at last reached the British press, much was made of the fact that the lost items included part of a report from the French military attaché in Berlin on the latest Prussian army manoeuvres.68 There was nothing particularly odd about the document’s presence in Ball’s bag since it had long been customary in Europe for government couriers to convey small packages of usually non-confidential mail on behalf of foreign diplomatic missions. The newspaper revelations, nevertheless, added to the embarrassment of the Office and did nothing to enhance the messenger service’s reputation. On learning of Seymour’s later misadventure on the line from Bucharest, Tenterden noted tersely: ‘The Queen’s Messengers will cease to be of any use if this losing of bags goes on.’69 Until 1870 the Office was generally ready to reimburse foreign service messengers for the loss of personal effects incurred on duty as the result of theft or accident. Haviland, Joseph Draffen and William Kaye, all three of whom fell victim to banditti while travelling in southern Europe, received compensatory payments, as also did Townley when he was robbed in Lille in 1848.70 But, as was apparent in Ball’s case, the railways opened up fresh opportunities for criminality. On his way between Dünaburg and St Petersburg in March 1862, Edward Vyner found that he had been robbed of about £100 in British and foreign notes after leaving his carriage to dine with fellow passengers. Three years later, in November 1865, Cecil Johnson had money amounting to £89 14s. stolen from him at a railway station in Brussels; and then, early in 1870, Captain Martin Haworth fell foul of a ‘Jewish-money changer’ at Eydtkuhnen in East Prussia when he received a counterfeit fifty rouble note in return for English sovereigns.71 Another messenger, John Poignand, lost a portmanteau and clothing worth £51 6s. 6d. when, just off Dover on the night of 13 December 1865, the steamer on which he had embarked collided with an American vessel and, despite his having registered his luggage before departure, the South Eastern Railway Company refused to acknowledge any liability for his losses. In each of these cases the Foreign Office, after some deliberation, agreed to indemnify the messengers.72 There was, however, a feeling within the Office that messengers should exercise more care and that they should not be able to claim compensation for such losses as might have been suffered by ordinary travellers. The messenger William Harbord was doubly unfortunate. In August 1870 he was travelling from Berlin to Vienna but found the railway station crowded with soldiers and, with several hours to pass before the departure of his train and unable to obtain hotel accommodation, he slept on a bench, only subsequently to discover that he had been deprived of his passport and currency worth £23.73 Alston, from whom he sought reimbursement, questioned the merits of the case. He feared FO 391/22, O. Russell to Hammond, letters, 21 December 1872 and 4 January 1873. FO 366/498, minutes by Alston, 2 and 6 June 1875. FO 366/471, minute by Alston, 24 March 1882. 69 Ibid., minute by Tenterden, 1 January 1877. 70 FO 366/471, memo. by E. Hertslet, 29 March 1862. 71 Ibid., Vyner to Hammond, letters, 27 March and 28 April 1862; Alston to C. Johnson, letter, 7 January 1867; Haworth to Aston, letter, 3 March 1870; minutes by Haworth and Clarendon, 9 March 1870. 72 Ibid., Poignand to Hammond, letters, 3 January and 2 February 1866, with minutes. 73 Ibid., Harbord to Alston, letters, 23 and 31 August 1870; Harbord to Granville, letter, 19 May 1871. 68

 Delivering the Message 207 that too great a readiness to admit such claims might ‘breed a want of precaution on the part of messengers’, and although Hammond sanctioned compensation, the Treasury disagreed and in the following spring insisted on Harbord’s repayment of the sum.74 Meanwhile, Alston drafted and circulated a minute of 28 September 1870 informing foreign service messengers that Granville would refuse to consider future claims unless it could be shown that ‘the loss sustained ha[d] been due to the peculiar and exceptional character of the service upon which the messenger ha[d] been employed, and to circumstances altogether beyond his control’.75 Before his retirement in 1873, Hammond also registered his own growing dissatisfaction with the misconduct of individual messengers and the want of discipline within the corps. Despite regulations to the contrary, the majority of foreign service messengers by then lived out of town; few of them showed any inclination to submit themselves to examination by the appointed medical officer before absenting themselves on sick leave; and on those days when there were no fixed journeys to perform, the second and third duty messengers were sometimes unavailable. Thus, when on the evening of 28 September 1871 the Office needed a messenger for Constantinople, none could be found and Alston had instead to send a clerk from his own department. The first duty messenger, Byng Hall, had stayed home at Petersham in Surrey, claiming that he was too ill to travel, and his two colleagues were nowhere to be found. One, Ball, was on holiday in Broadstairs and the other, Captain William Montagu Leeds, was with his family in south Wales. It was, Hammond noted, ‘perfectly absurd’ that with a large messenger staff the Office should be compelled to send a clerk with despatches because the messengers chose to disobey their orders.76 Some messengers were repeat offenders. William Powell, who resigned in January 1887 rather than face a reprimand and fifteen days loss of earnings for neglect of duty, was in the words of Pauncefote, ‘an habitual “shirker” of his journeys and [had] given more trouble and annoyance than the rest of the Queen’s Messengers put together’. In the previous four years Powell had spent 743 days at home on call, 331 days at home on leave, and just 386 days on service abroad.77 Admittedly, such cases were rare: on average, messengers spent 200 days a year abroad on duty in 1870–1.78 Nevertheless, with fewer fixed or periodic journeys scheduled, the second and third messengers on duty rosters were fully alive to the fact that, though they were obliged to be in attendance at the Office, their services were unlikely to be required.79 Indeed, while the business of the Foreign Office continued to expand, the demand for foreign service messengers decreased and the number of Ibid., minutes by Alston and Hammond, 8 and 9 September 1870; Alston to Harbord, letter, 13 April and 15 June 1871. 75 Ibid., draft minute by Alston, 28 September 1870. 76 Ball and Leeds were reprimanded for their absence and each initially punished with one month’s suspension of pay. After subsequent pleas from Leeds, his fine was halved. FO 366/471, minutes by Alston and Hammond, 30 September and 1 October 1871; minute by Granville, 7 October 1871; Leeds to Granville, letters, 16 October and 9 November 1871, and 24 January 1872; Hammond to Leeds, letter, 3 February 1872. 77 FO 366/724, memos. by Alston, 13 and 26 January 1887; Pauncefote to Salisbury, minutes, 18 and 26 January 1887; Pauncefote to Powell, letters, 20 and 31 January 1887. 78 FO 366/471, minute by Hammond, 1 October 1871. 79 Ibid., Leeds to Granville, letter, 9 March 1872. 74

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them in permanent employ went into slow but steady decline. There were twelve in 1873 and only nine by 1892. Retirees were not invariably replaced, and in emergencies the Office drew upon a pool of volunteer ‘extra messengers’ whose reward for journeys undertaken was very often limited to their expenses. Alston was in no doubt that ‘the telegraph [had] taken the life out of the messenger service to a large extent’.80 That, however, was only a partial explanation of the service’s decline. Of almost equal significance was the expansion of Europe’s railway network, the establishment of regular steamship lines, and the concomitant institution of fast and reliable national and international postal services. What critics of the existing arrangements found difficult to understand was why the Foreign Office continued to rely on such an expensive messenger service. For its defenders the corps’s survival was primarily a matter of security. As both Alston and the permanent undersecretary Philip Currie would explain to the Ridley Commission in 1889, the Office kept heads of mission abroad fully appraised of the state of Britain’s foreign relations through the regular distribution of its printed confidential correspondence which, because of its bulk, could neither be sent by telegraph nor ciphered for despatch by post. Secretaries of state were, in any case, prone to leave the drafting of their private letters till the evening and, along with peregrinating royals, relied on having messengers at hand to ensure their missives’ prompt and safe delivery.81 Salisbury liked to holiday in Dieppe and, according to his daughter, during August 1878 messengers ‘loaded with piled-up Foreign Office boxes, crossed the Channel in both directions two or three times a week’.82 But by the late 1880s correspondence with posts in Africa, Asia and the Americas was very largely taken in sealed bags entrusted first to the Post Office for carriage by mail train, then to the captains or pursers of seagoing British vessels, and finally to locally engaged mission staff and agents. Until 1897 the bag for the British legation at Peking was in winter carried overland from Hankow, a journey of some weeks, on the back of a donkey with only a coolie in attendance.83 Even in continental Europe diplomats became ever more dependent on chancery servants and expatriate British residents for the safe delivery of correspondence. Diplomatic bags to and from Rome were, for instance, consigned to the India Mail service, and Ancona’s railway station became the bag pick-up and drop-off point for embassy employees. So likewise, in 1888 Salisbury sought to reduce costs by suppressing the long-standing messenger service between Calais and Paris. Instead, it was decided to rely on the embassy’s French facteurs. Then, following an incident which raised doubts about the embassy’s security, it was arranged in the summer of 1893 that William Darling Cuthbertson,

Fourth Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Civil Establishments of the Different Offices of State at Home and Abroad (c 6172), para. 26,652. 81 Ibid., paras. 26,301–14 and 26,652–54. 82 G. Cecil, Life of Robert Marquis of Salisbury (4 vols, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921–32), vol. 2, p. 336. 83 FO 83/1979, E. Satow to Lansdowne, despt. No. 260, 21 July 1904. On the advances in the carrying of overseas mails by the Post Office in this period, see: H. Robinson, Carrying British Mails Overseas (London, 1964), pp. 234–51. 80

 Delivering the Message 209 an Englishman living in Paris whom the ambassador had hired privately for clerical duties, would take on the work for £100 a year.84 Cuthbertson was cheaper than a Queen’s Messenger and, if required, he was ready to undertake other journeys, delivering official correspondence to and from San Sebastian when during the summer months the Spanish court and Britain’s ambassador moved there from Madrid. He was also considered more trustworthy than the facteurs he replaced, and for Sir Edmund Monson, who was appointed ambassador to France in 1896, this was particularly important. When in December 1899 he pressed for an increase in Cuthbertson’s salary to a base of £150 a year, he highlighted the extent to which the French officials would be prepared to use any illicit means to secure possession of secrets that might be of advantage to them. The ‘majority of French politicians’, he warned Salisbury, ‘look upon England not only as an enemy but as an intriguing, unscrupulous, and even treacherous neighbour’.85 Similar concerns were voiced about correspondence with the British mission in Tehran. In September 1901 Sir Arthur Hardinge, the British consul-general (subsequently minister) there, expressed his fears to the Foreign Office that his Persian servants (gholams), who were charged with carrying diplomatic bags overland through Russia, might be susceptible to the bribes of the Russian secret police. He thought the latter could easily cut open and stitch up bags in order to access despatches and familiarize themselves with the main features of British ciphers, and he urged the future use of padlocked leather pouches.86 But Russian intentions and Persian honesty remained under suspicion, and in 1905, with Russia at war with Britain’s ally Japan and disturbances in the Caucasus, the Foreign Office explored the possibility of limiting journeys undertaken by gholams to Persia and the Caspian littoral. Thought was given to reverting to an earlier route and having a locally employed messenger carry bags between Constantinople, Batoum and Baku.87 When, however, this proved impractical, it was decided to seek out a ‘reliable Englishman’ to take the bags to and from St Petersburg and the Caspian Sea port of Enzeli. The Treasury was amenable, and in July 1905, David Wilton, the brother of The Times correspondent in St Petersburg, was recruited to undertake the twelveday journey thirteen times a year for an annual salary of £250 plus a daily allowance for his subsistence.88 Much as the Foreign Office may have felt the need for reliable Englishmen to convey its confidential correspondence, it was less certain as to whether its foreign service FO 83/1424, Dufferin and Ava to Rosebery, despt. No. 34, 31 July 1893; Welby to Currie, letter, 14 September 1893. By the turn of the century Cuthbertson seems to have been thus employed at least three or four times a week. M. Baring, The Puppet Show of Memory (London, 1930), p. 181. 85 The Treasury agreed that Cuthbertson should receive an annual salary of £150, rising by annual increments of £10 to £200 a year. FO 83/1760, Monson to Salisbury, despt. Nos. 494 and 532, 28 November and 18 December 1899; Mowatt to Sanderson, letter, 8 January 1900. 86 FO 83/1883, A. Hardinge to Sanderson, letter, 30 September 1901. 87 FO 83/2160, Lansdowne to C. Hardinge, tel. No.13, 20 February 1905; memo. by Grant Duff, 9 March 1905; Lansdowne to N. O’Conor, despt. No. 111, 10 April 1905. 88 Ibid., A. Hardinge to Sanderson, letter, 9 April 1905; C. Hardinge to Sanderson, letter, 25 April 1905; A. Hardinge to Lansdowne, tel. No. 60, 2 May 1905; O’Conor to Lansdowne, despt. No. 380, 3 June 1906; C. Hardinge to Lansdowne, despt. No. 377, 8 June 1905; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 28 June 1905; J. Murray to Sanderson, letter, 29 June 1905; Lansdowne to C. Hardinge, despt. No. 204, 8 July 1905. 84

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messengers need be what Palmerston had once considered gentlemen. With a view to reducing costs, Alston told the Ridley Commission in November 1889 that he would ‘like to see a different class employed’ as messengers. Pressed further on the matter, he replied: ‘I should myself like to see an ex-non-commissioned officer who has carried a good character, and who is an army pensioner.’89 The Commission endorsed the suggestion. In its report of 30 July 1890 it recommended that new appointees should be placed on a drastically reduced salary scale of £150 to £200 a year, and that they should be mainly recruited from army and naval officers on half pay, or from noncommissioned officers retired on a pension, who could ‘produce unqualified certificates of character and pass a satisfactory examination in colloquial French and in at least one other continental language likely to be useful to their duties’.90 Villiers, though doubtful as to whether such a salary scale would attract competent and trustworthy men, thought that £300 a year might suffice.91 But the Office was in no hurry to implement the proposal. When in April 1892 it recruited a new foreign service messenger, it did so on the existing salary and appointed Francis Raikes, a civilian who had no particular qualification for the job other than the fact that his father had been postmaster-general in Salisbury’s second administration. Not until January 1895 was a foreign service messenger recruited on a lower rate of pay. Even then, this followed an agreement with the Treasury that anything less than £200 ‘would not attract the most desirable candidates’, and Guy L’Estrange Ewan, an Old Harrovian and amateur ornithologist who had previously been messenger of the British legation at Darmstadt, was appointed on £250 a year. Of the two subsequent appointees only the first, Harry King ‘Bimbashi’ Stewart, a lieutenant-colonel of the Gordon Highlanders with experience of Egypt and the Sudan, was a regular officer, and he joined the messenger corps after retiring from the army with only a gratuity to fall back upon. The other was Arthur Jermy Mounteney-Jephson, who, though he had briefly held a commission in the Royal Irish Rifles, was better known for his exploits in central Africa and his association with Henry Morton Stanley in the rescue during 1887–9 of Emin Pasha, the German-born Ottoman governor of the Sudanese province of Equatoria.92 The changes effected in messenger pay and recruitment were primarily a moneysaving exercise. For the messengers themselves money was, as in most walks of life, always a matter of considerable concern. Cecil Johnson, who had a large family to support, appears to have experienced persistent problems in managing his personal finances, and in 1851 he had come close to being arrested for recovery of debt. His home in Calais provided him with a temporary refuge from his creditors in London, and this and the prospect of his being able to make further economies was evidently why in October 1862 his fellow messengers petitioned Edward Hertslet, albeit Fourth Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Civil Establishments of the Different Offices of State at Home and Abroad (c 6172), minutes, paras. 26,659 and 26,682. 90 Ibid., Report, p. 3. 91 FO 800/1, memo. by Villiers, 4 July 1891. 92 FO 366/760, minutes by Hervey and Sanderson, 27 November 1894. FO 83/1760, minute by Dallas, 9 June 1899. See also A. J. Mounteney-Jephson and H. M. Stanley, Emin Pasha and the Rebellion at the Equator: A Story of Nine Months’ Experiences in the Last of the Soudan Provinces (New York, 1891). 89

 Delivering the Message 211 unsuccessfully, for Johnson to be allowed to take and remain on the Paris station until he was ‘cleared from his difficulty’.93 By the summer of 1866 such was the distress of Johnson’s family that Clarendon was persuaded to send Mrs Johnson all of £50, a sum ten times greater than that later paid to each of the no less deserving charladies whose dismissal Hammond had demanded.94 Other messengers found ways of making additional profit from journeys undertaken on the Office’s behalf. The news that foreign service messengers were benefiting from fees paid by merchants in Russia for the conveyance of gold bullion and other valuables had led Palmerston to issue a formal reminder in January 1848 that such practices were expressly prohibited by existing regulations.95 But John Rutherford Lumley, who was appointed a foreign service messenger in July 1882, appears to have had little regard for such long-standing precepts. Born to a military family in India, he had, prior to his becoming an officer in the British army, gained a captaincy in a Hanoverian lancer regiment, served with distinction in the Franco-Prussian War, and may, according to one account, have been awarded the Iron Cross.96 During his first eighteen months as a messenger he was twice reprimanded, first for endeavouring on commission to secure orders abroad for pen and pencil holders, and then for entering into communication with the Bulgarian government as a representative of the Varna Railway Company. In the latter case, it was in Pauncefote’s opinion ‘especially objectionable that a Queen’s Messenger should be concerned either directly or indirectly in negotiation with a Foreign Government on behalf of private interests’. Lumley seems, however, to have had only limited business acumen. In January 1892 proceedings were opened against him in the bankruptcy court. The Office suspended him from pay and duty, and although, on the official receiver deciding that his difficulties were ‘not due to culpable or other discreditable or dishonourable conduct’, he was reinstated as a messenger, £200 a year was thereafter deducted from his salary for payment to his creditors.97 Five years later, after a further court report shed light on Lumley’s continued involvement in commercial transactions abroad, instructions were circulated expressly prohibiting messengers from such engagements.98

Lenox-Conyngham noted on the petition: ‘This application cannot be complied with: it is quite irregular and ought never to have been made.’ FO 83/348, Stanley to S. B. Oliver, letter, 16 December 1851; R. Webster et al to E. Hertslet, petition, 27 October 1862 and minute by Lenox-Conyngham, 18 November 1862. 94 FO 391/6, Cowley to Hammond, letters, 24 and 27 June 1866; Mrs C. Johnson to Hammond, letter, 29 June 1866. 95 FO 366/471, Hammond to Addington, letter, 25 January 1848; L. Hertslet’s answers to Hammond’s queries, 25 January 1848; minute by Addington, 31 January 1848. 96 Wynter, Queen’s Errands, pp. 256–7. Rennell Rodd, Memories, vol. 1, p. 42. 97 FO 366/678, Pauncefote to Lumley, letter, 15 November 1883. FO 366/724, minute by Hervey, 29 April 1892; minute by Dallas, 6 December 1897. 98 FO 366/471, circular minute by Dallas, 13 December 1897. 93

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Going local, paying less Lumley was fortunate in being able to reckon on a regular base salary of £400 a year plus the notional subsistence allowance of £200. Foreign service messengers appointed from 1895 onwards could count on no more than £250 and became increasingly dependent on the £1 daily allowance paid to them while travelling abroad. They were, therefore, usually anxious to take as many journeys as possible, but by the early 1900s the intervals between their receiving instructions could, for any one of the then nine messengers, be as long as four weeks. The fondness of the new king, Edward VII, for foreign travel certainly placed fresh demands upon the service. Yet, as Cartwright explained in a memorandum of 22 November 1904, when under pressure he rarely had difficulty in finding extra messengers, though their despatch, particularly when they were drawn from amongst the Office clerks, was much resented by the foreign service messengers. With good reason they opposed the use of ‘outsiders’ when they themselves were available for duty. Cartwright was unperturbed by this. ‘The employment of clerks on these duties seems’, he observed, ‘to be rather desirable than otherwise. A visit to Petersburg or Constantinople should make them take more interest in their work.’ Indeed, he believed that ‘no inconvenience would be felt’ if the foreign service messengers were reduced to seven. Very much aware of the financial implications of the registry reforms with which he was currently involved, he thought, as did Lansdowne and Sanderson, that the Office might take credit with the Treasury for a prospective saving of £500 on the Foreign Office vote.99 Cartwright also looked to make further savings of £1,100 to £1,200 a year by a thorough reorganization of messenger routes. The two principal features of this proposal were the use of the Harwich to the Hook of Holland ferry service operated by the Great Eastern Railway Company (GER), and a reduction of journeys from three a fortnight to one a week. There would thus be a fortnightly service to and from Constantinople, with the messenger travelling via Hanover, Berlin, Breslau and Vienna, and a fortnightly service to and from St Petersburg, via Hanover and Berlin. Bags to and from Brussels would be carried by a GER steamer to Antwerp; Darmstadt’s local messenger must travel to Hanover rather than Cologne; and Copenhagen would be served either by a chancery servant from Berlin or by the Darmstadt messenger travelling there from Hanover with a reduced service for his home legation.100 The plan, whose adoption was enthusiastically welcomed by Lansdowne and Sanderson, meant that from January 1905 fixed foreign service messenger journeys were restricted to seven continental cities (Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Constantinople, St Petersburg, Sofia and Vienna), with missions elsewhere more than ever dependent for the despatch and delivery of bags on shipping lines, locally engaged staff and other individuals deemed trustworthy by consuls and diplomats.101 The embassy in Paris was thus no longer able to rely for regular bag collections and deliveries upon the then fortnightly Ibid., memo. by Cartwright, 22 November 1904, with minutes by Sanderson and Lansdowne, 25 November 1904. 100 Ibid., submission by Cartwright, 24 November 1904. 101 FO 83/1979, Lansdowne to F. Lascelles, despt. No. 264, 7 December 1904; to A. Herbert (Darmstadt), despt. No. 58, 7 December 1904; to E. Goschen, despt. No. 60, 7 December 1904. 99

 Delivering the Message 213 foreign service messenger travelling between London and Constantinople. Cuthbertson had, therefore, to make additional journeys, not just to Calais, but to Dover and Folkestone, and when he was subsequently elevated to the new position of embassy archivist, his duties were taken on by the ambassador’s house secretary, whose journeys included a weekly trip to London where he was offered overnight accommodation in the Foreign Office, and whose salary scale was fixed at £150–200 a year.102 Meanwhile, the summertime bag service to and from San Sebastian was transferred to the General Steam Navigation Company, whose ships plied between London, Southampton and Bordeaux, and to a ‘trusty Britisher’ resident in the Gironde. For £1 a day’s subsistence and a second-class rail ticket, the latter travelled fortnightly between the French and Spanish ports.103 During the remainder of the year diplomatic bags were, with the assistance of the GPO, sent to and from Madrid via Gibraltar and a steamer of the Peninsular and Oriental Line.104 Cartwright was well pleased with the way his reforms were implemented. So too was Sanderson.105 But some, such as Rex Turner, the legation messenger at Darmstadt, had less cause for satisfaction. Like his predecessors in the post, he received £60 a year and a daily subsistence allowance for his courier duties. In addition, he was employed privately by Sir Arthur Herbert, the chargé d’affaires there, for essentially clerical work. While, however, the rerouting of the foreign service messengers involved his scampering back and forth across Germany and Denmark, he had fewer journeys to perform, and any profit he might have made on subsistence payments was in consequence substantially reduced. Some consideration was given to his moving permanently to Hanover, and in September 1905 the Treasury agreed to his receiving an extra £30 a year.106 But the advantages of having a local messenger at Darmstadt were also called into question. The legation generated little by way of significant commercial or political information, and, as Cartwright was aware, its messenger service simply provided an extended and itinerant Coburg clan with a ‘sort of collecting and distribution centre’ for the parcels of royal correspondents seeking to evade payment of customs duties. When, therefore, in the autumn of 1905 Herbert indicated his wish to retire, it was decided to abolish the service and compensate Turner with an offer of clerical employment and messenger duties at the legation in Copenhagen.107 Edward VII, who was consulted on the matter, raised no objection. According to his private secretary, he knew ‘nothing whatever about the parcels which [were] sent to and from Darmstadt’ and had neither received

FO 83/1760, Bertie to Lansdowne, despt. No. 341, 15 September 1905, and despt. No. 393, 30 October 1905; minute by Cartwright, 18 September 1905; Lansdowne to Bertie, despt. No. 619, 21 September 1905. 103 FO 83/1979, R. Macdonald to R. Macleay, letter, 22 July 1904; Macleay to Hopwood, letter, 23 July 1904; minute by Cartwright, 27 July 1904; R. MacDonald to Hopwood, letter, 1 August 1904; Gen. Steam Navigation Co. to Lansdowne, 2 August 1904; Cartwright to Hopwood, minute, n.d. 104 Prior to the adoption of this route in December 1896 diplomatic bags between London and Madrid had been conveyed via the British legation at Lisbon. FO 83/1651, Salisbury to Drummond Wolff, despt. No. 179, 30 December 1896; S. Walpole to Sanderson, letter, 31 December 1896. 105 FO 83/2160, memo. by Cartwright, 10 May 1905, and minute by Sanderson, 13 May 1905. 106 Ibid., memo. by Turner, n.d., enclosed in Herbert to Lansdowne, despt. No. 26, 14 August 1905; minute by Cartwright, 13 September 1905. 107 Ibid., memo. by Cartwright, 12 December 1905; Sanderson to Treasury, letter, 18 December 1905. 102

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nor sent any.108 Cartwright was, nonetheless, concerned at the way in which the royal family continued to resort to foreign service messengers when despatching bulky items abroad. In the spring of 1905 twenty-five packages, weighing over two tons and containing ordinary stores for the royal yacht at Marseille, were sent in the company of a King’s Messenger just when the king was returning home.109 Then that autumn, much to Cartwright’s annoyance, the Berlin messenger was charged with delivering to London, first a trunk weighing 1½ cwt and then, two weeks later, a 1 cwt case, both the property of the king’s brother-in-law, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. The consignment earned the ambassador in Berlin a remonstrance from the Foreign Office over the great expense and inconvenience of transmitting cumbrous and heavy packages by passenger trains.110 The use of messengers for the despatch of presents and private parcels was an issue to which chief clerks had frequently had to return. In Sanderson’s words, ‘the illicit practice of sending parcels in the bags [was] a source of great expense and inconvenience and the bulk of the bags might at any one time cause considerable scandal’. Circulars were, therefore, drafted in January 1905 reminding diplomats and other officials that such practices were prohibited unless specially sanctioned by undersecretaries or heads of mission.111 In the meantime, disturbed by the disregard of messengers for the rules governing their availability for duty, Cartwright and Sanderson sought to tighten up on discipline within the corps, introducing new regulations aimed at ensuring that second and third messengers on the duty roll should have the first claim on a journey if the messenger who headed the list failed to keep the Office informed of the address from which he might be summoned.112 One particular delinquent was Bimbashi Stewart. After serving four years as a messenger, he had been permitted to go fight in the war in South Africa, and there he commanded the Johannesburg Mounted Rifles.113 But the war may have affected his health and after his return to the Foreign Office in July 1902, he was frequently absent on sick leave. Popular with the other messengers and an excellent card player, Stewart was suspected by Cartwright of sometimes feigning illness. He would produce a medical certificate pronouncing himself unfit for travel and then almost invariably disappear to Trouville or some other resort in France.114 Cartwright’s patience was finally exhausted when in March 1905 Stewart telegraphed Ibid., F. Knollys to E. Barrington, letter, 12 December 1905. Ibid., memo. by Cartwright, 10 May 1905. Queen Victoria habitually used the foreign service messengers for the receipt and despatch of gifts, be they confirmation presents for her grandchildren, the Prussian princes, in March 1877, or a dog which was sent from Berlin in January 1894 and which the queen left to the care of the Foreign Office doorkeeper until it could be collected. FO 366/498, H. Ponsonby to Tenterden, letter, 31 March 1877. FO 83/1424, E. Malet (Berlin) to Sanderson, note, 20 January 1894. 110 Ibid., Lansdowne to Lascelles, despt. No. 240, 12 September 1905; minutes by Cartwright and Sanderson, 11 and 12 October 1905. 111 FO 83/2160, Cartwright to Sanderson, minute, 9 January 1905; Sanderson to Lansdowne, minute, 11 January 1905; circular despt. from Lansdowne, 16 January 1905. 112 FO 366/471, memo. by Cartwright, 30 January 1905; minute by Sanderson, 30 January 1905; Cartwright to foreign service messengers, circular and attachment, 3 February 1905. 113 Wheeler-Holohan, King’s Messengers, pp. 101–2. 114 Between July 1902 and August 1904, Stewart undertook only ten journeys for the Office and was on sick leave for 229 days. FO 366/761, minutes by Cartwright and Villiers, 20 August and 2 September 1904. 108 109

 Delivering the Message 215 from Cannes to say that a fever from which he was suffering had delayed his promised return for duty. ‘He is’, Cartwright noted, ‘a disreputable character, and spends all his spare time in gambling, owes a great deal of money and is very inaccurate in his statements.’115 Lansdowne thought that if Cartwright were correct, Stewart ‘should be got rid of without further to do’.116 He was called upon to resign, he did so on 1 April, and, still in his mid-forties, he was retired on a pension of £56 17s. 6d. a year: a sum so meagre that Cartwright tried, but failed, to persuade Sanderson to contest it with the Treasury.117 Stewart’s resignation reduced the number of foreign service messengers to eight, and there were no plans to fill the vacancy. Cartwright did, however, think that the Office might take advantage of this saving to seek Treasury approval for raising the prospective salaries of the three most senior messengers to £350 a year. As two of the messengers were still on the old scale of £400 a year, this would only have meant paying one messenger an additional £100. In support of this the chief clerk advanced the dubious argument that while messengers had once derived considerable income from ‘their charges for actual travelling and for luggage and incidental expenses’, their accounts were now so scrutinized and the facilities for this so much improved that ‘their out of pocket expenses [were] equivalent to their actual charges’. It was not a case that Sanderson believed he could make on the messengers’ behalf. ‘The plea’, he observed, ‘that in former days they were able to make money by overstating their out of pocket expenses and that they did habitually commit this flagrant act of dishonesty is not one that could be stated in an official letter.’118 Charles Hardinge, Sanderson’s immediate successor, was equally unsympathetic. When in February 1907 one of the messengers fell ill and it seemed possible that the corps would soon be down to seven, Cartwright repeated his proposal. He felt strongly that messengers ought to be able to look forward to an eventual improvement in their salary and a reasonable pension. Yet, as Louis Mallet pointed out, the Office was ‘besieged with applications’ from would-be messengers, and both he and Hardinge agreed that so long as they could rely on obtaining the services of pensioners and officers on half pay, there were no grounds for offering greater rewards.119 The dictates of supply and demand seemed set to supersede the needs of gentlemen. There was no shortage of regular messengers or clerks and outsiders ready to undertake journeys on the Office’s behalf. Edward VII was accustomed to spending about three months of the year abroad and his travels, along with the frequent visits by Queen Alexandra to Denmark, occasionally put pressure on the messenger establishment. But following the king’s death in May 1910, it rapidly became clear that the corps could function more efficiently with six rather than the by then seven messengers. The routine work did not really require more than three working messengers and, according to Cartwright, that allowed an interval of nine to ten days Ibid., minute by Cartwright, 15 March 1905. Ibid., minute by Lansdowne, n.d. 117 Ibid. G. Murray to Sanderson, 18 April 1905; minutes by Cartwright and Sanderson, 26 and 27 April 1905. 118 Ibid. 119 Ibid., minutes by Cartwright, Mallet and Hardinge, 19–20 February 1907. 115 116

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between journeys, so that having three additional messengers to cover for leave and mishaps was ample. That said, in December 1912, Cartwright, prompted thereto by a ‘good deal of grumbling’ by messengers and the forthcoming retirement of one, took up cudgels on behalf of what would soon be the remaining six. He wrote personally to the Treasury to press for improved subsistence allowances. Their expenses had, it must be admitted, been increasing. Hotels, cab hire and gratuities paid to porters and other servants all accounted for more, and no provision had previously been made for the cost of garments and luggage, all of which were subject to wear and tear. ‘After all’, Cartwright reminded the Treasury, ‘a King’s Messenger has to keep up a decent appearance at our Embassies abroad and in diplomatic society.’ Moreover, the Foreign Office had already achieved a reduction in messenger travelling expenses from £5,210 in in 1903–4 to £3,055 in 1911–12.120 The Treasury was not convinced that the Foreign Office had yet done enough in response to the Ridley Commission’s recommendations. While most of the foreign service messengers were men with a military background, only two of them were officers on half pay or pensions. The messengers’ daily subsistence allowance was, nonetheless, raised from £1 to £1 10s.121 A corps, some of whose members had in the days of Lewis Hertslet enjoyed earnings equivalent to those of senior staff, was thus, by the close of the Edwardian era, reduced to welcoming a tenshilling advance for each of its messengers’ working days. But if steam, telegraphy and the Treasury had finally had their way, two world wars, the Cold War and the security requirements of an expanded diplomatic network would ensure the corps’s survival.

T 1/11501, Sanderson to Michlejohn, letter, 13 December 1912; Nicolson to the Treasury secretary, letter, 14 December 1912. 121 Ibid., Treasury to Nicolson, 4 January 1913, and accompanying minutes. 120

Conclusion An office of distinction and domesticity

Y[ou]r Lords and my Gentlemen are again in a state of collision & I have no scruples in saying that this time Y[ou]r Lords are in the wrong. Lord Malmesbury to Benjamin Disraeli (Chancellor of the Exchequer), 19 December 18581 These objections are only those w[hic]h: Ld. Hammond always made to any proposition tending to make the F.O. like any other Office. Sir Ralph Lingen, marginal note on letter from Lord Tenterden, June 18792 The Victorian Foreign Office was distinct from other government departments in more than name and function. In an essay published in 1972, Valerie Cromwell and Zara Steiner asserted that it ‘remained the stronghold of the aristocracy’ until well into the twentieth century.3 Such interpretations may, as Ray Jones has argued, overlook the extent to which a significant number of the aristocratic parents of clerks recruited to the Office were themselves professionally employed.4 After all, though Thomas Sanderson was of noble and yeoman descent, his education at Eton was cut short when his father’s bill-brokering business collapsed.5 There can, however, be little doubt that the Foreign Office maintained a steady resistance to the imposition of administrative reforms consistent with those introduced elsewhere in Whitehall. This was evident not just in the recruitment and promotion of the clerical staff of the department’s political divisions. It was also apparent in attitudes assumed towards its specialist and subordinate employees. Despite his determination to make severe cuts in spending on diplomatic communications, Malmesbury refused to accept the lower pay scales which the Treasury proposed for his home service messengers. ‘There is’, he informed Disraeli in December 1858, ‘no analogy between the FO messengers & the others, the work of mine being much harder.’6 More than twenty years later, HRO, Malmesbury Papers, 9M73/54. T 1/16234, undated note by Lingen on Tenterden to Lingen, letter, 24 June 1879. Sutherland, Studies, pp. 167–94. David Cannadine has since observed that ‘compared with the rest of the civil service the Foreign Office mandarins formed a small, separate and exclusive enclave – detached, superior, understated, unflappable’. Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (Papermac edition, Basingstoke, 1996), p. 281. 4 Jones, Foreign Office, pp. 60–4. 5 Neilson and Otte, Permanent Under-Secretary, pp. 92–3. 6 See note 1. 1 2 3

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much to the consternation of Treasury officials, the Foreign Office was still insisting on higher salaries for its messengers than those received in the Colonial and Home Offices.7 And while successive permanent undersecretaries declined to support the integration of the library clerks with those of the regular establishment, until the turn of the century they showed little enthusiasm for having second-division clerks handle the Office’s confidential correspondence. Even after an agreement had been reached on the establishment of a general registry, the Librarian’s Department of the Foreign Office remained, in the words of a senior Treasury official, a ‘peculiar institution’, bearing no resemblance to anything else in Whitehall.8 The classic justification for the retention by the Foreign Office of recruitment and administrative practices distinct from the rest of the Civil Service was that the department’s transactions were considered so important and so sensitive that they could only be left to trusted individuals. That was why the Office insisted on nominating candidates for examination, and at another level that was a reason given for paying messengers more than what the Treasury reckoned the market rate for the job. There were also related issues of class and efficiency. In a memorandum of 24 June 1869, Hammond explained ‘nothing so much conduces to the satisfactory working of an office as that all the clerks employed in carrying out the general business of it, should be in social relations with each other, and to that end from corresponding classes of society’.9 Though Hammond had the regular clerical establishment in mind, his words might be said to have already been borne out by Palmerston’s decision to raise the social profile of the foreign service messengers. The violent quarrel between Captain Wright and the low-born Frederick Fricker in August 1844 was evidence of what could happen when class differences erupted in the Office. That said, it should also be remembered that during the first half of the nineteenth century the final registration, indexing and research of the Office’s correspondence were entrusted to the supervision of Lewis and James Hertslet, the young sons of a suicidal migrant worker. Indeed, Lewis was later given to speculating as to whether Addington’s uncongenial attitude towards him was due to his comparatively humble origins. By contrast, three of Palmerston’s appointees to the Librarian’s Department, the drunken Seale, the sickly Quick and the indolent Rich, were hardly advertisements for either gentlemanly conduct or foreign secretarial patronage. They too, however, may have resented being placed under the ill-tempered direction of someone who appeared to have risen so rapidly through the clerical ranks. Personnel management could not be counted amongst Lewis Hertslet’s strongest attributes. His superintendence of the messengers did not sit easily with his duties as librarian, and this and his involvement with other profitable ventures limited the time he could devote to the detailed oversight of the registration and indexing of papers. Arrears in this essential work might, as Addington seemed to suspect, have been attributable as much to the under-management as to the under-manning of the Librarian’s Department. Lewis Hertslet was, nonetheless, responsible for establishing an effective documentary reference and retrieval system, and he and his son Edward T 1/16234, marginalia and minutes by Treasury officials, June 1879. T 1/10369/4489, Murray to Sanderson, letter, 8 November 1905. 9 Bodleian Library, Clarendon Papers, Clar. dep. c.503-04, memo. by Hammond, 24 June 1869. 7 8

 Conclusion 219 set precedents for the Foreign Office’s future commitment to the publication of its historical records. Through their library memoranda and documentary collections, they demonstrated the value to diplomacy of ongoing archival research conducted in response to departmental needs. If, as T. G. Otte has observed, the chief function of the Foreign Office ‘was the gathering, storing, analysing and retrieving of policy-relevant information so as to ensure informed decision-making’, Granville’s description of Edward Hertslet’s reference room as ‘the pivot upon which the whole machinery of the Foreign Office turned’ seems less of an exaggeration.10 Augustus Oakes may have been a little ahead of his time when in 1894 he proposed that the division be renamed the ‘Library and Intelligence Department’. But in an age when diplomatic intelligence was not invariably associated with the clandestine gathering of information, the label was far from inappropriate. Indeed, in 1918 the Office acquired, albeit for barely two years, both a Historical Section and a Political Intelligence Department, and during the 1920s the librarian, Stephen Gaselee, was to work alongside a newly appointed historical adviser, in addressing the past and shaping its interpretation for diplomatic ends.11 Their work owed much to methods and practices long-established in the prewar Librarian’s Department. The Hertslets were innovators and entrepreneurs whose reputation extended beyond the bounds of Whitehall. It was, however, their own and their immediate successors’ failure to solve departmental registry and staffing problems which ultimately served as a catalyst for broader administrative reform. By then the messengers, with whose oversight Lewis, James and, to a lesser extent, Edward Hertslet had once been so intimately connected, had been reduced in strength and status. Advances in communication and transportation had made the maintenance of an expensive corps, if not irrelevant, very often more of a convenience than an absolute necessity. Arguments about maintaining the security of confidential diplomatic correspondence were still heard, but carried less weight when the Office was prepared to entrust its mail in China to a coolie and a donkey. Cartwright even thought that the cost of recruiting new second-division registry clerks might be offset against savings achieved in expenditure on foreign service messengers. It was likewise assumed that the introduction of an internal telephone system would allow the Office to dispense with at least one home service messenger. There was, however, a reluctance on the part of some senior officials to make radical changes to the pay and privileges of messengers. Malmesbury was able to force through swingeing cuts in the allowances and wages of foreign service messengers, but the gentlemen of the corps continued for some time to enjoy incomes far in excess of what the Treasury considered appropriate. And arguments over the duties of home service messengers, whether or not, for instance, they should be expected to summon cabs for clerks, persisted until well into the Edwardian era. Such structural conservatism puzzled Treasury officials. Their messengers were the equivalent of the Foreign Office’s officekeepers, and in their eyes the Office’s reluctance to promote a more integrated domestic workforce seemed T. G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865-1914 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 5. LD, Corresp., vol. 3, memo. by E. Hertslet, 25 June 1874. 11 K. Hamilton, ‘Addressing the Past: The Foreign Office and the Vetting of Diplomatic and Ministerial Memoirs during the Years between the World Wars’, Britain in Global Politics, vol. 1, From Gladstone to Churchill (Basingstoke, 2013), eds. C. Baxter, M. L. Dockrill and K. Hamilton, pp. 99–131. 10

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to fly in the face of reason. The Victorian Foreign Office was, however, a relatively benign employer. Its library clerks may have felt hard done by, but its messengers and officekeepers enjoyed privileges not readily available elsewhere. Hammond’s insistence on the sacking of three charladies, largely on grounds of their appearance, was exceptional. Dismissals were otherwise rare, and serious misconduct was usually punished with a fine or suspension from duty. Charles Sly, whose incompetence was legendary, retained his position as an officekeeper for more than twenty years until he could finally be pensioned off on the grounds that he was unfit for further work. There was, perhaps, an element of aristocratic paternalism in the attitude assumed by senior officials towards the Office’s domestic staff. The Foreign Office was, after all, a relatively small department in Whitehall (its total workforce in 1914, including domestic staff, was 176), and in some respects it resembled a sizeable Victorian household. Hammond himself drew such a comparison when in July 1868 he informed the Treasury that its officekeepers were ‘in fact domestic servants such as in a large private family would be designated “Grooms of the Chamber”’.12 Undersecretaries and others of the clerical establishment were in regular daily contact with those who delivered their mail, carried their boxes, cleaned their rooms and served their meals, and, though they may not always have been aware of just how many lived beneath stairs or in the attics, they usually knew by name the door- and officekeepers and were familiar with the ways and disposition of those who brought their coals and lit their lamps. When in 1869 Edward Hertslet sought the employment of an assistant library messenger, he argued that ‘gentlemen’ could not be expected to fetch and carry manuscript volumes and that, since such volumes contained confidential material, whoever was appointed must be ‘intelligent, active, and strictly honest’. A trustworthy and therefore adequately rewarded servant was needed.13 The notion that British society was bound together by a complex and essentially benevolent web of codependency between classes has been dismissed by the social historian Lucy Lethbridge as ‘one of the most potent myths of Edwardian England’.14 Yet, within the Foreign Office those at the bottom of the social hierarchy were afforded at least a degree of protection from external and sometimes niggardly economisers. Amongst the poorest paid in the Office were its women employees, more particularly its maidservants and later its typists. In both cases, however, it was the Treasury rather than the Office itself that stood in the way of their receiving more. Moreover, the housekeepers, who until 1881 held sway over the maids and related domestic arrangements, were invariably women. Neither Ann Watson nor the doughty Mary Langcake seem to have been afraid to challenge male authority. Langcake could be a stalwart in the defence of her maids, particularly when, after the Office’s return to Downing Street, it came to the cleaning of a building designed more for display and entertainment than for the routine business of diplomacy. George Gilbert Scott’s spacious corridors, rooms and staircases, and their ornate decoration presented endless and sometimes insurmountable problems for those charged with their daily upkeep. FO 366/676, Hammond to Treasury, letter, 14 July 1868. LD, Corresp., vol. 3, memo. by E. Hertslet, 27 April 1869. 14 Lethbridge, Servants, p. 12. 12 13

 Conclusion 221 A hundred years after the Foreign Office took up residence in its new building, at a time when the reconstruction of Whitehall was again under consideration, the recently appointed head of the FCO’s Arabian Department echoed Granville’s complaints about the general state of the Office’s accommodation. In December 1968 he described in detail the shabby appearance of his room. ‘The walls’, he protested, ‘were streaked with mud because condensation has descended over the picture rails which had not been dusted for months or perhaps years’, adding in parenthesis, ‘clearly the elderly ladies who do for us find it hard to dust at a height of 12'’.15 The Foreign and Commonwealth Office inherited many of the physical problems of its nineteenth-century predecessor, some of which, despite an extensive programme of renovation, have persisted to this day. But those who clean, cook and cater have also had to come to terms with new management styles and structures which, as a result of the outsourcing of services to agencies and private companies, have tended to reverse reforms implemented in the 1840s. The trend then was towards rationalizing and reorganizing the work and pay of the Office’s domestic staff, ending the quasi-independent status of the porters and substituting fixed salaries and board wages for a multiplicity of allowances and perquisites. Even in those instances where individuals engaged in the Office were employees of other departments, the Office was generally ready to take responsibility for their well-being. In 1879 Salisbury showed no hesitation in backing a request for promotion and better pay made by the Office’s industrious telegraph clerk, Cyril West – a claim his employer, the GPO, firmly rejected. As the chief clerk, Francis Alston, later noted, West’s case was a ‘hard one’ and it seemed ‘also hard that he should be precluded from appealing for support to the Foreign Office’ where he had worked for so many years.16 Such attitudes have been less prevalent in recent times. The outsourcing in 2008 of the FCO’s cleaning, porterage, mail room and catering services to a management company, Interserve, was followed by a lengthy dispute over pay and conditions of employment. When, however, in 2015 the cleaners took their case to the FCO, an evidently overwrought official urged Interserve to remind them that ‘they do not work for the FCO (they work at the FCO only)’.17 There was, in the Foreign Office’s dealings with its domestic servants, something to be said for the distinctive, though not necessarily aristocratic, paternalism of the Victorian era.

TNA, FCO 80/2, XG 4/7, minute by Donal McCarthy, 27 December 1968. K. Hamilton, ‘Accommodating Diplomacy: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Debate over Whitehall Redevelopment’, The Foreign Office and British Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (London, 2005), ed. G. Johnson, pp. 198–222. 16 FO 366/420, West to Hammond, letter, 15 March 1879; memo. by West, 19 March 1879; Tenterden to GPO, letter, 29 Oct. 1879; Alston to Tenterden, minute, 17 February 1881. 17 Emphasis in original. https​ :/www​.gov.​uk/go​vernm​ent/p​ublic​ation​s/foi​-rele​ase-l​ondon​-livi​ng-wa​ ge-an​d-cle​aners​ 15

222

Bibliography Manuscript collections The National Archives, Kew Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office records FO 83 General Correspondence, pre-1906 FO 95 Miscellanea, Series I FO 96 Miscellanea, Series II FO 97 Supplements to pre-1906 General Correspondence FO 351 Hertslet Papers FO 363 Tenterden Papers FO 366 Chief Clerk’s Papers FO 370 Librarian’s Department, General Correspondence from 1906 FO 371 General Correspondence from 1906 FO 391 Hammond Papers FO 800 Private collections FO 918 Odo Russell Papers FCO 80 Office Services and Supply Department Papers Office of Works records WORK 6 Miscellanea WORK 12 Correspondence relating to government offices State Paper Office records SP 45/47 Entry books, orders and reports Treasury Board records T 1 Papers and in-letters

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Printed documentary and reference works A Collection of Printed Treaties, Conventions, &c (2 vols, London, 1802), ed. R. Ancell. Hertslet’s Commercial Treaties: A Complete Collection of the Treaties and Conventions, and Reciprocal Regulations, at Present Subsisting between Great Britain and Foreign Powers (31 vols, London, 1822–1925), ed. L. Hertslet et al. British and Foreign State Papers (170 vols, London, 1832–1977), ed. L. Hertslet et al. The Foreign Office List (London, 1852–1965), eds. F. W. H. Cavendish, E. Hertslet et al. The Map of Europe by Treaty: Political and Territorial Changes since the General Peace of 1814 (4 vols, London, 1875–91), ed. E. Hertslet. List of Carthusians, 1800 to 1879 (Lewes, 1879), ed. W. D. Parish. The Map of Africa by Treaty (3 vols, London, 1894–96), ed. E. Hertslet. Handbook of Commercial Treaties, &c., between Great Britain and Foreign Powers (London, 1908 and 1912), ed. G. de Bernhardt. British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (11 vols, London, 1926–38), eds. G. P. Gooch and H. W. V. Temperley. Office Holders in Modern Britain, vol. 8, Foreign Office Officials 1782-1870 (London, 1979), ed. J. M. Collinge. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 vols, Oxford, 2004-), gen. ed. D. Canadine.

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Dittmer, J., ‘Theorizing a More-than-Human Diplomacy: Assembling the British Foreign Office, 1839–1874’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 11 (2016): 78–104. Ellis, K. L., ‘British Communications and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxi (November 1958): 159–67. Goldstein, E., ‘“A prominent place would have to be taken by history”: The Origins of a Foreign Office Historical Section’, Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern Diplomatic Practice (Dordrecht, 2012), ed., T. G. Otte, 83–102. Hamilton, K., ‘The Pursuit of “Enlightened Patriotism”: The British Foreign Office and Historical Researchers during the Great War and Its Aftermath’, Forging the Collective Memory: Governments and International Historians through Two World Wars (Oxford, 1996), ed. K. Wilson, 192–229. Hamilton, K., ‘Falsifying the Record: Entente Diplomacy and the Preparation of the Blue and Yellow Books on the War Crisis of 1914’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 18, no. 1 (2007): 89–108. Hamilton, K., ‘Zealots and Helots. The Slave Trade Department of the NineteenthCentury Foreign Office’, Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807–1975 (Brighton, 2009), eds. K. Hamilton and P. Salmon, 20–41. Hamilton, K., ‘Addressing the Past: The Foreign Office and the Vetting of Diplomatic and Ministerial Memoirs during the Years between the World Wars’, Britain in Global Politics, vol. i, From Gladstone to Churchill (Basingstoke, 2013), eds. C. Baxter, M. L. Dockrill and K. Hamilton, 99–131. Jones, R. A., ‘The Social Structure of the British Diplomatic Service, 1815–1914’, Histoire Sociale-Social History, xiv, no. 27 (1981): 49–66. Jones-Parry, E., ‘Undersecretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, 1782–1855’, English Historical Review, 49 (April 1934): 308–20. Middleton, C. R., ‘John Backhouse and the Origins of the Permanent Undersecretaryship for Foreign Affairs: 1828–1842’, Journal of British Studies, xiii/2 (1974): 24–5. Middleton, C. R., ‘The Emergence of Constitutional Bureaucracy in the British Foreign Office, 1782–1846’, Public Administration, 54 (Winter 1975): 365–81. Moss, M. and Thomas, D., ‘How the File was Invented’, Administory: Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsgeschichte, 4, issue 1 (2018): 28–52. Otte, T. G., ‘The Diplomatic Digestive Organ: The Foreign Office as the Nerve Centre of Foreign Policy, c. 1800–1940’, British World Policy and the Propagation of Global Power (Cambridge, 2019), ed. T. G. Otte, 90–110. Palmer, S., ‘Sir John Soane and the Design of the New State Paper Office, 1829–1834’, Archivaria, 60 (Fall 2005): 39–70. Steiner, Z., ‘The Old Foreign Office: From Secretarial Office to Modern Department of State’, Publications de l’Ecole Française de Rome (1981): 177–95. Steiner, Z., ‘Elitism and Foreign Policy: The Foreign Office before the Great War’, Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy, 1895–1939 (Edmonton, 1984), eds. B. J. C. McKercher and D. J. Moss, 19–55.

Dissertations Anderson, M., ‘Edmund Hammond, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1854–1873’, PhD thesis, University of London (1955).

 Bibliography 231 Hall, S., ‘Sir Edward Hertslet and his work as Librarian and Keeper of the Papers of the Foreign Office from 1857–1896’, MA thesis, University of London (1958).

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Index Aberdeen, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of  3, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 49–58, 64, 91, 97, 98–9 À Court, William, 1st Baron Heytesbury  45 Addington, Henry Unwin  3, 18, 19, 25, 26–7, 29, 39, 50, 51–2, 53, 55–60, 62–7, 96, 97, 99, 100, 105–6, 107, 109–11, 133, 218. See also Hertslet, Lewis Adelaide, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland  94 Admiralty  45, 91, 140, 172, 173 Airey, Albert  187 Alabama  158 Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha  21 Alexandra, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland  115, 129, 200, 215 Allen, Frederick  128, 132, 145, 146 Alsbury, George  29–30, 31 Alston, Francis Beilby, Sir  4, 27, 36, 37, 118, 119, 120–4, 126–9, 132, 134–41, 145, 146, 148–9, 155, 164, 202, 206, 207, 208, 210, 221 reform of servant establishment  134–9 American Civil War  31, 158, 200, 201–2 American Department  187 Americas 46, 176. See also United States of America Ancell, Richard  5, 40–5, 70, 77–8, 79 Ancell, Thomas  41 Anderson, Percy, Sir  178 Anglo-Ashanti War  204 Anglo-Persian Oil Company  187–8 Ardagh, John, Maj. Gen. Sir  145 Argentina  187 Armistead, Elizabeth  16 Aspain, Henry  17, 28, 53 Austria (-Hungary)  86, 87, 91, 97 n.106, 104–5, 109, 158, 185, 186, 190, 200

Backhouse, John  3, 7, 17, 18, 23, 48, 56, 57–8, 88–9, 92, 111 Badrick, George  180, 181 Baghdad railway project  190 Ball, William St James, Capt.  205–6, 207, 207 n.76 Bandinel, James  5, 7, 9, 42, 57, 60, 165 Barbary States  46 Barnard, Philip, Lt.  91–4, 97–9 Barrington, Bernard Eric, Sir  125 Bathurst, Henry, 3rd Earl  6 Batterbee, Thomas  125, 126, 129 Bazalgette, Joseph, Sir  34 Belgium  172, 185 Bell, Alfred  116 Beresford Hope, Alexander, Sir  39, 116 Berlin, Congress of  9, 156, 158, 176, 186 Berlin West Africa Conference  158 Bertie, Francis L., 1st Viscount Bertie of Thame  34, 123, 124, 125 Bettles, Francis  83 Bidwell, John, Jr.  134 Bidwell, John, Sr.  5 Bidwell, Thomas, Jr.  7, 13, 14, 18 Bidwell, Thomas, Sr.  7, 79–80 Bismarck, Otto von, Prince  203 Blech, Edward  190 Bloomfield, John, 2nd Baron  97 Board of Trade  6, 125, 163 Boate, Edward Wellington  30–1 Boate, Henrietta  30–1, 32 Bodkin, William Henry, Sir  31 Borneo  159 Bosnia and Herzegovina  186 Bowden, Mrs  148 Brant, Richard  184–91 Bright, John  6–7 British and Foreign State Papers  46, 47, 48, 56, 57, 61–4, 67, 170–4, 189 British Auxiliary Legion  91, 93, 109 British Museum  8, 75, 161, 186 Brown, James  142, 145, 150, 151

 Index 233 Brunnow, Philipp von, Count  96–7 Buchanan, George, Sir  119, 148 Bulgaria  204, 205, 211 Bulwer, Henry Lytton, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer  98, 101, 194 Burgess, James Bland, Sir  40 Burton, Decimus  32 Bushell, F. W.  152–3 Byng Hall, Herbert, Maj.  201, 207 Campbell, Francis, Sir  186 Canning, Charles, 1st Earl  26, 49–50, 58 Canning, George  7, 7 n.26, 8, 15, 17–18, 27, 43, 43 n.23, 46, 47, 80–4 Canning, Stratford  104–5 Carden, Maximilien  164 Carpenter, Percy  75, 157, 163, 167–8 Cartwright, William Chauncy, Sir  143–4, 147, 152, 182–3, 184, 193, 212–16, 219 Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount  2, 16, 43, 44, 81 Catchpole, George  29, 35, 35 n.109, 134, 135, 136 Catchpole, John  35, 132, 133, 134 Cavendish, Francis  174 Cayford, Eliza  38 Cecil, Algernon  10–11 charladies/charwomen  1, 8, 27–8, 37–8, 120, 121, 123, 211, 220 Cheese, Ann  16 Chief Clerk’s Department  5, 9, 29–31, 32 n.92, 74, 111, 157, 161, 166, 189 China  24, 46, 126, 219 China Department  126 Christian, Prince of SchleswigHolstein  214 Civil Service Commission  37 Clarendon, George Villiers, 4th Earl of  9, 29, 38, 64–70, 86, 107, 108, 110–11, 112, 120, 121, 122, 131, 157, 163, 202, 203, 211 Clayton and Bell  116 coal porters and lamplighters  1, 8, 15, 17, 35, 116–17, 118, 119, 120 n.30, 125, 134–8, 142, 147, 150, 220 Cockerell, William  126 Cocking, Henry Valentine  16, 122

A Collection of Printed Treaties, Conventions, &c.  41, 45 Colonial Office  6, 13, 32, 44, 45, 57, 60–1, 69, 71, 83, 89–90, 111, 125, 137, 141, 152, 161 Colonial Office List  175 Commercial Department  5 Confidential Print  14, 182, 208 Connor, Mary Ann  38 Consular Department  5, 74 Cookes, William  85–8 copyists  9. See also lower/seconddivision clerks Coral, Francis  42, 43 n.20 Cowley, Henry Wellesley, 1st Earl  98 Coxhead, Charles  118, 156 Coxhead, George  20, 27, 35, 118, 128 Crimean War  9, 69, 111, 175 Cromwell, Valerie  2, 217 Crotch, James  99 Crowe, Eyre, Sir  183–4, 185, 188–90 Currie, Philip, 1st Baron Hawley  4, 155, 160, 164, 168, 198, 208 Cuthbertson, William Darling  208–9, 213 The Daily Telegraph  202 Dalbertanson, Charles  34–5, 35 n.109, 134 Dallas, George, Sir  130, 141–2, 143, 146, 147, 180 Damien, Nicholas  81 Danish Succession Treaty  170–1 Dassonville, Mary  16 Davis, Mary Ann  37–8 Dawkins, Clinton  93, 98 Day, C.  152 de Bernhardt, Frédéric  31–2, 32 n.92, 169 de Bernhardt, Gaston  169, 186, 187, 189–90 Dee, Thomas  150, 151 Denmark  69, 200, 213, 215 Derby, Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of  74, 116, 117, 124, 128, 148, 156, 158, 163, 175, 176 Derby, Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of  32, 115 Dickens, Charles  2, 29 Dickie, Robert  186

234 Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield  115, 133, 158, 170, 175, 217 Disraeli, Mary Anne  115, 153 District Messenger Service & Call Co.  146 doorkeepers  1, 3, 10, 15, 15 n.14, 16–17, 19, 22, 32, 34, 35, 60, 107, 117, 120 n.30, 125, 127, 128, 131, 132, 134, 140, 142, 146–7, 151, 214 n.109, 220 Draffen, Joseph  206 Dudley, John Ward, 4th Viscount  15 Eades, Alfred  128 Eastern Department  147, 182, 185 Easton, Amos and Anderson  118 Edward VII, King of Great Britain and Ireland  115, 129, 212, 213, 214, 215 Egypt  210 Electrical Telegraph Co.  117 Elliot, George  27 Elliot, Henry, Sir  200 Emin Pasha, Mehmed  210 Enfield, George Byng, Viscount  162–3 Erskine, Edward  94–5 Erskine, Thomas, 1st Baron  80 Evans, James  142, 150, 151 Ewan, Guy L’Estrange, Lt.-Col.  210 Falkland Islands  187 Farmer, Thomas  17 n.22, 35, 117, 118, 119, 124, 134, 135, 137–8 Fenians  131, 139 Fennessy, Robert  85 Fitzmaurice, Edmond Petty-, 1st Baron  148–9 Fludyer, Samuel, Sir  13 Fonblanque, Thomas de Grenier de  97, 97 n.106 Foreign Office accommodation  13–32, 115–53 administrative structure  1–11 catering and cooking  1, 23, 28, 37, 120–1, 138, 140, 149–53, 221 central heating  117, 124 cleaning and upkeep  16, 27–8, 37–8, 75, 120, 122–3, 150, 220–1

Index clerical distractions  25–6 diseases  34, 148–9, 151–2 disorderly behaviour  35–6, 52–3, 99–100, 122 electric bells  116–17 electric lighting  123 fatal accidents  118, 137 fires and fireplaces  23–4, 28, 99, 123–5, 149 gaslighting  13, 17, 35, 119, 123, 124 hydraulic lifts  11, 117–19, 129, 137, 142, 156 misdemeanours and security  22–31, 125–32 pests and pets  22–3 relocation  2–3, 33, 37, 116 residents  14–22, 33, 34–8, 75, 141–2, 150–1 sanitation  16, 27, 132, 148–9 speaking tubes  29, 116–17, 129, 156 telegraphy  1, 32, 69, 117, 133, 142, 221 telephones/telephonic devices  146–8 Foreign Office List  174–5 Fox, Charles James  2, 16 Fox-Strangways, William, 4th Earl of Ilchester  93, 111 France  6, 47, 55, 78, 84, 98, 102, 104, 105, 106, 108, 172, 200, 202, 203, 204, 208–9, 210, 213 Franco-Prussian War  32, 200, 203, 211 Fricker, Frederick  84, 99, 218 Fulcher, Sophia  144–5 Garibaldi, Giuseppe  200 Garrow, William, Sir  80 Gaselee, Stephen, Sir  219 General Post Office (GPO)  117, 146 n.165, 203, 213, 221 General Registry  10, 186, 190, 218 proposals for  166, 181–4 George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland  2 George IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland  7, 21 George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland  148 German Department  134 Germany  47, 81, 84, 108, 134, 161, 183, 186, 200, 202–3, 206, 213

 Index 235 Gibson-Craig, William, Sir  62 Gladstone, William Ewart  161 Glenelg, Charles Grant, 1st Baron  89, 90, 91 Glover, Mr and Mrs  152 Gracewood, Andrew  15, 16, 17, 18–21, 19 n.30 Granville, Castila Rosalind, Lady  121 Granville, Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl  32 n.92, 63, 115, 117, 121, 122, 124, 125, 131, 132, 148–9, 159–63, 173, 203, 207, 219, 221 Grattan, Henry  107 Greco-Turkish War  147 Green, Alfred  71, 73, 157, 159–60, 164 Greenall, William  17, 20, 34 Grenville, William, 1st Baron  44, 79–80 Grey, Edward, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon  147, 186, 190, 191 Grey, Thomas  30, 31 Gunton, Ethel  144 Gurdon, William Brampton, Sir  131 Hall, Robert King  156 Hamilton, William Richard  45, 65 Hamlyn, Frank  128 Hammond, Edmund, 1st Baron Hammond of Kirkella  3, 29, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 58, 64, 67–8, 70, 72–5, 112, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121–2, 124, 133, 134, 137, 158–62, 171, 174–5, 193, 194–9, 203–4, 207, 217, 218, 220 Hanbury, Robert William  1 Hansen, Christian  125, 128 Harbord, William  206–7 Harcourt, William Vernon, Sir  171 Hardinge, Arthur, Sir  209 Hardinge, Charles, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst  4, 152, 215 Harran, Edward  110–11 Harrison, Thomas  14 Hart, Henry, Lt.-Gen.  174 Haviland, Robert  93, 100, 101, 104, 107, 206 Henry VIII, King of England  40 Herbert, Arthur, Sir  213 Hertslet, Edward, Sir  1, 8, 23–4, 25–6, 47, 48, 70–5, 108, 113, 118,

129, 155–6. See also Librarian’s Department agency work  8, 71, 113 appointment as library clerk  54 grading and income 65–6, 68–9, 70, 71–2, 161, 175–6, 177 knighthood  155, 161 publications  170–8 retirement  173, 177, 178 support for staff  159–61, 163 Hertslet, Edward Cecil  157, 174 Hertslet, Godfrey  169–70, 173–4, 186, 190 Hertslet, James  8, 43–5, 51–2, 54, 56, 58, 68, 69, 83, 218, 219 Hertslet, Lewis  1, 7, 8, 28, 42–70, 77–84, 87–91, 96, 100, 101, 103, 107–10, 172, 182, 193, 196, 216, 218–19. See also King’s/Queen’s Messengers and Librarian’s Department agency work  8, 77–8 appointments  40, 43, 47, 77 editorial work  45–8, 61–2, 68 friction with Addington and Hammond  56–67, 111, 218 income and promotion  42–3, 44, 56–8, 66–8, 78, 83 messenger superintendence  47, 56, 58, 62, 65, 68, 82–3, 86–90, 92, 111, 196 retirement  70 working environment  47–8 Hertslet, Reginald  157 Hertslet’s Commercial Treaties  45, 46, 47, 172–4, 177 Hertzlett, Lewis  39–40, 41–2, 80, 218 Hervey, Henry  141, 150–1, 168–9 Home Office  2, 19, 57, 79, 83, 89–90, 137, 141, 152, 218 Hooker, Joseph, Sir  129 Hoppen, K. Theodore  47 Hornby, Edmund, Sir  68 housekeepers  1–3, 15–16, 21, 26–7, 36–7, 120–2, 134, 138, 140, 220 Hunter, George  84 Hunter, William, Jr.  80, 84 Hunter, William, Sr.  80 Huskisson, William  15, 84 Hüttner, Johann Christian  24

236

Index

India Board of Control  33 India Mail Service  194 India Office  37, 75, 127 Interserve  221 Irving, Francis  68, 73, 74, 157, 159–62 Italy and Italian states  94–5, 104, 108, 158, 195, 199–200, 202–3 Jackson, William  104 Jerningham, George Stafford  84, 85 Johnson, C., Mrs  211 Johnson, Cecil Godschall, Capt.  91, 93, 94–7, 99–100, 105–6, 107, 109, 198, 201, 206, 210–11 Johnson, Henry  34–5, 35 n.109 Jones, Ray  2, 217 Jordan, Dorothea  41 Justin, Mrs  25, 26 Kaye, William  206 Kent, Edward, Duke of  7 Kimberley, John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of  56, 150–1, 178 Kingsbury, James  15, 17, 21 King’s/Queen’s Messengers  1–2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 18, 28, 35–6, 39, 40–1, 42–3, 47, 56, 58, 62, 65, 68, 71, 78–113, 120, 122, 132–7, 139–40, 143, 146–8, 219–20. See also Hertslet, Lewis attire and appearance  108–10, 203, 216 baggage and losses  98, 104, 105–6, 205–7, 214 class and gentrification  79, 83–4, 85–6, 90–5, 97–100, 112–13, 196–7, 210 costs  82–3, 106, 107, 193–5, 202–3, 212 foreign service messengers  78–91, 194–216 home service messengers  82, 103–4, 110–12, 133–7, 139–40, 146–8 impact of railways  102–8, 112–13, 195–6, 198, 204–5 impact of telegraphy  10, 193–5, 202, 208, 216 misconduct  80, 84, 86–8, 93–5, 96–102, 198–9, 207, 210–11, 214–15 passenger conveyance  86–9, 95, 102 ranking and titles  109–10, 212–14

reforms  78–9, 112–13, 194–5 remuneration  78, 81, 82, 103, 111–13, 139, 195–9, 210, 214–16 routes  88, 92, 105–7, 194–5, 199–203, 204–5, 208–10, 212–13 vehicles  82, 86, 107–8 wartime duties  91, 193–4, 201–2, 203–4 Knight, Frederick Wynn  86–7, 88 Knox D’Arcy, William  187–8 Kraus, Augustus  81 Lamb, Frederick, 3rd Viscount Melbourne (also Lord Beauvale)  87–8, 93 Langcake, Elizabeth Mary  7, 36–7, 118–23, 126, 138, 139, 140, 148, 153, 220 Lansdowne, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of  181–2, 184, 212, 215 Layard, Austen Henry, Sir  34, 171, 172 Leeds, Willliam Montagu, Capt.  207, 207 n.76 Lenox-Conyngham, George  7, 8, 20, 21, 25, 26–7, 29–31, 35, 36, 37, 51, 60, 64, 67, 73, 98, 110, 112–13, 197, 198, 199, 211 n.93 Lethbridge, Lucy  220 Librarian’s Department  1–2, 5, 6, 9–10, 40–75, 155–91, 218–19. See also Hertslet, Edward; Hertslet Lewis accommodation  44, 59–61, 64, 67, 69–70, 72, 75, 156 clerical misconduct  49–56, 157, 218 indexing and registration  10, 43, 46–9, 50, 51, 56, 61–4, 66–8, 70, 72, 120, 157, 162, 165–70, 185 memoranda  41, 47–8, 61, 64, 69–73, 158–9, 161, 164, 171, 187, 190, 219 miscellaneous queries  185 printed book collection  44, 59–61, 70, 72, 75, 156, 163, 169, 180, 188 proposed reforms  166–7, 169, 179, 188–90 Public Documents Book  45, 46, 57, 73 registry reforms  10, 56, 63, 72, 168, 179–84, 190–1, 212 remuneration and staffing  9–10, 46–8, 62–3, 66–70, 72–5, 156–7, 159–64, 167–70, 179–81

 Index 237 Lincoln, Abraham  31 Lingen, Ralph, 1st Baron  165, 172, 176, 204, 217 Lister, Thomas Villiers, Sir  146, 148, 157 Littlechild, John, DCI  126 Liverpool, Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of  80 Local Government Board  119, 131 London Gazette  17, 19, 20, 35 Louis (Alice), Princess, Grand Duchess of Hesse  200 Lowe, Robert, Viscount Sherbrooke  160–1 lower/second-division clerks  9–10, 123, 152, 166–70, 180–8, 218. See also staff officers Lucas, Capt.  79 Lumley, John Rutherford, Capt.  211, 212 Lumley, John Savile  49, 54 Luxemburg  158 Lyell, George  80 McCarthy, Donal  221 n.15 Macartney, George, 1st Earl  24 McDonnell, Schomberg Kerr, Sir  152 Commission of Inquiry  190 maidservants  1–3, 10, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 36, 37–8, 86–7, 107, 120–3, 124, 127, 131, 138, 144, 149, 150, 151, 220 Mallet, Ann  16 Mallet, Hugh  31–2 Mallet, Louis du Pan, Sir  187, 215 Malmesbury, James Harris, 3rd Earl of  27, 32, 33, 36 n.111, 75, 109, 112, 133, 174, 193–9, 200, 217, 219 Malta  194 The Map of Africa by Treaty (edited by Edward Hertslet)  177–8 The Map of Europe by Treaty (edited by Edward Hertslet)  175–6 March, George  74 n.173, 162 Marvin, Charles  9, 162 Mason, G., Mrs  75 Mason, George  52, 75, 75 n.179, 156 Maycock, Willoughby, Sir  126, 146, 165, 189 Maynard, Reuben  125

Mayne, Richard, Sir  26 Meade, Robert Henry, Sir  161 Mellish, Richard  93–4, 94 n.86 Metropolitan Board of Works  149 Metropolitan Police  22–3, 24, 26, 29, 30–1, 36, 116, 126–7, 130, 131, 146 Metternich, Klemens von, Prince  86, 87 Middleton, C. R.  2, 6 Middleton, John  128, 139, 142, 143, 150, 151 Mills, Thomas  134, 135, 137, 139 Minto, Gilbert Eliot-MurrayKynynmound, 2nd Earl of  104 Mitford, Algernon Freeman-, 1st Baron Redesdale  129 Moldavia  69 Monson, Edmund, Sir  209 Morier, Robert, Sir  200–1 Mounteney-Jephson, Arthur Jermy, Lt.  210 Mowatt, Francis, Sir  169, 177 Murray, George, Sir  4, 155, 182, 183, 184 Napoleonic Wars  46 Near Eastern crises of 1875–8  158 Neilson, Keith  2 Nemes, Paul von  86–7 Nemours, Louis, Duc de  98 Netherlands  158–9 New Annual Army List  174 Nicolson, Arthur, 1st Baron Carnock  4, 148, 189, 190 Nixon, John  84, 85 Northcote, Stafford, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh  6 Northcote-Trevelyan Report  6, 160 Oakes, Augustus, Sir  74 n.173, 162–7, 169, 178–82, 184, 188, 219 officekeepers  1, 2, 10, 14–15, 16, 17, 21–3, 34–5, 41, 42, 112, 116–17, 120, 122, 219–20 duties and remuneration  19–21, 126–8, 131–44, 151 misconduct  22–3, 28, 34–5, 125–6, 129–30 Office of Works  33, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 127–30, 134, 146, 148–52

238

Index

Otte, T. G.  2, 219 Ottoman Empire (Turkey)  47, 104–5, 193–5, 198–9, 203–5, 209–10 Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount  3, 3 n.10, 4, 5, 9, 10, 15–17, 20–4, 28, 33, 34, 36 n.111, 46–9, 54, 55, 56–8, 62–3, 69, 84–97, 99–109, 112, 112 n.191, 128, 157, 174, 210, 211, 218 Parker, Alwyn  185–6, 190–1 Parliament  1–6, 8, 14, 22, 24, 32–4, 44, 61, 75, 82, 86, 89, 119–20, 131, 157, 165, 169, 170–2, 175, 178, 181 select committees  13–14, 15 n.14, 33, 59, 79, 103, 117, 140, 149, 160, 197, 198, 203 Parnther, Charles  9 Passport Office  28–31, 35, 71 n.163, 132 Pauncefote, Julian, 1st Baron  4, 167, 168, 173, 176, 207, 211 Persia  46, 123, 187, 190, 209 Piggott, Thomas Digby  176 Planta, Joseph  3, 8, 44, 83 Player, St Aubyn H., Lt.  204 Poignand, John  107, 206 Poland  107 porters  1, 3, 5, 15, 16–19, 21, 29, 35, 90, 92–4, 104, 107, 120 n.30, 132, 135–6, 142, 216, 221 See also coal porters and lamplighters Portugal  47, 213 n.104 Post Office Express Delivery Service  148 Powell, William  207 Preston, Robert, Sir  13, 15 printing establishment  1, 2, 14, 15, 16, 28, 34, 119–20, 131, 152 Prussia  32, 85, 91, 93, 158, 200, 203, 206, 211, 214 n.109. See also Germany Public Health (London) Act of 1891  150 Public Record Office (PRO)  75, 186–7 Queen’s Messengers. See King’s/Queen’s Messengers Quick, William Fortescue  48, 48 n.48, 49–50, 53–4, 56, 218 Raikes, Francis  210 Rice, William  32

Rich, Henry  48, 54–5, 218 Rich, William  48, 54, 55–6 Ridley, Matthew, Sir  168 Commission of Inquiry  9–10, 141, 156, 168–9, 179, 208, 210, 216 Robbins, Spencer Percival, Lt.  91, 105, 109, 110, 201–2, 203 Roberts, W., Mrs  140, 150 Roberts, William  140, 150–1 Robertson, Duncan  74, 74 n.173 Rolfe, Thomas  118 Romania  205 Romer, Arthur  157 Rose, C., Mrs  140 Rose, Charles  136, 138–42, 150 Rosebery, Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of  141, 146 n.165, 178 Rossiter, William  125 Roth, Mr  137 Rowan, Charles, Lt.-Col.  26 Russell, John, 1st Earl  34–5, 36 n.111, 60, 63, 64, 70, 72–4, 89, 91, 171, 174, 175, 197–200, 200 n.37, 201 Russell, Lord William  92–3, 158 Russell, Odo, 1st Baron Ampthill  161, 203 Russia  9, 47, 69, 81, 83, 85, 91, 96, 97, 104–5, 107, 108, 158, 185, 194, 196, 202, 209, 211 Rust, Donald  142–3 Salisbury, James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of  143–4 Salisbury, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of  9, 126, 128, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 147–8, 149, 151, 158–9, 162, 167, 169, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 208, 221 Salvation Army  164 Samways, James  16 Sanderson, Thomas, 1st Baron Armthorpe  4, 124, 130, 141–4, 148, 149–51, 160, 168–9, 173, 179–84, 184 n.154, 212–15, 217 Sasse, Frederick  62, 63, 71, 72, 73, 157, 162, 163, 164 Scheener, Edward Schencker  7, 7 n.25, 8 Schleswig-Holstein question  94 n.86, 158, 170

 Index 239 Scott, George Gilbert  3, 33, 38, 115, 116, 119, 127 n.67, 149, 220 Scott, Henry  9 Seale, John, Sir  48 Seale, Robert Berwick  48–54, 56, 59, 218 Serbia  96, 97 Seymour, Conway, Capt.  201, 205, 206 Seymour, Henry  170, 171–2 Shaw, John  81, 81 n.18 Sheffield, John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of  13 Shelburne, William Petty, 2nd Earl of  2 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley  2 Sidmouth, Henry Addington, 1st Viscount  3 Sinclair, George  151 Slave Trade Department  5, 8–9, 48 n.45, 57, 60, 62, 65–6, 72 n.167, 165 Sly, Charles  129–30, 141, 220 Sly, Jane  129 Smirke, Sydney  23 Sneyd, Jeremy  3, 4 Soane, John, Sir  13 Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys  24 South African War  142, 214 South Eastern Railway Company  102 Spain  3, 47, 80–1, 85–6, 91, 93, 98, 101, 106–7, 109, 199–200, 202, 204, 209, 213 Sparrow, George  80 Speller, Eliza  41 Spicer, Gerald  187 Spyer, E., Mrs  21 Spyer, Edward  17, 17 n.21, 19, 21, 22 staff officers  168–70, 180–1, 184, 188, 190. See also lower/second-division clerks Stahl, Conrath  15, 22–3 Stanford, Edward  176–7 Stanley, Henry Morton  210 State Paper Office  5, 40, 41, 48, 59, 61, 61 n.121, 75, 157 Staveley, Thomas  8, 70 Steiner, Zara  2, 217 Stewart (Vane from 1819), Charles William, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry  16 Stewart, Harry King, Lt.  210, 214–15

Stockwell Fever Hospital  150 Stormont, David Murray, Viscount  2 Streatfeild, Frederick  179, 184 Stuart, Charles, 1st Baron Stuart de Rothesay  81 Sudan  210 Superannuation Act of 1859  36 Sweden  80 Talbot, James  16–17 Talbot, Thomas  16–17 Taylor, Bridges  28 Tenterden, Charles Abbott, 3rd Baron  3–4, 9, 71, 115, 126, 127–8, 136, 137, 138, 160, 164, 175, 176, 206, 217 Thornton, Stephen, Inspt.  29, 31 Tibbetts, Mr  134, 135, 138, 145 Tilley, John, Sir  10, 152 The Times  171, 209 Tims, William  79–80 Townley, Brevet Charles, Lt.  91, 91 n.71, 104–5, 109, 197, 198, 206 Transylvania  86, 92 Treasury  2, 4, 5, 8–10, 18, 22, 29, 32, 36, 43–4, 48, 56–7, 60, 67–70, 73–5, 83, 89, 90, 103–4, 117, 121, 123, 130, 136–48, 151, 156, 159, 160–82, 184, 187, 189, 191, 194, 204, 207, 209, 210, 212, 215–16 committees of enquiry  6, 19–20, 61–3, 140, 167, 169 criticism of FO registry practices  165–70, 182–4 proposed reform of messenger services  196–9, 217–20 proposed staffing reforms  107, 111–12, 133, 136–40 Treaty (and Royal Letter) Department  5, 9, 62, 73–4, 157, 160, 161, 162, 180, 189, 190 Trent  158, 201 Trevelyan, Charles, Sir  6, 62, 103, 160, 197 Turkish Department  124–5 Turner, Adolphus  24 Turner, Rex  213 Two Sicilies, Kingdom of the  200 Tyler, John  34 typists  144–5

240 United States of America  3, 31, 47, 61, 68, 158 Urquhart, Mary  15, 16, 21 Venfield, John  15, 20–3 Vick, Nathaniel  83, 83 n.31 Victoria, Princess Royal and Crown Princess of Prussia  21, 200 Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland  7, 21, 98, 103, 109, 147, 200, 214 n.109 Villiers, Francis Hyde, Sir  131, 166, 168, 181, 210 Vincent, G., Mrs  138 Vincent, George  126, 128, 135–6, 138, 139, 140 Vivian, Hussey  35–6 Vyner, Edmund Halford, Capt.  91, 108, 109, 206 Wadham, William  130 Wallachia  69, 86, 88, 92 Walmisley, Arthur  68, 73, 160, 162–5 Ward, Thomas  93 Waring, John  105

Index War Office  6, 19, 48, 74, 112, 178 Watson, Ann  16, 21, 26, 35, 36, 36 n.113, 37, 220 Webster, Richard Hill, Lt.  92, 110, 198 Welby, Reginald, 1st Baron  139 Weller, Joseph  35, 36, 125, 145–6 Weller, Mrs  36 Wellesley, Richard, 1st Marquess  41–4 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of  28, 41, 43, 81 West, Cyril,  37, 117, 221 Western Department  186 White, James  170–1 William IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland  7, 7 n.25, 21, 41, 94 Wilson, Robert  46, 47–8, 170 Wilton, David  209 Wood, Donald  130 Wright, Jervis  141, 148 Wright, John  141 Wright, Thomas, Capt.  99–100, 102, 107–8, 110, 218 York, Frederick, Duke of  79 Youres, John  83

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