Twelve year diary (1907-1919) of a distinguished Scottish servant of the British Empire, who represented Scotland as an international footballer in the very earliest of all competitive matches with England in 1870 - and loathed his ministerial boss, the young Winston Churchill.
Scion of the aristocratic Baillie-Hamilton family (Earls of Haddington) William Alexander Baillie-Hamilton (1844-1920) rose to become one of the most powerful figures at the Colonial Office in the years preceding the Great War when the British Empire reached its greatest extent. Baillie-Hamilton records his loathing of his minister - Winston Churchill - as well as describing his own role in brokering the Imperial Conference of 1907 when Canada and Australia received Dominion status. He writes of his involvement in the organisation of George V’s Coronation and retained, happily, into old age the civil servant’s knack for pithy summary as he reflects on the death of another Scottish aristocrat, the Duke of Argyll, in 1914 whom he had seen the previous week: ‘He was no earthly use… and always gave a great deal of trouble but he was a kind hearted well-meaning creature’. Baillie-Hamilton was well aware that his ‘gilded age’ of shooting weekends and unthinking British political dominance was teetering on the edge of the abyss and repeatedly shows a touching vulnerability as shown at the funeral of his much loved cousin Louisa, wife of the Duke of Buccleuch: ‘Difficult to realise it was all over, and that one whom I had loved all my life should have gone for ever… the last walk on the grass of the church [in Dalkeith] in pouring rain, the last sad service. Poor Duke [of Buccleuch] looking quite broken down’.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Small octavo bound in half diced black roan over straight grain; scuffed but sound. Marbled endpapers and edges of the text block. Lined paper. Hamilton’s diary begins in media res ‘3rd Nov 1907 - Back in London from Drumlanrig‘ (home of the Dukes of Buccleuch) continuing until 4 October 1919 where the diary breaks off with his wife Mary’s precipitous decline in health ‘A very sad week, my poor darling suddenly taken ill - a sort of seizure in the head, with most alarming symptoms’. Himself 75 at the time, Hamilton did not return to the diary and died the following year in July 1920, leaving about 30 blanks at the end of the diary. Hamilton’s diary runs to about 350 pages, c45,000. Hamilton was an occasional diarist, often treating a period of a week or two in a single entry, hence this single volume covers 12 years. Hamilton writes in black ink and occasionally in pencil in a forward-sloping cursive hand, readable with some effort and attention to context.
NARRATIVE:
COLONIAL OFFICE: The diary begins with Hamilton in post as the longstanding Chief Clerk to the Colonial Office (appointed 1896) busy fending of rival claims over the Imperial Conference of 1907 ‘lot of work on… Rather sudden request of old CB [Prime Minister Campbell Bannerman, 73] and of Asquith [Chancellor of the Exchequer] resulting in various minuted changes including the shunting of Ld Elgin [Hamilton’s Secretary of State] which has been done in the most abrupt and indecorous manner’. Elgin receives muted praise for Baillie-Hamilton - ‘straight, honourable, and upright and has picked the plan with dignity’ but his relationship with the much younger Churchill was quite different, expressing ‘an intense relief to have got rid of Winston Churchill’ when his Minister had to travel north and exulting when ‘Churchill [is] defeated at Manchester thank goodness’ (16.4.1908). However Baillie-Hamilton couldn’s altogether escape Churchill who appears in the line up of one of Baillie-Hamilton’s many weekend shooting parties, comprising: ‘Churchill, Sir J Pilkington - James and Lady Evelyn, Miss Stanhope, Bishop of Southsea….’, not forgetting the bag of 350 pheasants (13.11.08). Baillie Hamilton’s retirement presentation in the Library of the Colonial Office is recorded with some feeling: ’about 60 or 70 present and an occasion I shall never forget. Sir C.[ecil] C.[lementi] Smith made a nice literate opening speech, & Lord Crewe [new Secretary of State] spoke in the most flattering and sympathetic manner. Felt it very much and my speech felt difficult’.
By now a fully paid up member of the British establishment Baillie Hamilton’s post-retirement diaries record his continuing involvement with public life, notably preparations for the Coronation of George V with ‘3 hard days rehearsing - looks as if some part of it will never come right - no one presiding genius - should all have been put in the hands of someone like Douglas Dawson…’ and in January 1913 Baillie-Hamilton took part in an official visit to the British protectorate of north Borneo where he was ‘glad to observe that all the officials were in the white uniform which I invented some years ago… and they certainly looked very smart.’
SCOTLAND is a constant in the diary, often tugging at Baillie Hamilton’s heartstrings in faraway London: ‘Feeling the “call of the moors” and a longing for a bit of Scotland more than I could resist’ (6.9.1909), indulging in the company of his many Scottish friends as well as visiting Drumlanrig at regular intervals, once arriving ‘just in time for dinner - small party. Fergusons, & Miss Brant, Freddi, Hew Dalrymple, Douglas Canin and Constance…’ The death of his friend the Duke during the early months of the year is an apt symbol for the diarist of the change sweeping through his world: ‘I feel as if a chapter in my life has come to an end, now that he has gone to join ma - and I have lost the truest and best of friends.’
GREAT WAR
Our diarist greets the outbreak of War with alarm: ‘we are at last plunged into what we have all been talking of for years, but have never regarded as in any way imminent… A sad and terribly anxious time has now set in, and everything is suddenly changed’. In subsequent entries he reveals that he has no illusions about the ‘terrible fighting’ in France and Belgium from which his son unexpectedly emerged injured in September 1915: ‘sudden return of Geordie from the front, with a wound in his right arm - he appears to have been in the recent great advance, was wounded early in the day, but went on, then in the evening got taken in an ambulance to Trefond.’ Baillie Hamilton offers a vivid vignette of Armistice Day - ‘London swiftly gone wild, streets swarming with people in the wildest state of excitement, all traffic stopped, flags breaking out anywhere, and altogether such a scene as can never have been witnessed in London before.’
PASSING OF THE GILDED AGE
Most touching in this diary is Baillie-Hamilton’s sense of a passing world. In January 1909 he visited an old friend Bertram, 5th Earl of Ashburnham, at the family seat in Sussex: ‘strange to be making the old journey there after an interval of 30 years… Received by an elderly retainer… conducted into the old library, where I was received by [Bertram] Ashburnham with a warm welcome. Should not have known him again except for his voice… with an all-round beard - looking just a little like his father…. A great feeling of sadness in wandering through the rooms, and thinking of all those who are gone’ though Baillie-Hamilton did manage a ‘perfect day’s shooting’ during his stay, the final bag amounting to 546 pheasants!
