Herbert Vivian (3 April 1865 – 18 April 1940) was an English journalist, author and newspaper owner, who befriended Lord Randolph Churchill, Charles Russell, Leopold Maxse and others in the 1880s. He campaigned for Irish Home Rule and was private secretary to Wilfrid Blunt, poet and writer, who stood in the 1888 Deptford by-election. Vivian's writings caused a rift between Oscar Wilde and James NcNeil Whistler. In the 1890s, Vivian was a leader of the Neo-Jacobite Revival, a monarchist movement keen to restore a Stuart to the British throne and replace the parliamentary system. Before the First World War he was friends with Winston Churchill and was the first journalist to interview him. Vivian lost as Liberal candidate for Deptford in 1906. As an extreme monarchist throughout his life, he became in the 1920s a supporter of fascism. His several books included the novel The Green Bay Tree with William Henry Wilkins. He was a noted Serbophile; his writings on the Balkans remain influential.
Early life and education Herbert Vivian was born on 3 April 1865 in Chichester, the only son of the Reverend Francis Henry and Margaret Vivian. He was baptised by his father on 11 May 1865 at the town's Church of St Peter the Great. He had a sister, Margaret Cordelia Vivian. His grandfather John Vivian was the Liberal MP for Truro, and owned Pencalenick House in St Clement, Cornwall; Herbert recalled shooting his first rabbit there as a child. He always glossed over his grandfather's political role, for example, writing: "None of my immediate relatives have ever troubled their heads in politics..." in his newspaper The Whirlwind.
Herbert studied at Harrow School from 1879 until 1883. When he was 14, he was introduced to an old friend of his father's, Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown's School Days. The meeting had a strong impact on the young Vivian, who wrote about it later in his memoirs. In 1881, his grandfather introduced him to Thomas Bayley Potter, the Member of Parliament for Rochdale. Potter was impressed by Vivian and often took him into Parliament during his holidays. There Vivian met many of the MPs and was particularly impressed by Charles Warton, the MP for Bridport. Potter also introduced him to Lord Randolph Churchill, who inspired Vivian to take up Tory democracy. Vivian exchanged letters with Lord Randolph during his school days and continued to correspond with him for many years afterwards. Vivian later became friends with his son, Winston Churchill.
Vivian studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1886 with a degree in history and subsequently being promoted to a Master of Arts. In his student years, Vivian and his friend Edward Goulding were the president and vice-president respectively of the University Carlton Club and invited Lord Randolph to become its president. Never shy of using his connections, Vivian dropped Churchill's name to arrange a meeting in Vevey with Nubar Pasha, the first Prime Minister of Egypt. After spending several hours discussing politics with Pasha, he returned to London and reported his conversation to Churchill. Churchill introduced Vivian to Charles Russell, who later became Baron Russell of Killowen and the Lord Chief Justice of England, and the two became friends. Around 1882, Vivian attended a lecture given by Oscar Wilde at which James NcNeil Whistler was also present and which Vivian would later write about .
At Cambridge, Vivian struck up friendships with students who went on to be prominent politicians and businessmen. Austen Chamberlain was involved in Cambridge Union politics when Vivian arrived and the two bonded over a shared interest in Radicalism. He was a close friend of Leopold Maxse — later editor of the National Review. Another friend was Ernest Debenham, who went on to lead the family business Debenhams to great commercial success. Vivian recalled Debenham overdosing on hashish during experiments in Buddhism at Cambridge.
Private secretary to Wilfrid Blunt Vivian and Chamberlain organised speaking events at the Union. In 1886, they invited the English anti-imperialist writer and poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to speak on the subject of Irish Home Rule, and Vivian and Blunt became friends. Later that year, Vivian visited Blunt at his home, Crabbet Park, and took a position as his private secretary. Vivian spent most weekends at Crabbet during his final year of studies, and continued to work for Blunt after he graduated. While so employed, he met influential politicians, as Blunt prepared to stand for Parliament, among them the Anglo-French historian Hilaire Belloc. Blunt was a cousin of Lord Alfred Douglas and a friend of Oscar Wilde.
In 1887 Blunt became more vociferously in favour of Irish Home Rule. In November, Lord Randolph wrote to Vivian advising him to distance himself from Blunt, advice Vivian did not take. At the time, Blunt was also developing interest in the Jacobite cause of restoring the House of Stuart to the British throne, which Vivian was to become a passion in his life.
In late 1887, Vivian left the Conservative Party and joined the Home Rule Union between the Liberal Party and the Irish Parliamentary Party. At the end of the year, he toured Ireland with the leading Irish politician Michael Davitt and Bradford Central MP George Shaw-Lefevre. Shortly after Vivian returned from Ireland he met the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party Charles Stewart Parnell and then the MP for East Mayo, John Dillon. In October 1887, Blunt gave a speech at a meeting in Woodford, County Galway protesting against mass evictions of tenant families. The meeting had been banned by Arthur Balfour, the Chief Secretary for Ireland and Blunt was arrested, tried and imprisoned. While Blunt served his sentence in Dublin, Vivian worked closely with William John Evelyn to promote Blunt in the February 1888 Deptford by-election, caused by Evelyn's resignation as the Conservative MP. Blunt lost by 275 votes. Despite this, Blunt and Vivian were approached in March 1888 by a committee from Parnell's Irish National League, asking Blunt to stand as their candidate for Deptford at the next general election, but by the time the election was called in 1892, Blunt's enthusiasms had moved on.
For a while, Vivian contributed to Evelyn's Abinger Monthly Record, a magazine he later described as "[in] part... really scurrilous attacks on the Vicar". The Vicar was Rev. T. P. Hill, incumbent of Abinger, who had fallen out with Evelyn. The Record was also noted for a campaign against compulsory vaccinations and support of Irish Home Rule.
Oscar Wilde In the late 1880s, Vivian was a friend of Oscar Wilde; they dined together on several occasions. At one such dinner, Vivian claimed he witnessed a famous exchange between young Wilde and James NcNeill Whistler. Whistler said a bon mot that Wilde found particularly witty, Wilde exclaimed that he wished that he had said it, and Whistler retorted, "You will, Oscar, you will".
In 1889, Vivian included this anecdote in an article, "The Reminiscences of a Short Life", which appeared in The Sun and implied that Wilde had a habit of passing off other people's witticisms as his own, especially Whistler's. Wilde saw Vivian's article as a scurrilous betrayal and it directly caused the break in friendship between Wilde and Whistler. "The Reminiscences" also caused acrimony between Wilde and Vivian, Wilde accusing him of "the inaccuracy of an eavesdropper with the method of a blackmailer" and banishing him from his circle. After the incident, Vivian and Whistler became friends, exchanging letters for many years.
Newspaper publishing and the Neo-Jacobite Revival The late 1880s and 1890s brought a Neo-Jacobite Revival in Britain. In 1886, Bertram Ashburnham founded the Order of the White Rose, which embraced causes such as Irish, Cornish, Scottish and Welsh independence, Spanish and Italian legitimism, and particularly Jacobitism. Its members included Frederick Lee, Henry Jenner, Whistler, Robert Edward Francillon, Charles Augustus Howell, Stuart Richard Erskine and Vivian. It published a paper, The Royalist, from 1890 to 1903.
Vivian first met Erskine when they were at a journalism school together. In 1890, the two founded a weekly newspaper The Whirlwind, A Lively and Eccentric Newspaper with Vivian as editor, noted for including illustrations by artists, including Whistler and Walter Sickert. Sickert was also its art critic, and wrote a weekly column. It carried articles on Oscar Wilde at the height of his fame and notoriety. The paper espoused an individualist, Jacobite political view, championed by Erskine and Vivian. One notable Sickert illustration for The Whirlwind was a portrait of Charles Bradlaugh. Bradlaugh also wrote an article on "practical individualism" for the paper.
In the first edition of The Whirlwind published on 28 June 1890, Erskine and Vivian came out against female suffragette, writing in a leader (editorial) they were utterly opposed to any kind of "female, childhood or dog suffrage" (the last two were included to illustrate the presumed absurdity of allowing women to vote). The two authors explained that women should be not allowed to vote because supposedly 99 out of 100 British women supported "state socialism" as an economic system (Erskine later admitted that he made up this statistic). In the same leader, Erskine and Vivian came out in favor of restoring the House of Stuart, arguing that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was illegal and as such the claims of the descendants of King James II to the throne took precedence over the claims of Queen Victoria. In the opinion of Eskien and Vivian, the rightful monarch was Princess Mary of Bavaria.
The Whirlwind was scourged by Victor Yarros for its anti-Semitic stance, mainly espoused by Vivian in his editorials. In the 23 August 1890 edition, he wrote, "The Jews are a race rather than a religious body, and, like the Chinese, are often obnoxious to their neighbours. By their financial craft they have acquired a dangerously extensive power, not merely over individuals, but even over the policy of states.... The proper way to deal with Jews is a rigorous boycott... What should be aimed at is a return of the whole Jewish race, as speedily as may be, to Palestine... The countries of their adoption would assuredly have no difficulty in sparing them".
Vivian used his editorship to promote also an individualist philosophy for women, though he was against Women's suffrage. Other causes included the menace of London's tramways and repeated attacks on the journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley and other figures of the age. He also published a series of autobiographical articles, Reminiscences of a Short Life, which later formed the basis of his 1923 memoirs, Myself Not Least, being the personal reminiscences of "X." The Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, one of the world's richest men, was attacked for his republicanism and labelled as "vermin" in The Whirlwind. The paper went on hiatus in early 1891, when Vivian stood for election, and did not restart publication.
The Order of the White Rose split in 1891. It had been a primarily nostalgic, artistic organisation, but Vivian and Erskine wanted a more militant political agenda. With Melville Henry Massue, styling himself the Marquis of Ruvigny, they founded a rival Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland, sometimes using the name White Rose League. Its Central Executive Committee contained Walter Clifford Mellor, Vivian, George G. Fraser, Massue, Baron Valdez of Valdez, Alfred John Rodway, and R. W. Fraser, with Erskine as president. Pittock called the League a "publicist for Jacobitism on a scale unwitnessed since the Eighteenth Century".