98 Facts About Herbert Vivian

Herbert Vivian was an English journalist, author and newspaper owner, who befriended Lord Randolph Churchill, Charles Russell, Leopold Maxse and others in the 1880s.

Herbert Vivian campaigned for Irish Home Rule and was private secretary to Wilfrid Blunt, poet and writer, who stood in the 1888 Deptford by-election.

Herbert Vivian was a noted Serbophile; his writings on the Balkans remain influential.

Herbert Vivian was born on 3 April 1865 in Chichester, the only son of the Reverend Francis Henry and Margaret Vivian.

Herbert Vivian was baptised by his father on 11 May 1865 at the town's Church of St Peter the Great.

The meeting had a strong impact on the young Herbert Vivian, who wrote about it later in his memoirs.

Potter introduced him to Lord Randolph Churchill, who inspired Herbert Vivian to take up Tory democracy.

Herbert Vivian exchanged letters with Lord Randolph during his school days and continued to correspond with him for many years afterwards.

Herbert Vivian studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1886 with a degree in history and subsequently being promoted to a Master of Arts.

Never shy of using his connections, Herbert Vivian dropped Churchill's name to arrange a meeting in Vevey with Nubar Pasha, the first Prime Minister of Egypt.

Around 1882, Herbert Vivian attended a lecture given by Oscar Wilde at which James NcNeil Whistler was present and which Herbert Vivian would later write about.

At Cambridge, Herbert Vivian struck up friendships with students who went on to be prominent politicians and businessmen.

Austen Chamberlain was involved in Cambridge Union politics when Herbert Vivian arrived and the two bonded over a shared interest in Radicalism.

Herbert Vivian recalled Debenham overdosing on hashish during experiments in Buddhism at Cambridge.

Later that year, Herbert Vivian visited Blunt at his home, Crabbet Park, and took a position as his private secretary.

Herbert Vivian spent most weekends at Crabbet during his final year of studies, and continued to work for Blunt after he graduated.

At the time, Blunt was developing interest in the Jacobite cause of restoring the House of Stuart to the British throne, which Herbert Vivian was to become a passion in his life.

In late 1887, Herbert Vivian left the Conservative Party and joined the Home Rule Union between the Liberal Party and the Irish Parliamentary Party.

At one such dinner, Herbert Vivian claimed he witnessed a famous exchange between Wilde and James NcNeill Whistler.

In 1889, Herbert 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.

Herbert Vivian first met Erskine when they were at a journalism school together.

Herbert Vivian used his editorship to promote an individualist philosophy for women, though he was against Women's suffrage.

The paper went on hiatus in early 1891, when Herbert Vivian stood for election, and did not restart publication.

Herbert Vivian left the Jacobite League in August 1893, but continued to promote a strongly Jacobite political philosophy.

In 1892 and 1893, Herbert Vivian worked as a journalist for William Ernest Henley at the National Observer.

Herbert Vivian contributed to Wilkin's monthly periodical The Albemarle, which was co-edited by a mutual Cambridge friend, Hubert Crackanthorpe.

In 1898, Herbert Vivian published letters he had exchanged with the Office of Works demanding that the Club be allowed to lay a wreath at the Statue of James II, Trafalgar Square on 16 September, the anniversary of James' death.

Herbert Vivian remained president of the Club until at least 1904.

Herbert Vivian was greatly attracted to the social structure of Serb society, which saw as the purest expression of nationhood.

Herbert Vivian saw Serbia as a society that still lived by an Eastern European version of the medieval code of chivalry, which he was greatly attracted to.

Herbert Vivian wrote with admiration that the rural areas of Serbia had been barely touched by modernisation, which led for the yeoman farmers to "steadily" vote for conservative politicians in successive elections.

About Belgrade and the other cities of Serbia, Herbert Vivian condemned them for a "false" culture that was antithetical to the "real" Serbian culture to be found in the countryside.

In 1898, Herbert Vivian returned to being a travel journalist, first for the Morning Post and then for Pearson's newly-founded Daily Express.

An anonymous reviewer in the Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York noted that like many other supporters of the British empire, Herbert Vivian felt an intense hatred for French imperialism under the grounds the British or the Italians would had made for better colonial masters of Tunisia.

The reviewer complained about Herbert Vivian's anti-Americanism, noting that Herbert Vivian in his book stated that all "Yankees" were "impudent vulgarians".

In 1901, Herbert Vivian wrote with his wife Olive a book on European religious rituals, described in the Sheffield Independent as "well written, curious and readable, and marred only by a singularly fatuous surrender to any form of superstition however grovelling".

Herbert Vivian noted that main form of communicating the news in Ethiopia was via the Azimare, wandering minstrel singers whose songs convoyed information about current events and gossip.

Herbert Vivian described Ethiopia as having a gun culture where owning a rifle was the highest mark of prestige.

Herbert Vivian will carry your gun and as many cartridges as is physically possible, but not a bottle or a roll of cloth.

In June 1901, Herbert Vivian founded The Rambler, a monthly magazine intended to be a direct successor of The Rambler edited by Samuel Johnson with Herbert Vivian going so far as to print the new Rambler in 18th-century font and having the first page being numbered 1245 as the last page of the old Rambler that ended in 1752 was page 1244.

Herbert Vivian adopted the stance of the 18th-century Tory Party in The Rambler, calling for a return to the values of the 18th century.

Herbert Vivian was strongly pro-Boer in regards to the Boer War as he depicted the two Boer republics as the victims of British aggression.

Herbert Vivian reserved his most vitriolic abuse in The Rambler for Rudyard Kipling, whose aggressive support for the Boer War was the precise opposite of his viewpoint.

Herbert Vivian was vehemently opposed to the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, which inspired him to write: "Now that we have failed to hold our own between all the majesty of our empire and a handful of Dutch famers, we suddenly throw our traditions, we put our pride into our pockets, and we solict the support of not a great, honorable country, but a pack of gibbering Simians".

In 1903, Herbert Vivian returned to the subject of Serbia in "The Servian Character" for the English Illustrated Magazine.

Herbert Vivian followed this with a second work, The Servian Tragedy: With Some Impressions of Macedonia, detailing the coup d'etat against the Serbian royal family.

Herbert Vivian wrote that the yeoman farmers of Serbia were noble and honorable with a "natural capacity" for self-government.

Herbert Vivian wrote: "It is only when they go abroad for their education, don black coats, and a thin veneer of progress that they invite criticism" for embracing a "corrupt modernity".

Herbert Vivian sadly ended The Servian Tragedy that he wished to "remember them as I have known them-admirable survivors of the age of chivalry".

Herbert Vivian treated Balkan banditry in the same romantic vein that was usual in his writings on the Balkans as he declared: "the real brigand is usually a political refugee who only desires to be left alone and is content if he can steal enough to keep body and soul together, or else is a political emissary who travels about trying to force an unwilling peasantry into revolution".

Herbert Vivian wrote that nearly six centuries of oppressive rule by the Sublime Porte had made Ottoman Macedonia into "the headquarters of brigandage" in the Balkans.

Herbert Vivian was less sympathetic towards the komitadji, which he portrayed as a perversion of the "noble" bandits who engaged in cold-blooded violence in order to achieve the territorial ambitions of their respective paymasters in Athens, Sofia and Belgrade.

Herbert Vivian accused the komitadji of intentionally engaging in extreme violence out of the hope of provoking even greater extreme violence from the Ottoman state, which thereby made the "Macedonian question" a matter of international concern as the struggle in Macedonia was the subject of intense media attention.

In May 1903, in response to Joseph Chamberlain's call for Imperial preference tariffs, Herbert Vivian met with Churchill to discuss what he should be Churchill's stance on the issue.

In 1905 Herbert Vivian published the first interview given by Churchill, published in The Pall Mall Magazine, which received attention in the press.

Herbert Vivian interviewed David Lloyd George, the President of the Board of Trade, for The Pall Mall Magazine and wrote for The Fortnightly Review.

In 1904, Herbert Vivian made a political speech containing pointed remarks about George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw and Herbert Vivian exchanged letters on the matter, which Herbert Vivian then published, to Shaw's chagrin:.

The publication of my letter to Mr Herbert Vivian was a piece of humourous cruelty in which I had no part.

In 1908, Herbert Vivian proposed a gambling "system" for roulette published in The Evening Standard.

Herbert Vivian's system relied on the gambler's fallacy and it was debunked by Sir Hiram Maxim in the Literary Digest in October 1908.

Herbert Vivian was highly critical of Serbia's actions in joining the Balkan League that went to war against the Ottoman empire in October 1912, writing that Serbia had fallen under "terrorist rule" with its noble chivalric peasant traditions being "corrupted" by modern ethno-religious nationalism.

Herbert Vivian wrote that only by accepting the House of Petrovic-Njegos as their rules was necessary to end "the regicide terrorism of the last nine years and restoring greater Servia, almost the Servia of Dushan, to her old place among the civilised nations".

Herbert Vivian continued to publish books in the First World War, notably a 1917 volume, Italy at War, which despite its title was largely a travelogue.

Herbert Vivian tried to join the Ministry of Information and met both Lord Beaverbrook and John Buchan as part of his efforts, but his services were rejected, although Buchan admitted to Jacobite sympathies during their meeting.

Herbert Vivian instead returned to the Daily Express as travel correspondent for 1918.

In 1932, Herbert Vivian returned to European political history and legitimism with The Life of the Emperor Charles of Austria, the first biography of Charles published in English.

Herbert Vivian continued to write on the Balkans, with an article in The English Review in 1933 on racial tensions in Yugoslavia.

Herbert Vivian's writings were noted in his lifetime and after; he is listed in the 1926 edition of Who's Who in Literature, and the 1967 New Century Handbook of English Literature.

Herbert Vivian's last book, Fascist Italy was an apologia for Benito Mussolini, whom Vivian depicted as saving Italy from a Communist revolution.

In 1889, Herbert Vivian sought to stand in the Dover by-election.

Herbert Vivian withdrew and later alleged that the Irish journalist and candidate for Galway Borough, T P O'Connor, had stepped in to prevent his candidacy.

Herbert Vivian duly lost the 1892 election to William Sproston Caine.

Herbert Vivian was interested in the Deptford constituency, where he had helped Wilfrid Blunt's campaign 15 years earlier.

Herbert Vivian began to campaign there at the end of 1903 and spoke at a free trade meeting in December, reading letters of support he had received from Winston Churchill and John Dickson-Poynder, MP for Chippenham.

Herbert Vivian was selected as a Liberal candidate to fight the 1906 election, and Churchill spoke in his support at two meetings.

In 1908, Herbert Vivian looked into standing as a candidate in the Stirling Burghs constituency after the death of the former Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who had held the seat for the Liberals.

Herbert Vivian again espoused legitimist views in support of restoring the House of Stuart.

In 1920, Herbert Vivian met Benito Mussolini and Gabriele D'Annunzio in Italy and became an admirer of fascism, notably Italian Fascism.

Herbert Vivian was General Secretary and editor of the league's publication, the Royalist International Herald.

Herbert Vivian believed the Great Depression was the death-knell of democracy and that soon absolute monarchies would be the world's dominant political system or that alternatively Communism would be the world's dominant political system.

Herbert Vivian wrote that Great War "cast the world into a melting pot and the world still seethes".

Herbert Vivian declared that when the world stabilises people find that the "19th century superstitions of Parliament and democracy are not dead, but damned", leaving the world between a stark choice between "being absorbed in the bloody mists of Bolshevism or in the empyrean ideas of love and labor and self-sacrifice" in the service of kings.

Herbert Vivian was disappointed in 1933 when Adolf Hitler did not restore the House of Hohenzollern as he had expected him to do, which led him to turn against Nazi Germany.

Herbert Vivian much preferred fascists like Benito Mussolini who professed himself to be a loyal servant of King Victor Emmanuel III as he was only willing to accept fascist regimes in service of monarchies.

Herbert Vivian must be read as an amusement of a rather grim sort than as an education.

Inasmuch as it is a mouthpiece for crude propaganda, Mr Herbert Vivian's book is regrettable.

Herbert Vivian called Mussolini Europe's savior in Fascist Italy and complained that "Britain has scarcely produced a statesman since King James II was driven from her shores".

Murray wrote that Herbert Vivian had been consistently opposed to democracy ever since he started his eccentric crusade to restore the House of Stuart to the British throne in the 1880s, and that Vivan's embrace of fascism was not an aberration, but the logical culmination of his political thought.

Herbert Vivian was noted for "extreme monarchist views" throughout his life, and became antagonistic to democracy.

Herbert Vivian was a prominent British Serbophile and an early proponent of a Greater Serbia that encompassed most of the territory of Macedonia.

In 1892 at the age of 27, Herbert Vivian was named as co-respondent in a divorce case.

The Simpsons travelled on to Paris, where Mrs Simpson confessed that Herbert Vivian had proposed to her.

The Simpsons then returned to London and Mrs Simpson left her husband and demanded a divorce, as she and Herbert Vivian were living together in Bognor Regis under the assumed names of Mr and Mrs Selwyn.

Herbert Vivian pursued her ambition to become an actress and in 1895 she travelled to Holland, where she abandoned Vivian for a Mr Sundt of the Norwegian Legation in Amsterdam.

On 30 September 1897, Herbert Vivian married Olive Walton, daughter of Frederick Walton the inventor of linoleum.

Herbert Vivian was made a Knight of the Royal Serbian Order of Takovo in 1902 and a Commander of the Royal Montenegrin Order of Danilo in 1910.

Herbert Vivian died on 18 April 1940 at Gunwalloe in Cornwall, 17 miles from his grandfather's house in St Clement.