Harold Nicolson
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Harold George Nicolson
Sir Harold George Nicolson (1886-1968) was a British diplomat, historian, biographer, critic and journalist, and diarist of note.
Harold Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia (now Iran), on November 21, 1886, where his father was British charge d'affaires. His father eventually became the first Lord Carnock, and as a child Harold visited the estates of his uncle in Ireland, Lord Dufferin. Harold was an aristocrat through and through.
His early life was spent in diplomatic posts with his father - the Balkans, the Middle East, Morocco, Madrid, and St. Petersburg (Leningrad). He went into the diplomatic service himself, quite naturally, in 1909, after going to Balliol College, Oxford. On leave from his diplomatic post in Constantinople he married Vita Sackville-West in 1913 in the chapel at Knole, Kent. She was the daughter of Lord Sackville, and in his house at Knole there were 365 rooms: it had been a 16th-century present from Queen Elizabeth I to Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset.
In 1915 the young couple bought Long Barn, a medieval cottage near Knole, where they lived for 15 years. Vita was a poet, novelist, and gardener. Afterwards they lived in Sissinghurst Castle, also in Kent. Their friends were aristocrats, diplomats, and literary notables, among whom was Virginia Woolf, the famous stream-of-consciousness novelist. Vita was in love with Virginia, as she was in love with several other women in her life. Harold was a homosexual too, and they also loved each other. Vita and Harold had two sons, one of whom has written a book about their marriage: Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage (1973), which depicts his parents as loving each other until the day they died.
As a diplomat, Nicolson was at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I, and in the 1920s he served in the Middle East and Berlin. He resigned in 1929 to be near his wife and to write. His first book was Paul Verlaine (1921), which was the first of six literary biographies: Tennyson (1923), Byron: The Last Journey (1924), Swinburne (1926), Benjamin Constant (1949), and Sainte-Beuve (1957). He also published a brace of novels - Sweet Waters (1921) and Public Faces (1932); essays - Some People (1927), The English Sense of Humor (1947), Good Behaviour (1955), Journey to Java (1957), The Age of Reason (1960), and Monarchy (1962); some more biographies - Curzon, the Last Phase (1934), Dwight Morrow (1935), and Helen's Tower (1937); and some historical works, among which were Peacemaking, 1919 (1933), Diplomacy (1939), and the distinguished The Congress of Vienna (1946) and The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (1954).
And he had time for his Diaries. They were published by his son Nigel, in three volumes, in 1966-1968. He was said to have never written a boring line. On reaching 50 he commented: "I am still very promising, and shall continue to be so until the day of my death" (which came 32 years later!).
In politics, he was a member of Parliament for the National Labour Party for West Leicester from 1935 to 1945. He was intensely opposed to Munich - the Munich Pact of 1938, signed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and dictated by Hitler, for German subjugation of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. He was committed, with Winston Churchill, in opposition to all dictators.
But he was not much of a "Labour man." After the war he failed in the election of 1945 as a National Labour Party candidate; he tried again in 1948 in a by-election at North Croydon, this time as a Labour Party contestant. He was unsuccessful. In his own words, he was a "cerebral socialist." He could not sympathize with the point of view of his mainly working-class constituents; they were too far from his own class, socially and intellectually. He was so civilized and so cultured that he seemed the last "gentleman" in politics.
He observed in 1948: "How difficult the proletariat are! … They destroy the grass, and there were little ragomuffins sailing cigarette cartons on the two pools. Yes, I fear my socialism is purely cerebral; I do not like the masses in the flesh."
Nicolson's suspicion of the working-classes was paralleled by his snobbishness about Jews, Arabs, Blacks, and Americans. He shared these prejudices with his wife. He knew these feelings were not worthy of him, but he could not seem to do anything about them. For instance, in the first three months of 1933 he and his wife were on a lecture-tour of the United States. Vita said: "with all their kindnesses, these people have very little imagination."
Of all the works Nicolson wrote, the history and diplomacy books stand out, and the Diaries. He died at Sissinghurst Castle on May 1, 1968, six years after his wife, never having recovered from her death.
Further Reading
Sources of additional information include Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage (1973); Michael Stevens, V. Sackville-West (1973); Sir Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930-1962 (3 vols., edited by Nigel Nicolson, 1966-1968); and Newsweek 72 (July 15, 1968).
Additional Sources
Lees-Milne, James., Harold Nicolson: a biography, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1982, 1980-1984.
Nicolson, Sir Harold, 1886-1968, English biographer, historian, and diplomat, b. Tehran, Iran. Educated at Oxford, he entered the foreign office in 1909, and, until his resignation 20 years later, he represented the British government in various parts of the world. His work at the Paris Peace Conference (1919) prompted the study Peacemaking, 1919 (1933) and stimulated an interest in diplomacy that is reflected in Diplomacy (1939) and The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (1954, 3d ed. 1963). He served in the House of Commons from 1935 to 1945 and was knighted in 1953. Among the subjects of his skillful and sympathetic biographies are Paul Verlaine (1921), Tennyson (1923), Byron (1924), Swinburne (1926), Curzon (1934), Dwight Morrow (1935), King George V (1953), and Sainte-Beuve (1957). Other works include The Congress of Vienna (1946), Good Behaviour (1956), The Age of Reason (1961), and Kings, Courts, and Monarchy (1962). He was married to the novelist Vita Sackville-West.
Bibliography
See his diaries and letters, ed. by his son, Nigel Nicolson (3 vol., 1966-68); N. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage (1973).
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Harold Nicolson
This article is about the British diplomat, writer and politician. For the former American Central Intelligence Agency officer and spy for Russia, see Harold James Nicholson.
Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician. He was the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West, their unusual relationship being described in their son's book, Portrait of a Marriage.
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Early life
Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the younger son of diplomat Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. He was educated at Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford.
Diplomatic career
In 1909 he joined HM Diplomatic Service. He served as attaché at Madrid from February to September 1911, and then Third Secretary at Constantinople from January 1912 to October 1914. During the First World War, he served at the Foreign Office in London, during which time he was promoted Second Secretary. As the Foreign Office's most junior employee, it fell to him in August 1914 to hand Britain's revised declaration of war to the German ambassador in London. He served in a junior capacity in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.[1]
Promoted First Secretary in 1920, he was appointed private secretary to Sir Eric Drummond, first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, but was recalled to the Foreign Office in June 1920.
In 1925, he was promoted Counsellor and posted to Tehran as Chargé d'affaires. However, in Summer 1927 he was recalled to London and demoted to First Secretary for criticising his Minister, Sir Percy Loraine, in a dispatch. He was posted to Berlin as Chargé d'affaires in 1928. He was promoted Counsellor again, but resigned from the Diplomatic Service in September 1929.
Political career
From 1930 to 1931, Nicolson wrote for the Evening Standard, but found it increasingly tedious.
In 1931, he joined Sir Oswald Mosley and his recently formed New Party. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for the Combined English Universities in the general election that year and edited the party newspaper, Action. He ceased to support Mosley when the latter formed the British Union of Fascists the following year.
Nicolson entered the House of Commons as National Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester West in the 1935 election. In the latter half of the 1930s he was among a relatively small number of MPs who alerted the country to the threat of fascism. More a follower of Anthony Eden in this regard than of Winston Churchill, he nevertheless was a friend (though not an intimate) of Churchill, and often supported his efforts in the Commons to stiffen British resolve and support rearmament.
He became Parliamentary Secretary and official Censor [2] at the Ministry of Information in Churchill's 1940 wartime government of national unity, serving under Cabinet member Duff Cooper for approximately a year until he was asked by Churchill to leave his position;[3] thereafter he was a well-respected backbencher, especially on foreign policy issues given his early and prominent diplomatic career. From 1941 to 1946 he was also on the Board of Governors of the BBC. He lost his seat in the 1945 election. Having joined the Labour Party, he stood in the Croydon North by-election in 1948, but lost once again.
Personal life
In 1913, he married the writer Vita Sackville-West, who encouraged his literary ambitions. He published a biography of French poet Paul Verlaine in 1921, to be followed by studies of other literary figures such as Tennyson, Byron, Swinburne and Sainte-Beuve. In 1933, he wrote an account of the Paris Peace Conference entitled Peacemaking 1919.
Nicolson and his wife practiced what today would be called an open marriage. They each had a number of same-sex affairs, and once Harold had to follow Vita to France, where she had "eloped" with Violet Trefusis, to try to win her back. However, they remained happy together – in fact, they were famously devoted to each other, writing almost every day when they were separated, for example, because of long diplomatic postings abroad. Eventually, he gave up diplomacy, partly so they could live together in England. They had two sons, Nigel, also a politician and writer, and Benedict, an art historian.
In the 1930s, he and his wife acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook in Kent, the county known as the garden of England. There they created the renowned gardens that are now run by the National Trust.
Later life and legacy
After Nicolson's last attempt to enter Parliament, he continued with an extensive social schedule and his programme of writing, which included books, book reviews, and a weekly column for The Spectator. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1953, as a reward for writing the official biography of George V, which had been published in the previous year.[4]
His younger son, the publisher and writer Nigel Nicolson, published works by and about his parents, including Portrait of a Marriage (frankly covering his parents' bisexuality), their correspondence, and Nicolson's diary. The latter is one of the pre-eminent British diaries of the 20th century and an invaluable source on British political history from 1930 through the 1950s, particularly in regard to the run-up to World War II and the war itself: Nicolson served in high enough echelons to write of the workings of the circles of power and the day-to-day unfolding of great events from, as it were, a medium distance. (His fellow parliamentarian Robert Bernays aptly characterized Nicolson as being "...a national figure of the second degree.") It is perhaps his diary, of all of his voluminous oeuvre, for which Harold Nicolson will be most remembered, as the author was variously an acquaintance, associate, friend, or intimate to such figures as Ramsay MacDonald, David Lloyd George, Duff Cooper, Charles de Gaulle, Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, along with a host of literary and artistic figures.
Nicolson is also remembered for his 1932 novel "Public Faces," the first book foreshadowing the nuclear bomb. A fictional account of British national policy in 1939, it tells how Britain's secretary of state tried to keep world peace, even with the Royal Air Force aggressively brandishing rocket airplanes and an atomic bomb. In today's terms, it was a multi-megaton bomb, and the geology of the Persian Gulf played a central role, but on the other hand, Nicolson never foresaw Hitler.
There is a brown "blue plaque" commemorating him and Vita Sackville-West on their house in Ebury Street, London SW1.
Books
- Paul Verlaine (1921)
- Sweet Waters (1921) novel
- Tennyson: Aspects of His Life, Character and Poetry (1923)
- Byron: The Last Journey (1924)
- Swinburne (1926)
- Some People (1926)
- Portrait of a Diplomatist (1930)
- People and Things: Wireless Talks (1931)
- Public Faces (1932) novel
- Peacemaking 1919 (1933)
- Curzon: The Last Phase, 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (1934)
- Dwight Morrow (1935)
- Diplomacy: a Basic Guide to the Conduct of Contemporary Foreign Affairs (1939)
- Why Britain is at War (1939)
- Friday Mornings 1941–1944 (1944)
- Another World Than This (1945) anthology, editor with Vita Sackville-West
- The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity: 1812–1822 (1946)
- Comments 1944–1948 (1948)[5] – collected articles from the Spectator
- King George V (1952)[4]
- The Evolution of Diplomacy (1954) Chichele Lectures 1953
- The English Sense of Humour and other Essays (1946)
- Good Behaviour, being a Study of Certain Types of Civility (London: Constable and Company, 1955)
- Journey to Java (London: Constable, 1957)
- The Age of Reason (1700–1789) (1960)
Footnotes
- ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 31712. p. 5. 30 December 1919.
- ^ Ahmed Ali. Twilight in Delhi. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 2. This is from the introduction to the book, in which its author tells of H.N.'s role in getting it published in 1940. There is no reference to H.N.'s work in this capacity in his published Diaries, presumably due to the Official Secrets Act.
- ^ Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, Nicholson Baker, 2008
- ^ a b Nicolson, Harold (1952). King George the Fifth, His Life and Reign. London: Constable. ISBN 978-0-09-453181-9. OCLC 1633172. Also under OCLC 255946522. Published in America as Nicolson, Harold (1953). King George the Fifth, His Life and Reign. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. OCLC 1007202. Also under OCLC 476173.
- ^ London: Constable & Co., 1948.
Further reading
- Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973), ISBN 0-297-76645-7.
- Nigel Nicolson (ed.), The Harold Nicolson Diaries 1907–1963, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), ISBN 0-297-84764-3
- James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson, A Biography, (Chatto & Windus), 1980, Vol. I (1886–1929), ISBN 0-7011-2520-9; 1981, Vol. II (1930–1968), ISBN 0-7011-2602-7.
- Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Vita and Harold. The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson 1910–1962 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992), ISBN 0-297-81182-7.
- David Cannadine: Portrait of More Than a Marriage: Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West Revisited. From Aspects of Aristocracy, pp. 210–42. (Yale University Press, 1994), ISBN 0-300-05981-7.
- Norman Rose, Harold Nicolson (Jonathan Cape, 2005), ISBN 0-224-06218-2.
- Derek Drinkwater, Sir Harold Nicolson & International Relations, ( Oxford University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-19-927385-5.
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Harold Nicolson
- Harold Nicolson at Find a Grave
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ernest Harold Pickering |
Member of Parliament for Leicester West 1935–1945 |
Succeeded by Barnett Janner |
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