Death of Sir Algernon WEST

Death of Sir Algernon West The Times, London, 22nd March 1921
“Of many men it has been said with more or less accuracy “He was everybody’s friend,” but the words may be applied with almost literal truth to Sir Algernon West, who died yesterday at his house in Manchester square, just before completing his 89th year.
Our generation at least has never known anyone whose acquaintances were, and had been, so various, and whose real friends were so many. Numberless people who had not the pleasure of his personal acquaintance knew him well through two pleasant volumes of “Recollections 1832-1886′, which he published in 1899, a very storehouse of kindly gossip on the events and persons of half a century, culminating in an enthuastic portrait of his great leader and friend Mr. Gladstone, whose very confidential private secretary he had been through the most important years of that statesman’s career.
But we all know Mr. Gladstone, either through our own memory or from Lord Morley’s “Life” ; what we do not know, except from such books as West’s, is the crowd of influential, but less celebrated, men and women who passed across the stage of English politics and society in the middle and late years of the last century. On them, Sir Algernon’s book, and still more his talk, would throw little illuminating patches of light, sometimes by a brief character sketch, sometimes by a story or an epigram. It was wonderful to see him at the age of 87 or more, straight, alert, and vigorous, and hear him varying his talk about the War and the Peace and the Labour troubles of to-day, with brief retrospective glances at past times, suggesting comparisons and contrasts in the happiest manner. Indeed it is difficult to think of anybody who after a long life of hard official work, has retained such freshness of appreciation, such vividness of sympathy.
He was born in 1832, the son of Mr. Martin John West, Commissioner of Bankruptcy, and of Lady Maria Walpole, daughter of the second Earl of Orford. His father was a cousin to Mr Pitt, through alliance with the Temple family, and his mother was a great grand daughter of Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister. The family had a house at Walmer, and West used to tell with pride how the great Duke of Wellington had run him, in his infantine days, a race upon the slopes of Walmer Castle. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, but he took no degree at Oxford, and his reminiscences of the place did not go much beyond the doings of his friends in the Bullingdon, and the lectures of the h-less Osborne Gordon, more admirable as a scholar than as a man.
THE OLD WHIG OLIGARCHY
West was only 19 when he accepted a clerkship in the Admiralty, and while he was learning his work, which he did very effectually, he was fully adopted into the Whig society of London, becoming intimate with such people as Sir James Graham and his wife, Sir George Cornewall Lewis at Kent House, Lady Granville , Charles Grenville the diarist, and Lady William Russell in Audley-square. He went to Paris in 1851, and heard the troops shout “Vive ‘Empereur!” several months before the coup d’Etat. He heard Thackerary give his lectures on “The Four Georges” at Willis’ Room, and thus began an admiration which grew all the deeper as time went on. And even then at 20 or 21 years of age, he was deep in the political world, listening to the debates, following the Budgets with close attention, and noting all the good things that were said, especially on his own, the Liberal side. Indeed, the purity of his Whiggism – and of his family connexions – was recognized by his election to Brook’s Club when he was only 22. In that same year he was sent to the Crimea on a Commission connected with the proposed submarine telegraph, and he had a bitter experience of the famous “Crimean winter” and of the dreadful mismanagement of our commissariat and system of supply.
A few years later, in 1858 he married Mary, daughter of the Hon. George and Lady Caroline Barrington, favourite granddaughter of the Earl Grey of the first Reform Bill. She had been “brought up and educated in the strictest sect of the Whig Oligarchy.” had lived as a child with her grandfather, and then with her Uncle General Grey, the Queens Private secretary at St. James’s Palace; and thus by his marriage West was thrown even more closely than before into the circle of the aristocratic Whigs. But before this, while working at the Admiralty, his merits had been recognized by Sir Charles Wood, at that time First Lord; under him West began the career for which events proved him to be ideally fitted, that of private secretary. When in 1861 Sir Charles Wood took command of the India Office, West went with him, and he remained under his successor Lord De Grey (the Lord Ripon of later years), down to 1866, when he was made Deputy Director of Indian Military Funds. Those who are curious as to the details of our Indian Administration in the years that followed the Mutiny may be referred to the book which West published about the time giving an account of Sir Charles Wood’s policy.
DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS
In 1868, after an interval of Tory Government during which Disraeli had “dished the Whigs” by passing Household Suffrage in the boroughs, Gladstone came back to power, and entered upon that Ministry which lasted over five years and carried Irish Disestablishment and Forster’s Education Bill. At this time West, as private secretary, was in close attendance, enjoying the complete confidence of his chief, never obtruding himself, and managing all sorts of delicate negotiations with tact and success. At this date Mr Gladstone lived in Carlton House terrace, and allowed the West’s the use of the official house in Downing Street, and there in fine summer weather, the Gladstone’s and other prominent people often dined with Mr. and Mrs. West in the garden.
As the years went on the Prime Minister began to look out for some permanent post for his secretary, at first unsuccessfully recommending the speaker to make one of the Clerks at the Table of the House of Commons, and finally appointing him a Commissioner of Inland Revenue. Here he served for just 20 years, as Commissioner, as Deputy Chairman and as Chairman, having thus to an extent which few people realised a strong and enduring influence on the financial policy of the country. Details would seem dull; it is enough to mention a single instance that it was he who led Mr. Gladstone in 1880, to undertake the difficult task of converting the Malt Duty into a Beer Duty. All this strictly professional work West did well , but what he perhaps enjoyed more was such achievements of secret diplomacy as when after the Lords had thrown out the Franchise Bill in 1884 he brought Mr. Gladstone and Sir Stafford Northcote together at his house for a very private discussion of a possible compromise. This it will be remembered, was arranged between the Prime Minister and Lord Salisbury.
In 1892 West retired, after 40 years of public service. But his beloved chief, when at the age of 83 he became Prime Minister once more, could not do without his secretary, so West joined him and retired with him in April 1894, when he was sworn a member of the Privy Council. In 1886 he had been made a K.C.B. by Queen Victoria and her successor, in 1902 gave him the G.C.B. Meantime he had entered the London County as a progressive alderman, and in Lord Peel’s Commission on Licensing Laws he served as vice-chairman. His public usefulness, in a word was as remarkable and as continuous as his social charm. Last October we reviewed another delightful book by Sir Algernon West “Contemporary Portraits” containing sketches of such men as Merivale, Blachford, Lingen, Hammond, Walpole, Erskine May, Anthony Trollope, Matthew Arnold, “Tom” Taylor, Welby, and Morant. We have reason to hope that a fresh volume of his Reminiscences will appear before long. Lady West died in 1894. Sir Algernon leaves three sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Mr Horace West, is principal clerk, Committees and Private Bill Office, House of Commons and a Gentleman Usher to the King.

{REMAINDER OF ARTICLE TO FOLLOW }

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.