Diplomacy

Entering the Foreign Office in 1858, Mitford was appointed Third Secretary of the British Embassy at Saint Petersburg in 1863. He was then in the service of the Diplomatic Corps at Peking and Shanghai until 1866.^[2]

Mitford went to Japan as Second Secretary to the British Legation at Edo in 1866.^[2] He was to remain in Japan for the next several years until 1870. This was during the time of the Meiji Restoration when Imperial rule was restored from the Tokugawa shogunate and the seat of power migrated from Kyoto to Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Mitford's memoirs recount the troubled time of the foreign settlements at Kobe over the fortnight following American Rear-Admiral Henry Bell's death, and the death of British consul Francis Gerard Myburgh. He then served as secretary under Myburgh's replacement, John Frederick Lowder. There he met Ernest Mason Satow and became acquainted with Saigō Takamori, a famed samurai who would lead the Satsuma rebellion. Mitford travelled extensively across the hinterland of Japan, recording his various travels in his diary.^[4] He retired from the diplomatic service in 1873.^[2] Later that year, he travelled to Japan once again, this time via America.^[5]

Following the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, in 1906 Mitford accompanied Prince Arthur on a visit to Japan to present the Emperor Meiji with the Order of the Garter. He was asked by courtiers there about Japanese ceremonies that had disappeared since 1868.^[6]

Public life

From 1874 to 1886, Mitford acted as secretary to HM Office of Works, involved in the lengthy restoration of the Tower of London and in landscaping parts of Hyde Park such as "The Dell". From 1887, he was a member of the Royal Commission on Civil Services. He also sat as Member of Parliament for Stratford-on-Avon between 1892 and 1895. Lord Randolph Churchill remarked that '[he had] come to the dullest place on earth with great compensations.'^[4]

According to W. S. Gilbert, Mitford served as a consultant on Japanese culture to Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan during the development of their 1885 Savoy Opera The Mikado. A traditional Japanese song hummed by Mitford to Gilbert and Sullivan during a rehearsal was used in the opera for the march accompanying the Mikado's entrance.^[7]

In 1886, Mitford inherited the substantial Gloucestershire estates of his first cousin twice removed, John Freeman-Mitford, 1st Earl of Redesdale. Resigning his public offices and selling his London residence, he elected to retire as a Gloucestershire squire. In accordance with the will he assumed by royal licence the additional surname of Freeman. However, neither he nor his descendants would use their full surname Freeman-Mitford except in formal documents.^[8] Appointed a Deputy lieutenant and Justice of the peace for Gloucestershire, he became a magistrate and took up farming and horse breeding. He was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron from 1889 to 1914.^[9] Mitford substantially rebuilt Batsford Park, Batsford, Gloucestershire, in the Victorian Gothic manorial style. He also installed the extensive Japanese gardens which now comprise Batsford Arboretum.^[10][11]

Peerage

In the 1902 Coronation Honours list it was announced that Mitford would receive a barony, and the Redesdale title was revived when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Redesdale, of Redesdale in the County of Northumberland, on 15 July 1902. He took the oath and his seat in the House of Lords a week later, on 24 July.^[15]

Horticultural interests

While in the Far East, he became interested in Chinese and Japanese garden and landscape design and the flora of these countries. On his return, he created the arboretum at Batsford as a wild garden of naturalistic planting based on his Chinese and Japanese observations.^[16] His 1896 book, The Bamboo Garden,^[17] was the first book on the cultivation of bamboos in European temperate climates and remained the only text on the subject until the 1960s. He persuaded Edward VII to plant Japanese knotweed at Sandringham House and it later became difficult to eradicate, according to George VI.^[18]

Photographic interests

Mitford joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1907 and became a Fellow in 1908.^[19] He was President of the Royal Photographic Society between 1910 and 1912.^[20] While staying at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, he commissioned a photograph of Edward VII in Highland dress.^[19] Several portraits of Mitford may also be viewed at the National Portrait Gallery, London.^[19]

H.S. Chamberlain

In his closing years, Lord Redesdale edited and wrote extensive and effusive introductions for two of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's books, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century and Immanuel Kant: A Study and Comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato, and Descartes, both two volumes each, translated into English by John Lees, M.A., D.Litt., and published by John Lane at the Bodley Head, London, in 1910 and 1914 respectively.^[21][22][23]

Death and legacy

Mitford died at his Batsford estate on 17 August 1916. He was a prominent figure of late Victorian and Edwardian era society, who was celebrated as a writer, among many other interests, and one of very few contemporary British Japanologists. The paternal grandfather of the famous Mitford sisters, he was said to have been particularly fond of his granddaughter Nancy, whose early years were spent at Batsford.^[3] The Batsford estate was sold to Lord Dulverton in 1920 by his son and successor David Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, father of the aforementioned Mitford sisters.^[10][11]