Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Earl Lyons (26 April 1817 – 5 December 1887) was a British diplomat, who was the favourite diplomat of Queen Victoria, during the four great crises of the second half of the 19th century: Italian unification, the American Civil War, the Eastern Question, and the replacement of France by Germany as the dominant Continental power following the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Lyons resolved the Trent Affair during the American Civil War; and contributed to the Special Relationship and to the Entente Cordiale; and for predicting, 32 years before World War I, the occurrence of an imperial war between France and Germany that was to destroy Britain's international dominance.
Lyons served as British Ambassador to the United States from 1858 to 1865, during the American Civil War; and as British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1865 to 1867; and as British Ambassador to France from 1867 to 1887, which was then the most prestigious office in the British Service. Lyons was offered the office of British Foreign Secretary on three occasions, by three Prime Ministers (Gladstone, Disraeli, and Salisbury), and was encouraged to accept that office by Queen Victoria, but he declined the offer on all three occasions. Lyons endorsed the British Conservative Party faction of the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, and was distrusted by Gladstonian Liberals as a 'Tory-leaning diplomat'.
Lyons's most recent biographer Jenkins (2014) considers Lyons to be the exemplar of the ‘Foreign Office mind’ who created a canon of practical norms of diplomacy, including the necessity for nominal neutrality in domestic party politics and for private correspondence with Cabinet ministers. Lyons founded the 'Lyons School' of British diplomacy: which consisted of Sir Edwin Egerton; Sir Maurice de Bunsen; Sir Michael Herbert; Sir Edward Baldwin Malet; Sir Frank Lascelles; Sir Gerard Lowther; Sir Edmund Monson, 1st Baronet; and Sir Nicholas O'Conor.
Family and early life
Richard Bickerton Pemell was born in Boldre, Lymington, Hampshire, on 26 April 1817. His father was the diplomat and admiral Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons and his mother was Augusta Louisa Rogers. His siblings were: Anne Theresa Bickerton Lyons (1815 – 1894), who became Baroness von Würtzburg; and Captain Edmund Moubray Lyons (1819 – 1855); and Augusta Mary Minna Catherine Lyons (1821 – 1886), who became Duchess of Norfolk and the grandmother of Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian. Lyons's cousins included Sir Algernon Lyons, Admiral of the Fleet and Aide-de-Camp to Queen Victoria and Richard Lyons Pearson, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. who throughout his career 'desired Anglo-French cooperation', and had 'a perceptive assessment of the French collective psyche', and was 'ever ready to exculpate French behaviour'.
Education
thumb|Lyons explored the Mediterranean, during his adolescence, on his father's ship, [[HMS Blonde (1819)|HMS Blonde]]
Richard Bickerton Lyons was tutored at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, by Sir John Colborne, in Classics, English, French, arithmetic, and theology, where he received a Latin Prize in 1828. He and all of his siblings accompanied their father and their mother to Valletta, Malta, in 1828, where they were homeschooled in the works of Enlightenment philosophy, including those of William Robertson, and in history and in classical civilisation, and in French and in Modern Greek. Richard Bickerton returned to England to attend Winchester College, and subsequently Christ Church, Oxford, from which he graduated BA (in 1838) and MA (in 1843). received an honorary DCL from Oxford University.
Minister to the United States
thumb|right|Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons caricature in [[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair (April 6, 1878). Lyons's diplomatic influence is demonstrated by the subtitle used instead of his name: 'Diplomacy'.]]
Lyons's first major appointment commenced in December 1858, after he had succeeded to his father's title of 2nd Baron Lyons, when he succeeded Lord Napier as British Envoy to the United States in Washington. He arrived in the United States two years before the outbreak of the American Civil War. The US President James Buchanan, who was ignorant of Lyons's precocious ability, was unhappy with the appointment of Lyons, who had only a few years as a diplomat: Buchanan stated that he wanted a 'man whose character was known in this country'. Lyons considered President Buchanan to be inept and described him as ‘too weak to wring his hands’.
Lord Lyons contended that the British ‘were the chosen people of history’ but was otherwise unprejudiced to French and to Americans. He was in America ‘witty and erudite’, and ‘tactful and discreet to the point of parody, and with ‘a subtle intelligence and a steely resolve’.
Geoffrey Madan records Lyons as the author of two aphorisms:
- Americans are either wild or dull.
- If you're given champagne at lunch, there's a catch somewhere.
Lyons was reputed for his luxurious dinner parties, both when Ambassador to the United States and when Ambassador to Paris. Lyons's dinner parties ‘nothing could exceed’ in ‘dignity and faultless taste’. He agreed with Palmerston's remark that ‘dining is the soul of diplomacy’, and offered five courses of Moet and Chandon champagne to United States Senators. Lyons then revised his judgement to predict an increasingly bloody conflict that would be won by the Union, but after which the Union would disintegrate as a consequence of internal animosities.
Lyons advocated British non-intervention and neutrality with both the North and the South. He considered Lincoln to be unrefined, and he thought U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward to be abnormally prejudiced against Britain.
Lyons resigns from Washington
Lord Lyons in December 1864 left Washington as a consequence of insufficient health, after his final meetings with Abraham Lincoln and with Seward, both of whom wished for his return to the position of British Ambassador at Washington. However, Lyons's health subsequently deteriorated further and, in the spring of 1865, compelled Lyons to resign his Ambassadorship to the United States. Lyons refused the preference of Queen Victoria and of the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston that he return to his post in the USA, and he nominated Sir Frederick Bruce to be his successor: which the Queen and the Prime Minister accepted. and died on 5 December at Norfolk House, which was the residence of his nephew Duke of Norfolk.
"Lyons School" of diplomacy
Lord Lyons's 1887 obituary in The Morning Post describes him as ‘the idea of a pattern and ideal diplomatist’ who ‘knew the contents of every modern dispatch’ ‘by heart’. Lyons's most recent biographer Jenkins (2014) considers Lyons to be the exemplar of the ‘Foreign Office mind’ who created a canon of practical norms of diplomacy, including the necessity for nominal neutrality in domestic party politics and for private correspondence with Cabinet ministers. Lyons attained the height of his influence during the premierships of his political ally the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who offered him the position of Foreign Secretary in 1886. In the 21st century, including by his biographer Brian Jenkins (2014), and by T. G. Otte (2011), and by Scott Thomas Cairns (2004), Lyons has been identified as a founder of a 'Lyons School' of British diplomacy that consisted of Sir Edwin Egerton; Sir Maurice de Bunsen; Sir Michael Herbert; Sir Edward Baldwin Malet; Sir Frank Lascelles; Sir Gerard Lowther; Sir Edmund Monson, 1st Baronet; and Sir Nicholas O'Conor.
Literary legacy
Lyons was the great-granduncle of the writer Maisie Ward, and the great-great-granduncle of the translator Rosemary Sheed and of the writer Wilfred Sheed.
Lyons is a minor character in the alternate history novel Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove, and in the Southern Victory Series novel The Great War: American Front by Turtledove, in which he is sent to Washington, D.C., after the Battle of Camp Hill, to advise Abraham Lincoln that the United Kingdom and the Second French Empire were to recognise and defend the Confederate States of America, after the Union was decisively defeated in battle. Lyons is also a minor character in the historical novel Freedom by William Safire.
See also
- Lyons family