| Honorific Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Lord Redesdale | |
| Office1: | Member of Parliament for Stratford-on-Avon |
| Predecessor1: | Frederick Townsend |
| Successor1: | Victor Milward |
| Termstart1: | 4 July 1892 |
| Termend1: | 8 July 1895 |
| Birth Name: | Algernon Bertram Mitford |
| Birth Date: | 24 February 1837 |
| Party: | Conservative |
| Children: | 9, including David |
| Education: | Eton College |
| Alma Mater: | Christ Church, Oxford |
| Death Place: | Batsford, Gloucestershire, England |
| Birth Place: | Mayfair, London, England |
Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale, (24 February 183717 August 1916), was a British diplomat, collector and writer, whose most notable work is Tales of Old Japan (1871). Nicknamed "Bertie", he was the paternal grandfather of the Mitford sisters.
Mitford was the son of Henry Reveley Mitford (1804–1883), of Exbury House, Hampshire, and great-grandson of the historian William Mitford. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Classics. While his paternal ancestors were landed gentry, whose holdings included Mitford Castle in Northumberland, his mother Lady (Georgiana) Jemima Ashburnham was the daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham and Lady Charlotte Percy. After his parents separated in 1840, his father, an erstwhile attaché at Florence,[1] resided in Germany and France; his early years were thus spent on the Continent.
Like his cousin Swinburne, he was named Algernon after his great-grandfather Algernon Percy, 1st Earl of Beverley,[2] but always went by his middle-name Bertram and was known familiarly as "Bertie" (pronounced "Barty").
Entering the Foreign Office in 1858, Mitford was appointed Third Secretary of the British Embassy at Saint Petersburg. After service in the Diplomatic Corps in Shanghai, he went to Japan in 1866 as second secretary to the British Legation at the time of the migration of the Japanese seat of power from Kyoto to Edo (modern-day Tokyo), known as the "Meiji Restoration".[3] There he met Ernest Satow whom he travelled with across the hinterland of Japan. He later wrote Tales of Old Japan (1871), a book credited with making such Japanese Classics as "The Forty-seven Ronin" first known to a wide Western public. He resigned from the diplomatic service in 1873.
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.
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.
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.[4]
In 1886, Mitford inherited the substantial Gloucestershire estates of his cousin, John Freeman-Mitford, 1st Earl of Redesdale. In accordance with the will, he assumed by royal licence the additional surname of Freeman. 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. Redesdale joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1907 and became a Fellow in 1908.[5] He was President of the Royal Photographic Society between 1910 and 1912.[6]
Mitford substantially rebuilt Batsford Park, Batsford, Gloucestershire, in the Victorian Gothic manorial style. He also installed the Batsford Arboretum.[7]
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.[8]
During his time in Japan, Mitford was said to have fathered two children with a geisha. Later, he may have fathered Clementine Hozier (1885–1977), in the course of an affair with his wife's sister Blanche.[9] Clementine married Winston Churchill in 1908.
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.[10] His 1896 book, The Bamboo Garden, 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.[11]
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.[12] [13]
In 1874, Mitford married Lady Clementine Gertrude Helen Ogilvy (1854–1932), daughter of David Ogilvy, 10th Earl of Airlie, by his wife Hon. Blanche Stanley, daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley. They had five sons and four daughters. David, who succeeded in the barony, married the daughter of Vanity Fair founder Thomas Gibson Bowles and was the father of the Mitford sisters.
Lord Redesdale also wrote an extensive Introduction to The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), and translated, with another Introduction for Immanuel Kant (1914), both by Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
. Hitler's Valkyrie: The Uncensored Biography of Unity Mitford . The History Press . 2013 . 9780750951616 . 25 . .