Frederick Temple Blackwood [Lord Dufferin]

Life
1826-1902; 1st Marquis of Dufferin and Ava; diplomat and author; born Florence, son of Helen Blackwood and descendent of R. B. Sheridan; wrote Narrative of a Journey from Oxford to Skibbereen in the Year of the Irish Famine (1847) while at Oxford student, his sole work which is not in the spirit of the comic essay and the aristocratic travels journal; also writings advocating emigration that drew nationalist fire; Letters from High Latitudes (1859), a journal of yachting voyage to Iceland; celebrated wit; became governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, and British Ambassador to many countries; subscribing patron to the Abbey theatre at its foundation; wrote introduction the W. Fraser Rae’s Sheridan: A Biography (1870); Dufferin’s last days were clouded by financial difficulties; his eldest son was killed in South Africa (Boer War); his youngest died in an airplane accident; d. Clandeboye, Co. Antrim; monument at Belfast City Hall; his son and successor, Lord Basil Blackwood, was grievously wounded in the First World War and killed on returning to the Front; Lady Dufferin lived to an old age, and was the recipient of the ‘blessing’ of the women of India, put into verse by Rudyard Kipling ("Lady, lo, they know and love ..."); a grandson was killed near Ava in Burma (from whence the title) during the Second World War; the life of a great-grandson was blighted by heroine; The memorial on the west side of the City Hall in Belfast is a standing figure and elaborate plinth in memory of Frederick Temple, Ist Marquess Dufferin and Ava, KP, 1826-1902, Gov. Gen. of India, Viceroy; HM Lieutenant of Co. Down, raised to ‘a great Irishman’; there is a life of Lord Dufferin by Harold Nicholson (Helen’s Tower, 1937). CAB DNB JMC OCIL

[ top ]

Criticism
Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘Lord Dufferin on Ireland’, Dublin University Magazine, 68 (July 1866), pp.116-20;
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984); A. Lyall, The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, 2 vols. (London 1905); John Metcalf, ‘North Down’s Literary Associations’: Letters from High Latitudes, ‘being some account of a voyage in 1856 in the Schooner Yacht ‘Foam’ to Iceland, Jan Meyn, and Spitzbergen’ (11th edn. held in Belfast Public Library) (Short notice in Supplement to Fortnight, Sept. 1993.)

[ top ]

Notes
D. J. O'Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary, (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); lists Letters from High Latitudes (1857). See also Irish Book Lover, 1.

Bernard Share, ed., Far Green Fields, 1500 Years of Irish Travel Writing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992), contains extract from Dufferin, Letters from High Latitudes, 11th ed. (London: Dent ‘Everyman’ 1903; first pub. 1857; also 1925 edn.).

Belfast Central Library holds Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, 2 vols. (1905), by Sir A. Lyall; also C. E. D. Black, The Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, 1906; also Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land in Ireland (1867) [see Dalton’s answer, Irish Peers and Irish Peasants, an Answer to Lord Dufferin and the Earl of Rosse.

Linen Hall Library (Belfast) holds Letters from High Latitudes. [Ref. in Mark Bence-Jones, Viceroys of India (1982)]; also Irish Peers and Irish Peasants, an Answer to Lord Dufferin and the Earl of Rosse, by G. T. Dalton.

[ top ]

Problem-solver: Lord Dufferin wrote a paper recommending emigration as a solution to the Irish land problem and was answered by G. T. D’Alton in Irish Peers and Irish Peasants, an Answer to Lord Dufferin and the Earl of Rosse (Belfast Linenhall Library) and Isaac Butt in Irish People, Irish Land, a letter to Lord Lifford ... comments on the publications of Lords Dufferin and Rosse (1867) [Copies in University of Ulster Central Library [HL257 I6 B98].)

Selling up: Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple Blackwood, Lord Dufferin, rooted in Co. Down; retired in 1880s to a comfortable but unpretentious late-Georgian house which he set about altering with wings extensions and alterations. Harold Nicholson visited at the turn of the century, and admired the Marquess’s curiosities including a Red Indian fertility god and a mummy case. The Dufferins had a foothold on another Co. Down seat at Killyleagh, the home of the Rowan-Hamilton. He ended a feud with them by giving up the house to the Rowan-Hamilton’s at a quit-rent of a pair of silver spurs each year (alternating with a gold rose), and married Archibald Rowan-Hamilton’s dg. Asilver Freedom Casket presented to Dufferin by the City of London is expected to fetch £12,000 at Sotheby’s (Auction notice, Irish Times, Sat. 1 Feb. 1992.)

Genealogy: Dufferin’s preface to his edition of the Poems of Lady Dufferin, his mother (q.v.), contains a history of the Sheridan family, incl. Thomas the Elder, Thomas the Younger, Richard, his son Thomas, Caroline and Helen Sheridan, his daughters.

H. S. Cousins wrote a poem to a son of Dufferin who died in the Boer War, in Ben Madighan (1894); see also references to the management of his estate during the Land Acts in Mark Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy; his grandson died in Burma in 1943, ironically near the Ava from which his title derives; the last holder of the title was portrayed by Derek Bell and died of AIDS in [?]1990.

Lost comment, ‘I received from him a copy of that delightful book of poems of Helen, Lady Dufferin, with a memoir written by him, in which I think there is the most charming and beautiful passage illustrative of the love of a son for his mother which has ever been written in the English language’ (Q. source.)

High-time: Lord Dufferin liked Kipling’s mother and used to drop in for tea at Simla. (Cited in Tom Paulin, review of David Gilmour, The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, London: John Murray, in Times Literary Supplement 8 March 2002, p.4.)

Chancellor: James Joyce received his BA (Pass) degree from the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava on 30 [or 31] Oct. 1902. (See Peter Costello, james Joyce: The Years of Growth, 1992, p.181.)

[ top ]

Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)