Life
1840-1922; cousin of George Wyndham; ed. at Stonyhurst, then St. Mary’s,
Oscott, after the death in June 1853 of his mother who had been received
into the Catholic Church by Henry Manning (later Cardinal), and the boys
likewise at Aix-en-Provence in 1852; entered the Foreign Office as unpaid
attaché, Dec. 1850 [var. diplomatic service 1858]; served first
in Athens and later in other European capitals; faith shaken by reading
Darwin and Jowett’s Essays and Reviews; engaged in affair
with Catherine Walters (‘Skittles’), Parisian courtesan, who
inspired Songs and Sonnets of Proteus (1875), appearing as Manon
in Love Sonnets of Proteus (1881) and Esther in Esther, Love
Lyrics, and Nathalie’s Resurrection (1892); served in Lisbon,
Buenes Aires, where he met Richard Burton, 1867, and Frankfurt; resigned
from service in Switzerland in 1869; m. Lady Anne Isabella King-Noel,
dg. Earl of Lovelace and Byron’s dg. Ada; lived in Paris, 1869-70;
moved to Sussex; lost a child days after birth, 1870; inherited Crabbet
Park Sussex on death of brother, 1872; dg. Judith b. 1873; travelled to
Scutari, where he suffered a collapsed lung; Egypt, 1875; journeyed rough
to Jerusalem, spring 1876; met james Henry Skene at Aleppo, 1877; travelled
among Bedouin, and became br. of Sheik Faris; sent back Arab horses to
Crabbet; issued Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (1879); penetrated
Nejd with his wife, issuing A Pilgrimage to Nejd, The Cradle of the
Arab Race, 2 vols. (1881); visited Mohammed Ib. Rashid at Hail; returned
by the route of the Iranians (persian) Hajji from Mecca to Baghdad; departed
for India; stayed with Robert Lytton, then Viceroy; Ideas About India
(1885), appearing first serially in Fortnightly Review during 1884;
preached against the Ottoman rule of the Arab regions and proposed returning
Caliphate to Arabs; met affair Lady Gregory in Egypt, Dec. 1881, and became
lovers ‘at the climax of the tragedy’ [viz, battle of Tel-el-Kebir],
1882; supported of Bey Arabi’s [var. Urabi] peaceful revolution;
dismayed when the British govt. supported the Khedive against Arabi; purchased
Shaeyd Obeyd, outside Cairo; returned to London; after fall of Tel-el-Kebir
and arrest of Arabi, organised his defence at personal expense of £5,000,
Arabi pleading guilty and settling for exile in Ceylon; in India he profess
that ‘all nationas were fit for self-government’, 1883; stood
unsuccessfully as Tory Democrat for Camberwell, 1884; narrowly defeated
in W. Birmingham against Joe Chamberlain, June 1885; published articles
in Fortnightly Review as Ideas about India (1885); supported
Land League and Home Rule Party; wrote ‘The Canon of Aughrim’,
1886; visited Rome, and permitted back into Egypt, 1887; visited estates
of Col. King-Harman, and Lord Kingston at Boyle and Keadue, Co. Roscommon;
and sickened by evictions on estate of Lord Kingston at Arigna; offered
his services to Michael Davitt and William O’Brien during Land War;
conversed with Balfour and learned from him of his intention of using
Coercion on the Home Rule leadership; addressed midnight meeting alongside
William O’Brien at Woodford (nr. Portumna) on the Clanricarde estate,
advocated Plan of Campaign and was arrested for sedition under Balfour’s
Coercion Act of 1887, with additional charges of resisting the police;
sentenced to two months at Loughrea prison but awarded bail and returned
to England; retried and sentenced for the full term in Galway Gaol; prison
governor instructed to remove his coat and travelling rug; reduced to
wrapping himself in a blanket; Lady Gregory’s intercession gains
him a coat of prison cloth; quotes Balfour’s literal words in his
deposition to the Judges whom she brought to mediate his case; transferred
for the remainder of his sentence to Kilmainham; lost action for assault
against magistrate at Woodstock; lost election at Deptford; suffered disapproval
due to his exposure of Balfour; resumed winter visits to Egypt; issued
In Vinculis (1889), sonnets, praised by Oscar Wilde in review;
also A New Pilgrimage (1889); increasingly difficult relations
with Lady Anne and Judith; resumed writing love poetry, issuing numerous
collections of sonnets and lyrics, often featuring his amours (Esther
[...] [&c.]); lived at Newbuildings Grange, after removing from
Crabbet; close friend of George Wyndham in Sussex; Love Lyrics and
songs of Proteus with the Love Sonnets of Proteus issued by William
Morris’s Kelmscott press (1892); travelled in the Libyan desert,
1897; Satan Absolved (1899), demonstrating that imperialist greed
had outdone the devil; shipwrecked beyond Suez on the way to Mt. Sinai,
1900; defended his servants against charges when Sheik Obeyd was invaded
by foxhunting Englsh officers, 1901; travelled to Damascus, 1904; his
Abbey play, Fand of the Fair Cheek, written 1904, produced after
long delay 1907 without his prior knowledge; finally separated from Lady
Anne, 1906, after her compassionate visit to Sheik Obeyd in 1905; issued
Atrocities of Justice Under British Rule in Egypt (1906), dealing
with Denshawi affair, attacking Lord Cromer; also India Under Ripon
(1909); wrote on prison reform in English Review (1910); financed
the Egyptian Standard (Cairo), later edited by W. P. Ryan up to
his death in 1913; published The Land War in Ireland (1912), giving
account of Lady Gregory’s stern reaction to his involvement in Irish
nationalist politics; conducted Poet’s Party, Jan. 1914, serving
peacock, attended by Richard Aldington, F. S. Flint, T. Sturge Moore,
W. B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound; Poetical Works, 2 vols. (1914); reconciliation
over joint property in the Arab stud with Lady Anne, 1915; My Diaries
(2 vols. 1919-20), with foreword by Lady Gregory; the stud largely acquired
by Judith (who had married Neville Lytton) in spite of the will of Lady
Anne favouring the grandchildren, and a legal contest with Blunt himself;
posthumous Poems (1923); d. 12 Sept., after Catholic extreme unction,
but buried by his own wish without ceremony in Newbuildings wood; his
unpublished papers in a ‘secret box’ were reserved in the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge, until 1972; an early life by Edith Finch reflects the
hostility of his dg. Judith; the Earl of Lytton, his grandson, wrote a
memoir in 1961; [Lady] Elizabeth Longford’s A Passionate Pilgrimage
(1979) is the standard biography. DNB ODQ OCEL FDA OCIL
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Works
In Vinculis (1889), port.; A New Pilgrimage & Other Poems [Ist
ed.] (1889); Love Lyrics and songs of Proteus with the Love Sonnets
of Proteus (Kelmscott Press 1892); W. E. Henley and George Wyndham,
sel., The Poetry of Wilfrid Blunt (1st edn. 1898); also Secret
History of the Occupation of Egypt: Being a Personal Narrative of Events
(London 1907); The Land War in Ireland: Being a Personal Narrative
of Events [continuation of “[...] Egypt”] (London: Stephen
Swift & Co. 1912), ix, 510pp.; My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative
of Events 1888-1914, foreword by Lady Gregory, 2 vols. (London:
Secker 1919-1920), Pt. 1: ‘The Scramble for Africa’; Pt. II:
‘The Coalition Against Germany’; and Do., first US edn.
(1921) [lim. edn. 1500]; also Poems, ed. Floyd Dell (NY 1923);
My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative of Events, 1888-1914 (1932),
Foreword by Lady Gregory.
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Criticism
Yeats, ‘Prose and Poetry of Wilfred Blunt’, review Love Sonnets
of Proteus in United Ireland (28 Jan. 1888) [rep. in John Frayne,
ed., Uncollected Prose of W. B. Yeats, Vol. 1, 1970, pp.122-30];
Edith Finch, Wifrid Scawen Blunt 1840-1922 (London 1938); Elizabeth
Longford, A Pilgrim of Passion (NY: Knopf 1979), 467pp.,
49 ills. [with port. pencil sketch by Henry Holiday, ‘Reading proclamation
of the Woodford Meeting – Farringdon Memorial Hall, Nov. 3 1887];
Max Egremont, The Cousins: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and George Wyndham
(1977); R. J. Finneran, ‘W. B. Yeats and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt,
A Misattribution,’ in IUR (Autumn 1978); ); life by Elizabeth
Longford, A Passionate Pilgrimage (1979); Elizabeth Longford, ‘Lady
Gregory and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’, in Ann Saddlemyer & Colin
Smythe, eds., Lady Gregory, Fifty Years After (Gerrards Cross:
Colin Smythe 1987); Patrick F. Sheeran, ‘Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: A
Tourist of the Revolutions’, in Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok eds.,
Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, Vol. III:
National Images and Stereotypes (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag, 1987),
pp.153-160]; A. N. Jeffares, ‘Bunt: Almost an Honorary Irishman’,
in Images of Invention (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe pp.201-219;
see also two works by Manning Robertson; see also Declan Kiberd, ‘Lady
Gregory and The Empire Boys’, in Inventing Ireland: The Literature
of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape 1995), pp.83-95, espec.
pp.84-89; Lucy McDiarmid , ‘Lady Gregory, Wilfrid Blunt and London Table Talk’, in Irish University Review [Lady Gregory Special Iss.] (Srping/Summer 2004), pp.67-801.
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Notes
Frank O’Connor, Book of Ireland (Collins 1959; Dent
1967) selects "Englishman in Ireland/Galway Gaol" nd "But
a Bold Peasantry".
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.281 [Blunt, the English diplomat who supported Irish nationalist cause, was the first to refuse to wear prison clothes when imprisoned in 1887, and further, that his example was followed by IPP members William O’Brien and Timothy Harrington]; p.1003 [Frederick Ryan edited his paper Egypt].
Margaret Drabble, ed., Oxford Companion of English Literature (OUP: 1985); poet, traveller, anti-imperialist, m. Byron’s gt.-gd.-dg. Annabella King-Noel; also an energetic amorist; Sonnets and Songs by Proteus passionately addresses several women; other collections incl. love lyrics, evocations of Sussex, and Arabic translations; supported Egyptian, Indian and Irish independence, and was noticed in the pref. of John Bull’s Other Island. A spell in Irish prison inspired In Vinculis (1889), sonnets. My Diaries, 2 vols. (London: Secker 1919-20); life by Elizabeth Longford, A Passionate Pilgrimage (1979).
Hyland Books (1997 Cat.) lists A New Pilgrimage & Other Poems [Ist ed.] (1889) [top edge gilded]; The Poetry of Wilfred Blunt, Selected and Arranged by W. E. Henley and George Wyndham [Signed pres. copy from Arthur C. Benson]; My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative of Events, 1888-1914 (1932), Foreword by Lady Gregory [£18]; Edith Finch, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1840-1922 [Ist ed.], 1938. Ills. [bookplate of T. W. Moody]; Elizabeth Longford: A Pilgrim of Passion, The Life of Wilfrid S.Blunt [Ist ed.] (1979), ills..
Eric Stevens Books (1992) lists [QRY], Wilfrid Blunt and Sandra Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal [new ed.] (Frances Lincoln 1994), 190pp.; Blunt, William Scawen [sic], The Bride of the Nile, a political extravaganza in 3 acts of rhymed verse (priv. 1907), [1st], 43pp.
Lady Gregory wrote the sonnets that Blunt published as “A Woman’s
Sonnets”, which were actually her love-letters to him [see Attic
Guide, 1993, under Carolyn Swift].
Daddy, daddy! Blunt is erroneously accredited with fathering Robert Gregory in Roy Foster, W. B. Yeats: The Apprentice Mage (OUP 1997).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)