Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon

This article is about the British politician, diplomat, art collector and author. For the American publicist, seeEdgar Vincent.

The Right Honourable The Viscount D'Abernon GCBGCMGPCFRS
Lord D'Abernon in 1926
British Ambassador to Berlin
In office 1920–1925
Preceded by	Victor Hay
Succeeded by	Sir Ronald Lindsay
Member of ParliamentforExeter
In office 1899–1906
Preceded by	Henry Northcote
Succeeded by	Sir George Kekewich
Personal details
Born	Edgar Vincent (1857-08-19)19 August 1857 Slinfold,West Sussex, England
Died	1 November 1941(1941-11-01)(aged 84) Hove,England
Political party	Conservative
Spouse	Helen Venetia Duncombe ​ ​ (after 1890)​
Parent(s)	Sir Frederick Vincent, 11th Baronet Maria Copley
Education	Eton College

Arms of Vincent:Azure, three quatrefoils argent

Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon,GCB,GCMG,PC,FRS(19 August 1857 – 1 November 1941) was a British politician, diplomat, art collector and author.

Early life

Caricature bySpy(Leslie Ward) inVanity Fairmagazine (20 April 1899)

Vincent was born atSlinfold,West Sussex onHe was the youngest son of Sir Frederick Vincent, 11thBaronet of Stoke D'Abernon(1798–1883)and, his second wife, Maria Copley (d. 1899).Among his older siblings were brothers Sir William Vincent, 12th Baronet and Sir Frederick d'Abernon Vincent, 15th Baronet, whom he succeeded as 16th Baronet in 1936.

He was educated atEton Collegefor the diplomatic service. Instead, he spent five years as a member of theColdstream Guardsbefore coming into the service as secretary to LordEdmond FitzMaurice,Queen's Commissioner on the East Rumelian Question.

Career

Vincent was appointed Commissioner for the Evacuation ofThessaly(ceded to Greece by Turkey)and advised the Egyptian government on financial matters from 1883 to 1889. That year, he became governor of theImperial Ottoman Bank.One of his policies was to get the Bank involved in South African mining shares on European stock exchanges. This caused a speculation craze in Constantinople where tens of thousands of people bought South African mining shares, a lot of them with money loaned from the Ottoman Bank. This led to a run on the Bank in late 1895 and then a crash in the share values, followed by an international panic and the financial ruin of many of those who invested in the shares. Vincent, who personally made a fortune from the shares, was heavily condemned for his role in the disaster.

In 1896, the banking office inConstantinoplewasoccupied by a group of armed Armenianswho threatened to destroy the building with bombs. Vincent escaped through a skylight and notified the Turkish authorities at the Sublime Porte and secured a negotiator from the Russian Embassy. The attackers agreed to surrender their bombs in exchange for safe passage to exile in France, being conducted on Sir Edgar's private vessel.

Member of Parliament

In 1899, he was elected aConservativeMember of Parliament forExeter.He was less a true Conservative than a personal devotee of the Conservative leader,A. J. Balfour.He held the seat until losing to a Liberal in1906.He opposed the Conservative policy ofTariff Reformand unsuccessfully stood for the Liberal Party in Colchester inDecember 1910.In July 1914 he was raised to the peerage as Baron D'Abernonof Esher, Surrey, upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister,H. H. Asquith.

Poland

D'Abernon was part of theInterallied Mission to Polandin July 1920, during thePolish-Soviet War.Later this experience provided material for his bookThe Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World:Warsaw, 1920(1931).

Ambassador to Germany

Monument to Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon,St Mary's Church, Stoke d'Abernon,Surrey

From 1920 to 1925, D'Abernon was theBritish Ambassador to Berlin.In September 1921 he wrote that the success of theInter-Allied Military Commission of Control,which reported on German disarmament, meant that there would be no military danger from Germany for many years and that it would be impossible for the Germans to conceal the manufacture of heavy weaponry.In February 1922 he criticised the idea of a military alliance between Britain and France:

The fundamental criticism...is that England undertakes definite and very extensive responsibilities in order to avoid a danger which she believes to be largely imaginary. An armed attack by Germany on France within the next twenty-five years is admittedly improbable, an attack by Germany on England in the same period even more so...the whole tone of the French is to assume that the real danger to the future peace of Europe is military aggression by Germany.

On 9 February 1925 D'Abernon wrote that it was necessary "to abandon the view that Germans are such congenital liars that there is no practical advantage in obtaining from them any engagement or declaration. On this assumption progress is impossible. Personally I regard the Germans as more reliable and more bound to written engagements than many other nations".

Lord Vansittartcalled D'Abernon "the pioneer ofappeasement".GeneralJ. H. Morganalso called D'Abernon "the apostle of ′appeasement′" and claimed D'Abernon "did not believe in the possibility, much less the probability, of a German military revival".

Later life

After his retirement from the foreign service, D'Abernon devoted his time to directorships of numerous domestic organisations such as theLawn Tennis Association,the Race Course Betting Control Board, theMedical Research Council,and the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, and theRoyal Mintadvisory committee. He was also a trustee of theNationalandTateGalleries andPresident of the Royal Statistical Societyfrom 1926 to 1928.

Personal life

D'Abernon married the renowned beautyHelen Venetia Duncombe,daughter ofWilliam Duncombe, 1st Earl of Feversham,in 1890. Together they shared a love of society and the fine arts, especially English painting. Both had portraits made byJohn Singer Sargent.She posed for hers in 1904 at their villa, thePalazzo Giustinian,inVenice.Vincent was Chairman of theroyal commissionon National Museums and Galleries, which published its report in 1928. The bulk of their art collection was sold at auction in 1929.Two works once in their collection are in the National Gallery,three at theNational Gallery of Art, Washington,and others at the (Mellon)Yale Center for British Artand other museums. The collection included 17th century Ottoman textiles.

D'Abernon died ofhypostatic pneumoniaandParkinson's diseaseatHovein November 1941.He had no children and the viscountcy and barony created for him therefore became extinct. There were no remaining heirs to the 1620 baronetcy and that too became extinct on his death.

Honours

D'Abernon was appointed Knight Commander of theOrder of St Michael and St George(KCMG) in 1887,promoted to Knight Grand Cross (GCMG) in 1917,and made Knight Grand Cross of theOrder of the Bath(GCB) in 1926.He joined thePrivy Councilin 1920.

D'Abernon was elevated to the peerage asBaron D'Abernon,of Esher in the county of Surrey, in 1914and advanced toViscount D'Abernon,of Esher and Stoke d'Abernon in the county of Surrey, in 1926.He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society(FRS) in 1934.

D'Abernon succeeded his elder brother Sir Frederick D'Abernon Vincent, 15th Baronet of Stoke d'Abernon as 16th Baronet in 1936.

Styles and honours

• Edgar Vincent (1857–1887)
• Sir Edgar Vincent KCMG (1887–1899)
• Sir Edgar Vincent KCMG MP (1899–1906)
• Sir Edgar Vincent KCMG (1906–1914)
• The Right Honourable The Lord D'Abernon KCMG (1914–1917)
• The Right Honourable The Lord D'Abernon GCMG (1917–1920)
• The Right Honourable The Lord D'Abernon GCMG PC (1920–1926)
• The Right Honourable The Viscount D'Abernon GCMG PC (1926)
• The Right Honourable The Viscount D'Abernon GCB GCMG PC (1926–1934)
• The Right Honourable The Viscount D'Abernon GCB GCMG PC FRS (1934–1941)

Works

• A Grammar of Modern Greek(1881)
• Alcohol – Its Action on the Human Organism,His Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1918
• An Ambassador of Peace,3 volumes, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1929–1931
• The eighteenth decisive battle of the world: Warsaw, 1920,Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1931; reprinted by Hyperion Press, Westport, Conn., 1977,ISBN0-88355-429-1

References

• Paul Auchterlonie, 'A Turk of the west: Sir Edgar Vincent's career in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire,’British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies27:1. (2000) pp. 49–68. ISSN 1353-0194
• Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘Vincent, Edgar, Viscount D'Abernon (1857–1941)',Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 10 July 2011.

Further reading

• R. P. T. Davenport-Hines,Speculators and Patriots. Essays in Business Biography(Routledge, 1986).
• Philip Dent, 'The D'Abernon Papers: Origins of 'Appeasement'’,The British Museum Quarterly,Vol. 37, No. 3/4 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 103–107.
• Gaynor Johnson,The Berlin Embassy of Lord D'Abernon, 1920–1926(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).ISBN0-333-94549-2

External links

• Lord Curzon and the Appointment of Lord D'Abernon as Ambassador to Berlin in 1920byGaynor Johnson,Journal of Contemporary History,Vol. 39, No. 1, 57–70 (2004)
• National Registry Archive contains several excerpts of D'Abernon writings
• Hansard1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by Sir Edgar Vincent
• Newspaper clippings about Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernonin the20th Century Press Archivesof theZBW