Algernon Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale

Entering the Foreign Office in 1858, Mitford was appointed Third Secretary of the British Embassy in St Petersburg. After service in the Diplomatic Corps in Shanghai, he went to Japan as second secretary to the British Legation at the time of the Meiji Restoration when Imperial rule was restored from the Tokugawa shogunate and the Japanese Seat of Power migrated from Kyoto to the Imperial seat at Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Mitford's memoirs recount the troubled time of the foreign settlements at Kobe over the fortnight following American Rear-Admiral Henry Bell's death, and the death of British consul Francis Gerard Myburgh. Mitford served as secretary under Myburgh's replacement, John Frederick Lowder. There he met Ernest Mason Satow and 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. With Satow, Mitford traveled extensively across the hinterland of Japan and became acquainted with Saigō Takamori, a famed samurai who led the Satsuma rebellion.[1] He retired from the diplomatic service in 1873.

Following the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, in 1906 he 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.[2]

In 1886, Mitford inherited the substantial country estates of his first cousin twice removed, 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 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.[1] Redesdale joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1907 and became a Fellow in 1908.[3] He was President of the Royal Photographic Society between 1910 and 1912.[4]

He substantially rebuilt Batsford House beside Batsford in Gloucestershire in the Victorian Gothic manorial style, but at such a cost that it had to be later sold. It was bought by Lord Dulverton and is still owned by his descendants.

In the 1902 Coronation Honours list it was announced that he 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.[6]

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.[7] His 1896 book, The Bamboo Garden[8], 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.[9]

In his closing years, Lord Redesdale edited and wrote extensive and effusive introductions for two of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's books, 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.