Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Wyndham, George
WYNDHAM, GEORGE (1863–1913), statesman and man of letters, was born in London 29 August 1863, the elder son of the Hon. Percy Scawen Wyndham, third son of the first Baron Leconfield; his mother, Madeleine, sixth daughter of Sir Guy Campbell, first baronet [q.v.], and a granddaughter of Lord Edward Fitzgerald [q.v.], the Irish rebel, was a woman of remarkable talents and character, and had much influence upon him. He was educated at a private school, at Eton, and at Sandhurst, and joined the Coldstream Guards in March 1883; he served through the Suakin campaign of 1885. In 1887 he married Sibell Mary, daughter of the ninth Earl of Scarbrough and widow of Earl Grosvenor. In the same year George Wyndham became private secretary to Mr. Arthur (afterwards Earl of) Balfour. In 1889 he was elected to the House of Commons, unopposed, as conservative member for Dover, and he held the seat till his death.
In 1892 the conservatives went into opposition, and for the next four or five years Wyndham devoted himself mainly to literature; he made the acquaintance of William Ernest Henley [q.v.] in 1892 and became in a sense his disciple, writing for his weekly papers, the National Observer and the New Review. He also wrote an introduction to North's Plutarch (1895–1896) in Henley's Tudor Classics. An edition of Shakespeare's Poems (1898) prefaced by an essay on the conditions of Shakespeare's literary life, and a short essay, Ronsard and La Pléiade (1906), with a few selections and verse translations, are the chief of Wyndham's other literary works. His writings are eloquent and interesting, and show a characteristic determination to understand the subject and see it in the concrete; they have much merit, but more promise, a promise which was not fulfilled, as in 1898 Wyndham was appointed parliamentary under-secretary in the War Office, and thereafter never had the leisure for a serious literary undertaking.
In the autumn of 1899 came the South African War. The first British defeats caused intense dissatisfaction with the government. Wyndham defended its policy in a remarkably fine speech in the House of Commons (1 February 1900), perhaps the most effective which he ever made there. His administrative work during the first part of the War was very hard, and as successful as the conditions permitted. In 1900 he was made chief secretary for Ireland. His Irish administration (November 1900 to March 1905) was his chief political achievement, and is noteworthy as the last attempt (successful while it lasted) to govern that country on the lines laid down by Mr. Arthur Balfour, that is, the maintenance of the Union—which in practice meant personal government by the chief secretary—combined with a policy of economic development (land purchase, light railways, assistance to agriculture). Wyndham’s personal administration was on the whole successful, as he worked very hard, was fair-minded, and had a more sympathetic understanding of the Irish than most English statesmen. His only important contribution to the economic policy was his Land Act (1903). It followed the general lines of Mr. Arthur Balfour’s Land Purchase Act of 1891, but by several new provisions made sale much more profitable to the landlords without increasing the immediate payment by the tenant-purchasers; hence an immense extension of sales, which had nearly come to an end under the former acts. The Act of 1903 made a very bold use of imperial credit (the terms were modified in 1906); it encountered much opposition in the Cabinet, and was discussed at great length in the House of Commons; its passing marks the zenith of Wyndham’s political career. In 1904 he attempted, without success, to devise a scheme of university education for Irish Catholics, which would at the same time meet their views and those of a unionist government; and in March 1905 he resigned as the result of a scheme of ‘devolution’, that is, half-way Home Rule, brought forward by his permanent under-secretary, Sir Antony (afterwards Baron) MacDonnell, with the approval of the lord lieutenant, the Earl of Dudley. Wyndham was savagely attacked at the time for a betrayal of unionist principles, and has since been praised for having devised a solution of the Irish question. He deserved neither the praise nor the blame; he did not know what his colleagues were doing and would certainly have stopped them if he had. He might possibly have extricated himself from the embarrassment had he been physically fit, but in fact six years of overwork had broken him down. He retired from politics for a few months to recuperate, and then came in again gradually, but did not take any considerable part before the conservatives went out of office in 1906.
In the last seven years of his life (he died suddenly in Paris from a clot of blood, 8 June 1913, not having reached the age of fifty), Wyndham was associated mainly with the tariff reform wing of the unionist party, though he never renounced his personal loyalty to Mr. Balfour. But he showed some signs of a desire to leave politics altogether, especially after he succeeded his father (1911) and had the management of a small landed estate on his hands. He took this duty very seriously, for he was an English tory in the best sense; his love of England, which was intense, was bound up with a belief in the monarchy, the church, and the landed gentry, as the best institutions for England. He was an imperialist, and he was not a believer in democracy. But his ideal for the nation, or for the class which he thought called to the function of government, was so high that he grieved less at the gentry’s loss of power than at any manifestation of their abandoning their traditions. In his last years he found politics very depressing, and saw nothing clearly in the future except war with Germany.
Wyndham’s career in office was less than seven years, and his literary output was small; the impression which he made on those who knew him personally was greater than can be justified by his actual achievements. He had a very keen appreciation of beauty in nature, in some kinds of art, and in some departments of literature; a passion for life, and a passion for ideas; he loved hunting and open-air life, he loved talking—and his conversation was most inspiring. His public speaking was, at its best, admirable, but very uncertain. He had many friendships, and an inner devotion to his family. He entered political life with a good deal of ambition, but was retained in it mainly by a sense of duty; his delicate feeling of honour was a contributing cause of his fall from power. He had not so much a faculty of concentration as an inability to escape from any subject which he took up seriously; and this characteristic, while it made him very powerful in council and in administration, probably led to overstrain and shortened his life.
Wyndham was survived by his wife and by one son.
[Letters; J. W. Mackail and Guy Wyndham, Life and Letters of George Wyndham, 2 vols., 1924; C. Whibley’s edition of Wyndham’s Essays in Romantic Literature, 1919; private information; personal knowledge.]