Laurence Oliphant (author)
Laurence Oliphant | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | December 23, 1888 York House, Twickenham, London, England | (aged 59)
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Author Traveller Member of Parliament |
Spouse(s) | Alice le Strange Oliphant (1872-1886) Rosamond Oliphant (1888) |
Laurence Oliphant (3 August 1829 – 23 December 1888), a Member of Parliament, was a South African-born British author, traveller,
Early life
Laurence Oliphant was born in
Oliphant's parents were Christian Zionists.[5]
Diplomatic and utopian pursuits
Between 1853 and 1861 Oliphant was secretary to
In 1861, Oliphant was appointed First Secretary of the British Legation in Japan under Minister Plenipotentiary (later Sir)
He was sent to Poland in 1863 as a British observer to report on the January Uprising.[5]
Oliphant returned to England, resigned from the Diplomatic Service and was elected to Parliament in 1865 for Stirling Burghs. While he did not show any conspicuous parliamentary ability,[4] he was made a great success by his novel Piccadilly: A Fragment of Contemporary Biography (1870). Oliphant's later novels include Altiora Peto (1883) and Masollam: A Problem of the Period (1886).
He then became connected to the spiritualist prophet Thomas Lake Harris, who, in about 1861, had organised a small Christian utopian community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, which was settled in Brocton, New York, on Lake Erie, and he subsequently moved to Santa Rosa, California.[4]
After initially being refused permission to join Harris in 1867, he was eventually allowed to join his community, and Oliphant caused a scandal by leaving Parliament in 1868 to follow Harris to Brocton.
Later, he and his mother had a falling out with Harris and demanded their money back, which had allegedly been derived mainly from the sale of Lady Maris Oliphant's jewels. That forced Harris to sell the Brocton colony, and his remaining disciples moved to their new colony in Santa Rosa, California.
In 1876 Oliphant returned to England while his wife, Alice, chose to remain with the Brotherhood of the New Life in Brocton.[5]
By 1878 Oliphant, caught up in a wave of Western concern that Russia intended to conquer the Middle East, devised a "Plan for Gilead" under which Britain would plant a Jewish agricultural colony "in the northern and more fertile half of Palestine" and enlisted the approval of Prime Minister Disraeli, a supporter of Zionism; Foreign Minister Salisbury, the Prince of Wales; and the novelist George Eliot.[5] Oliphant, credentialed by the British government, set sail in 1879 to investigate conditions for establishing a Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine.[5] Oliphant would later come to see Jewish agricultural settlements as a means of alleviating Jewish suffering in Eastern Europe.[7]
In May 1879, Oliphant was in
While awaiting an appointment with the Sublime Porte, Oliphant traveled to Romania to discuss his proposed agricultural settlements with the Jewish communities there.[5]
The long-awaited meeting with the
When a wave of
Oliphant had by this point become something of a celebrity among Jews in Eastern Europe.
Despite the fact that the Sublime Porte had given no permission for the building of Jewish agricultural settlements, in May 1882 the Oliphants began a journey to Palestine, traveling through Budapest to Moldave, where they paused to meet Rabbi Avrohom Yaakov Friedman whom Oliphant understood to be "the leader of world Jewry", hoping to persuade him to raise sufficient funds to purchase Palestine from the Ottoman Emperor.[5]
The Oliphants settled in Palestine, dividing their time between a house in the
Esoteric writings
Laurence and his wife Alice collaborated on a work of esoteric Christianity, which was published in 1885 as Sympneumata, or Evolutionary Forces Now Active in Man. Influenced by the American mystic Thomas Lake Harris as well as spiritualists Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, Sympneumata is founded on an interpretation of the Fall whereby the human soul was originally androgynous but became divided into male and female counterparts upon being encased in physical bodies. In Sympneumata the Oliphants emphasise the need to locate ones physical and spiritual counterparts through a breathing practice, with the aim of unlocking the androgyne within through 'vibratory' motion.[11]
In December 1885, Alice became ill and died on 2 January 1886. Oliphant, also stricken, was too weak to attend her funeral.[6] Oliphant was persuaded that after Alice's death he was in much closer contact with her than when she was still alive, and believed that she inspired him to write Scientific Religion: Or, Higher Possibilities of Life and Practice Through the Operation of Natural Forces, which was published in November 1887.[4]
Final years
In 1888, Oliphant traveled to the United States and married his second wife, Rosamond, a granddaughter of Robert Owen in Malvern. The couple planned to return to Haifa, but Oliphant took sick at York House, Twickenham, England, and died there on 23 December 1888. His obituary in The Times said of him, "Seldom has there been a more romantic or amply filled career; never, perhaps, a stranger or more apparently contradictory personality."
Legacy
In 2000 Alice Oliphant's watercolours showing Haifa as it was in the late 19th century were shown in a special exhibition entitled "The Drawing Room of Lady Oliphant" at the
In 2003, Ticho House in Jerusalem mounted an exhibit of the Holy Land paintings of Alice Oliphant and her sister Jesamine Waller.[14]
Books
- A Journey to Kathmandu (the Capital of Napaul), with The Camp of Jung Bahadoor; including A Sketch of the Nepaulese Ambassador at Home is a travelogue written in 1852.
- Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan in the Years 1857, '58, '59 (1860)
- Piccadilly: A Fragment of Contemporary Biography (1870)
- Altiora Peto (1883)
- Sympneumata, or Evolutionary Forces Now Active in Man (1885)
- Haifa or Life in Modern Palestine (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1976 [1885]).[2] Illustrated with watercolors by Lady Alice Oliphant.[13]
- Masollam: A Problem of the Period (1886)
- Scientific Religion: Or, Higher Possibilities of Life and Practice Through the Operation of Natural Forces (1887)
References
- ^ "Book review: The Land of Gilead". The Observer. 2 January 1881.
- ^ Jerusalem Post.
- ^ "Reference to Sir Anthony Oliphant and the introduction of Tea to Ceylon". Retrieved 7 August 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f public domain: Duff, Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant (1911). "Oliphant, Laurence". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 82–83. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Steele, Philip Earl (January 2020). "British Christian Zionism (Part 2): the work of Laurence Oliphant". Fathom Journal. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
- ^ a b Anne Taylor (1982). Laurence Oliphant. Open University Press.
- S2CID 162284112.
- ^ The Christadelphian Magazine, Birmingham, 1884, 1886.
- ^ Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of the Promised Land, Shalom Goldman
- Jerusalem Post
- .
- ^ a b "Alice in the Holy Land Opens in Jerusalem". Art Daily. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
- ^ a b Levine, Angela (28 January 2000). "In the Frame". Jerusalem Post.
- ^ Ronnen, Meir (22 August 2003). "Painting Palestine - in the steps of a Christian Zionist". Jerusalem Post.
- ^ a b Beine, Dave (1998). "Nepal-Then and Now: A Critical Appraisal of the Ethnography of Nepal". Contributions to Nepalese Studies. 25 (2): 165–166.
- ^ "n 'Oddball' in 'The Camp of Jung Bahadoor'". ECS NEPAL. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
- ^ Oliphant, Laurence (6 July 2005). A Journey to Katmandu (the Capital of Napaul), with the Camp of Jung Bahadoor Including a Sketch of the Nepaulese Ambassador at Home. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
Further reading
- Mrs (Margaret) Oliphant (his cousin), Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, his Wife (1891).
- Philip Henderson, The Life of Laurence Oliphant Robert Hale Ltd, London, 1956.
- Burke's Peerage, Oliphant of that Ilk
- Burke's Landed Gentry, Oliphant of Condie
- Bart Casey, "The Double Life of Laurence Oliphant" Post Hill Press, New York, 2015
External links
- Works by Laurence Oliphant at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Laurence Oliphant at Internet Archive
- Works by Laurence Oliphant at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Laurence Oliphant
- Laurence Oliphant at ElectricScotland.com/webclans
- Laurence Oliphant at Library of Congress, with 46 library catalogue records