Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937): The man and his diary letters

Abstract

‘Poor old Austen!’ Leo Amery wrote three days before Chamberlain's death. ‘He just missed greatness and the highest position, but his was a fine life of honourable public service. His real weakness was his over anxiety for good form which he was sometimes inclined to identity too much with loyalty’. In many respects Amery's brief epitaph is typical of so many assessments of this ostensibly so simple but supremely enigmatic figure. There could be no denying Austen Chamberlain's distinguished career. He sat in the House of Commons for an unbroken period of forty-five years. It was a career that truly represented a ‘link with time’. Among the many tributes after his death, Lloyd George had reminded the Commons that Joseph Chamberlain had been congratulated on his son's maiden speech by Gladstone, a leader who himself had been first elected in the year of the Great Reform Act and first served under Peel. As one MP recalled of the occasion, ‘The younger Members felt that they had been carried back through Lloyd George to Gladstone away to the battles of the Reform Bill and the administration of the Duke of Wellington’. Of his almost half a century in the Commons, Chamberlain spent over twenty-two years holding ministerial office. In 1895, at the age of only 32, he became Civil Lord to the Admiralty. Thirty-six years later in his last ministerial position he returned to his ‘first love’ as First Lord in the same department. In the interim, he held all the great offices of State except that of Prime Minister and Home Secretary. Rising from Postmaster-General, he served twice as Chancellor of the Exchequer and once as Foreign Secretary. He was also a member of Lloyd George's War Cabinet and held the India Office. Even at the age of 72 many still saw him as the obvious candidate for the Foreign Office after Hoare's forced resignation in December 1935. By any standard, this was a remarkable ministerial and parliamentary career.