Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy (Complete‪)‬

Born in 1817, Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, second Baron and first Viscount and Earl Lyons, eldest son of the distinguished Admiral Sir Edmund (subsequently first Baron Lyons), was apparently destined like his younger brother for a naval career, since at the age of ten he was already serving as an honorary midshipman. A sailor's life, however, must have been singularly uncongenial to a person of pronounced sedentary tastes whom nature had obviously designed for a bureaucrat; in after years he never alluded to his naval experiences, and it was probably with no slight satisfaction that the navy was exchanged for Winchester. From Winchester he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1838, being apparently at that period a quiet, well-behaved, hard-working youth, living carefully upon a modest allowance, and greatly attached to his parents and family.

In the following year he entered the diplomatic service as unpaid attaché at Athens, where his father occupied the position of Minister. In 1844 he became a paid attaché at Athens, and passed thirteen uneventful years at that post.

At this stage of his career, prospects looked far from promising; he had started later than usual, being twenty-two at the period of his entry into the service; younger men were senior to him; he had had no opportunity of distinguishing himself at Athens, and as he laments in a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Malmesbury, written in April, 1852, he felt 'mortified and humiliated that a man six years younger than himself had been passed over him as Secretary to the Legation in which he had served for thirteen years.' Promotion indeed seemed so remote that, having reached the age of thirty-five, he seriously contemplated abandoning diplomacy altogether.

As a matter of fact, there was no cause for uneasiness. In 1852 he was transferred as paid attaché to Dresden, and early in the following year received the gratifying intimation that Lord John Russell, who had been struck with his capacity, had appointed him paid attaché at Rome. 'What I mean for him,' wrote Lord John Russell, 'is to succeed Mr. Petre, and to conduct the Roman Mission, with £500 a year. If there were any post of Secretary of Legation vacant I should gladly offer it to him, as I have a very good opinion of him.' The importance of the post at Rome consisted in the fact that, whereas technically dependent on the Tuscan Mission at Florence, it was virtually semi-independent, and might easily form an excellent stepping-stone to higher and more important appointments if activity and discretion were displayed.

In June, 1853, Lyons started for his new post carrying despatches, and as an illustration of the conditions of travel upon the continent at that period, it is worth noticing that the expenses of his journey to Rome amounted to no less a sum than £102 3s. 3d., inclusive of the purchase and sale of a carriage, although no man was ever less prodigal of public money. Nor is there any record of any official objection to this somewhat alarming outlay.