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- An only son, an English diplomat and Conservative Party politician, who started as a clerk in the Foreign Office
of Boscombe Tower, Bournemouth
MP for Christchurch
He was secretary to Sir Henry Storks, high commissioner of the Ionian Islands, from June 1859 till the transfer of the islands to Greece in June 1864King of Arms to the Order of St Michael and St George
Possibly special British Commissioner at Constantinople
Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, who died on Sunday last, will long be remembered as a member of the famous Fourth Party. He never reached the position either in Parliamentary or diplomatic life which his undoubted abilities at one time seemed to open to him, but lie played a notable and important part in the House of Commons in conjunction with Lord Randolph Churchill, and will leave a memory as a most resourceful tactician. He was a son of Dr. Joseph Wolff, the famous missionary, who, being converted from Judaism--he was a. Rabbi? took his life in his hand in order to preach Christianity to the Jews and Moham- medans in the East, and of Lady Georgiana Walpole. In spite of his connexion with the audacious Fourth Party, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff served the Conservatives well by founding the Primrose League.
Henry Drummond Charles Wolff was the only child of the Revd Joseph Wolff (a Rabbi's son who converted from Judaism to Christianity) by his first wife Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole (daughter of Horatio Walpole, the Seventh Earl of Orford). He was named after the banker Henry Drummond, who had helped his father financially.
Henry later adopted the surname Drummond-Wolff because he was embarrassed by his father's origins and ideas, and never spoke of him.
At the time of the 1841 census Henry was boarding at a school in Alms House Lane, Wakefield. He went on to Rugby School, which he left in 1846 at the age of sixteen to study foreign languages abroad. He then became a clerk in the Foreign Office in 1849, employed in deciphering despatches. In 1852 he served as attach? to the British legation in Florence, and that is probably where he met the mysterious Adeline Douglas.
In 1853 Henry Drummond-Wolff brought his new wife Adeline back to London when he returned to work at the Foreign Office as private secretary of Lord Malmesbury, the Conservative foreign secretary. Their first child, Horace Henry Drummond-Wolff, was born in London in 1858, and in October of that year Wolff became the private secretary of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the colonial secretary.
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1830 - 1908 (77 years)
