Laurence Oliphant (3 August 1829 – 23 December 1888), a Member of Parliament, was a South African-born British author, traveller, diplomat, British intelligence agent, Christian mystic, and Christian Zionist. His best known book in his lifetime was a satirical novel, Piccadilly (1870). More heed has gone since to his plan for Jewish farming communities in the Holy Land, The Land of Gilead. Oliphant was a UK Member of Parliament for Stirling Burghs.
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Early life
Laurence Oliphant was born in Cape Town, Cape Colony, the only child of Sir Anthony Oliphant (1793–1859), a member of the Scottish landed gentry, and his wife Maria. At the time of his son's birth Sir Anthony was Attorney General of the Cape Colony, but he was soon appointed Chief Justice in Ceylon. Laurence spent his early childhood in Colombo, where his father purchased a home called Alcove in Captains Gardens, subsequently known as Maha Nuge Gardens. Sir Anthony and his son have been credited with bringing tea to Ceylon and growing 30 tea plants brought over from China on the Oliphant Estate in Nuwara Eliya. In 1848 and 1849, he and his parents toured Europe. In 1851, he accompanied Jung Bahadur from Colombo to Nepal, which provided the material for his first book, A Journey to Katmandu (1852).
Oliphant returned to Ceylon and from there went to England to study law. Oliphant left his legal studies to travel in Russia. The outcome of that tour was his book The Russian Shores of the Black Sea (1853).
Oliphant's parents were Christian Zionists.
Diplomatic and utopian pursuits
Between 1853 and 1861 Oliphant was secretary to Lord Elgin during the negotiation of the Canada Reciprocity Treaty in Washington, and companion to the Duke of Newcastle on a visit to the Circassian coast during the Crimean War.
In 1861, Oliphant was appointed First Secretary of the British Legation in Japan under Minister Plenipotentiary (later Sir) Rutherford Alcock. He arrived in Edo at the end of June, but on the evening of 5 July, a night-time attack was made on the legation by xenophobic ronin. His pistols having been locked in their travelling box, Oliphant rushed out with a hunting whip, and was attacked by a ronin with a heavy two-handed sword. A beam, invisible in the darkness, interfered with the blows, but Oliphant was severely wounded and sent on board ship to recover. He had to return to England after a visit to Tsushima Island, where he discovered a Russian force occupying a secluded bay and obtained its withdrawal. The attack on the legation left him with permanent damage to one of his hands.
He was sent to Poland in 1863 as a British observer to report on the January Uprising.
At the end of 1863, Oliphant was a guest of Christian August, Duke of Augustenburg at his castle in Primkenau, Lower Silesia, when news arrived of the death of King Frederick VII of Denmark. Anticipating political tensions, Oliphant then went to Schleswig, where he witnessed the outbreak of the Second Schleswig War and the Battle of Mysunde on February 2, 1864.
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, 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.
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.
In December 1885, Alice became ill and died on 2 January 1886. Oliphant, also stricken, was too weak to attend her funeral. 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.
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 Israeli National Maritime Museum. Paintings by Alice's sister, Jamesina Waller made during her visit to the Holy Land were also on display. The Jerusalem Post's art critic, Angela Levine, deemed Lady Alice's watercolours, "charming but amateurish."
In 2003, Ticho House in Jerusalem mounted an exhibit of the Holy Land paintings of Alice Oliphant and her sister Jesamine Waller.
Books
A Journey to Kathmandu (the Capital of Napaul), with The Camp of Jung Bahadoor; including A Sketch of the Nepaulese Ambassador at Home (1852) is a travelogue written in 1852. The book describes the cultural condition of Nepal, however the book is not considered of scientific value. Oliphant then a 21-year-old son of colonial of Colombo joined the team of Jang Bahadur Rana who was returning to Nepal from England with his two younger brothers, Jagat Shamsher and Dhir Shamsher. The team had a stop at Ceylon in December 1850 from where Oliphant accompanied. The book is under public domain since 6 Jul 2005.
The Russian Shores of the Black Sea in the Autumn of 1852, with a Voyage Down the Volga, and a Tour Through the Country of the Don Cossacks (1853) with a fourth 'enlarged' edition in 1854
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]). Illustrated with watercolors by Lady Alice Oliphant.
Masollam: A Problem of the Period (1886)
Scientific Religion: Or, Higher Possibilities of Life and Practice Through the Operation of Natural Forces (1887)
Episodes in a Life of Adventure: Or, Moss from a rolling Stone (1888)