# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fane, Julian Henry Charles

​FANE, JULIAN HENRY CHARLES (1827–1870), diplomatist and poet, fifth son of John Fane, eleventh earl of Westmorland [q. v.], born at Florence 2 or 10 Oct. 1827, was educated at Thames Ditton 1838–1841, when he went to Harrow for a short time. As a fellow-commoner he matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1847, and soon became a distinguished member of the society known as the Cambridge Apostles. In 1850 he obtained the chancellor's medal for English verse by his poem on ‘The Death of Adelaide, Queen Dowager,’ and in the following year he took his M.A. degree. At the age of seventeen he entered the diplomatic service as an unpaid attaché to his father's mission at Berlin. He was afterwards an attaché at Vienna from 1851 to 1853, and there commenced his study of German poetry. To the first number of the ‘Saturday Review,’ 3 Nov. 1855, p. 13, he contributed an interesting article entitled ‘Heinrich Heine, Poet and Humorist.’ He set many of Heine's verses to music, and sang many to the music of Hoven (i.e. Vesque Puttlingen), and he played Austrian national airs upon the zither. He possessed a brilliant wit, a keen sense of humour, and an unrivalled gracefulness of manner and expression. At the congress of Paris in 1856 he was attached to Lord Clarendon's special mission, and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of his greatest friend Edward Lytton, now the second earl of Lytton. After the peace he was appointed secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, and remained in Russia until 1858, writing and sending to his government able reports on the trade of that country. He was transferred to Vienna 1 April 1858, and to Paris in 1865 as first secretary acting chargé d'affaires. He remained at Paris until 1867, when he returned to London, and was protocolist to the conferences held there on the affairs of Luxembourg from 7 to 13 May. He returned to Paris to take charge of the embassy between the departure of Lord Cowley and the arrival of Lord Lyons, but ill-health forced him to resign his connection with the diplomatic service 7 June 1868. In 1852 he printed a volume of ‘Poems,’ which soon reached a second edition, and two years afterwards he brought out ‘Poems by Heinrich Heine, translated by Julian Fane.’ In 1861, under the pseudonym of ‘Neville Temple,’ he published, in conjunction with his friend Edward Lytton, who adopted the name of ‘Edward Trevor,’ a poem entitled ‘Tannhäuser, or the Battle of the Bards.’ On 29 Sept. 1866 he married Lady Adine Eliza Anne Cowper, third daughter of George, sixth earl Cowper. She was born at 1 Great Stanhope Street, London, 17 March 1843, and died at Wimbledon 20 Oct. 1868. Fane never recovered the shock of the premature death of his wife, and suffered from an affection of his throat, which not only prevented him from swallowing any liquid, but was accompanied by a gradual extinction of his voice for almost a year before his death. He died at 29 Portman Square, London, 19 April 1870.
[Lytton's Julian Fane, a Memoir (1871), with portrait; Jerningham's Reminiscences of an Attaché (1886), pp. 116–20; Times, 21 April 1870, p. 3; Illustrated London News, 30 April 1870, p. 466; Pall Mall Gazette, 20 April 1870, p. 3.]
G. C. B.