Whitehall: The Foreign Office in 1900

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Arthur H. Beavan takes a look at the Foreign Office in Imperial London, first published in 1901:

First in importance, now that, under Lord Salisbury, the Cabinet Councils were held there, was the Foreign Office, approached from Downing Street by an entrance sharp to the right of the fine inner court.

The great apartments - Cabinet Council room, conference rooms, reception rooms, etc - were all on the first floor, and were gained by a double staircase, handsome in itself, though not equal in grandeur to that at Stafford House or Dorchester House, yet, when decorated with palms and flowers for some such function as the Sovereign's birthday reception, sufficiently imposing.

Below the suite was the Library, an important institution of the Foreign Office, presided over by Mr. A. H. Oakes, where every book or pamphlet bearing upon Foreign Office affairs was to be found, and which accumulated so fast, that there would soon be no room to accommodate them.

Then there were suites of pleasantly situated rooms, devoted to interviews with Ambassadors, the Diplomatic Corps generally, and the hardly less important Consular section of the Foreign Office.

In the new private room of the Marquis of Salisbury some interesting historical portraits were placed. Among them were those of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Earl of Bath, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Clarendon, Mr. Spencer Perceval, etc.

This apartment contained a splendid piece of Chinese tapestry presented by a special Envoy Extraordinary a long time ago.

Other apartments were the sanctuaries of Chiefs of Departments, Heads of sub-divisions, and their staffs, etc, where was transacted a vast amount of real business, the routine work alone being very heavy, although the popular idea was that the Foreign Office was only a pleasant kind of well-paying club, whose members dropped in when they pleased, wrote a few letters, perused the papers, and, after luncheon, left for a stroll in the West-end.