Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Wallace, Donald Mackenzie
WALLACE, Sir DONALD MACKENZIE (1841–1919), newspaper correspondent, editor, and author, the son of Robert Wallace, of Boghead, Dumbartonshire, by his wife, Sarah, daughter of Donald Mackenzie, was born 11 November 1841. He lost both his parents before he was ten years old, and about the age of fifteen, having a sufficiency of private means, he conceived, in his own words, ‘a passionate love of study, and determined to devote my life to it’. Accordingly, he spent all the years of his early manhood, until he was twenty-eight, in continuous study at various universities; about half the time at Glasgow and Edinburgh, where he was occupied mainly with metaphysics and ethics; the remainder at the École de Droit, Paris, and at the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, where he applied himself particularly to Roman law and modern jurisprudence, taking the degree of doctor of laws at Heidelberg in 1867. During the vacations he travelled extensively over the continent of Europe, acquiring fluency in its principal languages.
While he was engaged in qualifying himself in Germany for a professorship of comparative law, Wallace accepted a private invitation to visit Russia, as he had a strong desire to study the Ossetes, a peculiar Aryan tribe in the Caucasus, with exceptionally primitive institutions. He remained in Russia nearly six years, from early in 1870 till late in 1875, studying, not the Ossetes, but the Russians themselves, whom he found much better worth attention. He familiarized himself thoroughly with the life of the people, not merely visiting the great towns and the show places, but settling for a considerable period in a remote country village; and in 1876 he came back to England with the material which he utilized in his famous work on Russia, published in two volumes in the beginning of 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War. The book had a great and instant success, went through several editions, and was translated into many languages, the French translation being ‘crowned’ by the Academy. It was twice revised by its author, in 1905 and in 1912, and remains the standard authority on Russia before the revolution of 1917.
Wallace now entered active life as a foreign correspondent of The Times, which he represented at St. Petersburg in 1877–1878; at the Berlin Congress in June and July 1878, where he assisted M. de Blowitz, the famous Paris correspondent of The Times; and afterwards for six years at Constantinople (1878–1884). From that point of vantage he was able to investigate the Balkan peoples and their problems; and thence he went on behalf of The Times, after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir (September 1882), on a special mission to Egypt, the outcome being his book, Egypt and the Egyptian Question (1883). In 1884 the Earl of Dufferin, who, as British ambassador at Constantinople, had learnt to appreciate Wallace's unusual attainments, tact, and discretion, took him to India as his private secretary during his viceroyalty, and testified at its close in 1888 to the ‘incomparable’ nature of his assistance, which was rewarded by the K.C.I.E. in 1887. After a further period of travel in the Near and Middle East, Wallace was selected to accompany, as political officer, the Tsarewitch, afterwards the ill-fated Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, in his Indian tour during the winter of 1890–1891. Then he returned to the service of The Times, as director of its foreign department, a new post, in which for eight years his powers of organization, calm judgement, and encyclopaedic knowledge found congenial scope. That knowledge was utilized in 1899 in another direction, when The Times took over the Encyclopaedia Britannica and prevailed on Wallace, with Mr. Hugh Chisholm as colleague, to edit the extra volumes of the tenth edition needed to bring the work up to date. In 1901 he accompanied, as assistant private secretary, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (afterwards King George V and Queen Mary) in their tour of the British Dominions—a tour which he commemorated in a book, The Web of Empire (1902). In 1905 he acted once more as a correspondent of The Times, attending the conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, U.S.A., which produced peace between Russia and Japan.
For the last decade and a half of his life Wallace reverted to his youthful ideal, and devoted himself to persistent study, varied by occasional travel; but he published nothing further. In spite of being essentially a student he had a genius for social intercourse, and possessed friends in all European and several non-European countries, and in many walks of life—savants, artists, journalists, travellers, diplomatists, statesmen, social magnates, great ladies, courtiers, and, to a remarkable degree, royal personages. He never married and died at Lymington, Hampshire, 10 January 1919.
[The Times, 11 January 1919; private information; personal knowledge.]