[2] His grandfather John Vivian was the Liberal MP for Truro,[4] and owned Pencalenick House in St Clement, Cornwall;[2] Herbert recalled shooting his first rabbit there as a child.

Shortly after Vivian returned from Ireland he met the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party Charles Stewart Parnell and then the MP for East Mayo, John Dillon.

[31] In 1889, Vivian included this anecdote in an article, "The Reminiscences of a Short Life", which appeared in The Sun and implied that Wilde had a habit of passing off other people's witticisms as his own, especially Whistler's.

In 1886, Bertram Ashburnham founded the Order of the White Rose, which embraced causes such as Irish, Cornish, Scottish and Welsh independence, Spanish and Italian legitimism, and particularly Jacobitism.

Its members included Frederick Lee, Henry Jenner, Whistler, Robert Edward Francillon, Charles Augustus Howell, Stuart Richard Erskine and Vivian.

[76] Vivian's picture of Serbia was closely related to contemporary British concerns, namely the idea that a nation of property-owning small farmers was the best safeguard against the rise of socialist movements.

[77] As such, Serbia, which had been dominated by a yeoman farmer class ever since the estates of the pashas had broken up during the land reforms of the 1830s, was a nation that started to be the subject of much interest in Britain, of which Vivian's book was merely the best known example of.

[77] Vivian wrote with admiration that the rural areas of Serbia had been barely touched by modernisation, which led for the yeoman farmers to "steadily" vote for conservative politicians in successive elections.

[87] Of Vivian's several travel books, the best-known was Servia: The Poor Man's Paradise (1897), which was widely quoted in newspapers, including The New York Times,[88] the Morning Post[89] and Pearson's Weekly.

[91] In 1901, Vivian wrote with his wife Olive a book on European religious rituals, described in the Sheffield Independent as "well written, curious and readable, and marred only by a singularly fatuous surrender to any form of superstition however grovelling".

[92] That same he published Abyssinia: Through the Lion-Land to the Court of the Lion of Judah, recounting his visit to the Empire of Ethiopia, which had attracted worldwide attention after defeating Italy, being the first and only African nation to defend its independence during the Scramble for Africa.

Vivian noted that main form of communicating the news in Ethiopia was via the Azimâre, wandering minstrel singers whose songs convoyed information about current events and gossip.

[97] Vivian's "radical individualism" led him to take unusual positions for a reactionary journalist as he called for Home Rule for not only Ireland, but for Wales, Scotland, England and Cornwall as well along with a devolution of power from Westminster to the county governments.

[98] Vivian was vehemently opposed to the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, which inspired him to write: "Now that we have failed to hold our own between all the majesty of our empire and a handful of Dutch famers, we suddenly throw our traditions, we put our pride into our pockets, and we solict the support of not a great, honorable country, but a pack of gibbering Simians".

"[101] It was reviewed less positively in the London Daily News: "Mr. Herbert Vivian's new book... presents many interesting chapters on the events leading up to the recent tragedy, but can hardly be looked upon as an authoritative history.

[104] Vivian was less sympathetic towards the komitadji, which he portrayed as a perversion of the "noble" bandits who engaged in cold-blooded violence in order to achieve the territorial ambitions of their respective paymasters in Athens, Sofia and Belgrade.

Vivian who was a partisan of the House of Obrenović supported the Austrian empire, writing that "if I were the foreign minister [of Austria], I would counsel an occupation of Servia by the powers, perhaps even a partition.

I honestly gave Mr. Vivian the best advice I could in his own interest in a letter obviously not intended for publication; and if he had acted quietly upon it, instead of sending it off to the papers... he might still have a chance at a seat in the next Parliament....

I shall not pretend to be sorry that I have helped Mr. Bowerman, the accredited Labour candidate, to disable an opponent who, if he had played his cards skilfully, might have proved very dangerous... Yours, G. Bernard Shaw[114]Vivian continued his keen interest in the Balkan states.

[122] In 1927, he wrote Secret Societies Old and New, which received mixed reviews, The Spectator calling it "well-written and extremely readable",[123] but Albert Mackey noting, "The author does not possess sufficient knowledge for his task.

He began to campaign there at the end of 1903 and spoke at a free trade meeting in December, reading letters of support he had received from Winston Churchill[138] and John Dickson-Poynder, MP for Chippenham.

[151]In May 1929, Vivian and Hugh George de Willmott Newman founded the Royalist International, a group with a stated aim of opposing the spread of Bolshevism and restoring the Russian monarchy, but with a clear pro-fascist agenda.

[154] In 1933, Vivian wrote: Monarchy...[is] a more satisfactory form of government than the insidious poisons of a plutocracy [and] the distorted democracy of Parliaments... the world's galloping consumption will not be arrested until... Kings forget their ancient animosities to unite in a Royalist International uncontaminated and unhampered by the lying, cowardly, malignant Spirit of the Age.

[157] It received a scathing review in the Nottingham Journal: "A facile writer of travel guides... Herbert Vivian must be read as an amusement of a rather grim sort than as an education....

Mussolini is to him a "saviour", who "restored order and glory and pride, cured his country in her calenture, create an imperial future with traditions of ancient Rome"... Inasmuch as it is a mouthpiece for crude propaganda, Mr. Vivian's book is regrettable.

[160] Vivian called Mussolini Europe's savior in Fascist Italy and complained that "Britain has scarcely produced a statesman since King James II was driven from her shores".

[160] Murray wrote that Vivian had been consistently opposed to democracy ever since he started his eccentric crusade to restore the House of Stuart to the British throne in the 1880s, and that Vivan's embrace of fascism was not an aberration, but the logical culmination of his political thought.

"[174] In 2013, Servia: The Poor Man's Paradise was described by Radmila Pejic as "a major contribution to British travel writing about Serbia with its in-depth analysis and rather objective portrayal of the country's political system, religious practices and economic situation.

"[175] Although Vivian's Neo-Jacobite views are now largely forgotten, his 1893 wreath-laying earned him the epithet "political maverick" from Smith, who summed up the impact of the event: "The affair enjoyed publicity out of all proportion to the latter-day significance of the Jacobite cause, which had long been effectively extinct, but as one man's crusade against an aspect of state bureaucracy, it acquired contemporary meaning.

[183][184] Herbert and Olive were well known on the London social scene in the years just after the First World War and appear in Anthony Powell's memoir Infants of the Spring throwing a lavish luncheon in honour of Aleister Crowley.