General ‘Boy': The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning

by Richard Mead

The descent from these early Brunings is highly questionable and the various family trees are inconsistent and contradictory, but there is common ground with Sir John Bruning or Browning, born in 1335 in Leigh, Gloucestershire, who married Alice, the daughter and heiress of Sir John and Lady Maltravers of Melbury Sampford in Dorset. In the church at Melbury Sampford can still be seen two alabaster effigies of family members. His son, also Sir John, married the daughter of Sir Thomas FitzNicholl, a kinsman of the Hardings of Berkeley Castle. Through this connection he obtained the manor of Coaley in Gloucestershire, where the family residence was Garter Court, long since demolished. It is from this branch that the poet, Robert Browning, was descended. The link to the family with which we are concerned is more tenuous but, from the evidence available, Thomas Browning, who was born in about 1630 and died in 1700, was a cadet member of the Coaley Brownings.

  With the descent from Thomas one is on genealogically firm ground. He was a mercer whose wife, Elizabeth, came from Burton Latimer in Northamptonshire, where they both settled. His grandson William moved with his family to the London area, possibly following his uncle, Thomas’s fourth son, who had settled in Bermondsey and became in due course the High Sheriff of Surrey. The family remained in the London area and appear to have been solidly middle-class, but of relatively modest means. However, Thomas’s great-great grandson, Henry, born in 1796, married well, his wife Anne Bainbridge being a woman of some wealth, and he was able to buy a house in Grosvenor Street, even then in a fashionable area of London.

  Henry sent his second son Montague Charles, who was born in 1837, to school at Eton, from where he joined the Army, the first of this branch of the family to enter either of the two services. Montague Charles served in the 87th and 89th Regiments of Foot, seeing action as a young officer in both the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny and rising in due course to the rank of Captain. In 1862 he married Fanny Hogg, the daughter of the rector of Fornham St Martin, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and later purchased Brantham Court, near Manningtree in the same county. His financial circumstances bolstered by being a residuary co-legatee of his childless Uncle Thomas, he was recognised as a man of some substance locally, becoming a Justice of the Peace, a colonel in the West Suffolk Militia and a Companion of the Bath.

  Montague Charles’s eldest son, Montague Edward, born in 1863, became the most distinguished of the line thus far. He entered the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1876 and was made midshipman in the Royal Navy two years later, establishing himself as a gunnery expert before promotion to commander in 1897 and captain in 1902. He attained flag rank in 1911 and subsequently commanded the 3rd Cruiser Squadron in the Grand Fleet in 1915. In 1916 he was appointed Commander-in Chief of the North American and West Indies station, returning to the Grand Fleet as commander of the 4th Battle Squadron in 1918. Following the end of the Great War he was appointed head of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission and was rigorous in his insistence on adherence to the terms of the Armistice.1 A spell at the Admiralty as Second Sea Lord was followed by three years as Commander-in-Chief at Devonport. In 1925 he became the First and Principal Naval Aide-de-Camp to King George V and, following his retirement in 1926, was appointed Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom in 1929 and Vice-Admiral of the United Kingdom in 1939, from which role he only retired in 1945.2

  Admiral Sir Montague Browning GCB, GCVO, GCMG was clearly an exceptional officer and, by all accounts, a popular one. Called Monty by his family and personal friends, he was known throughout the Navy as ‘Hooky’, having lost his left hand through an accident early in his career and had it replaced with a hook. In 1930 he applied for a grant of arms for use by himself and all descendants of his father. The arms granted were ‘Argent three bars wavy Azure on the quarter of the first a Cross Gules’, a direct allusion to those of the Brownings of Coaley ‘Azure three bars wavy Argent’, in spite of his inability at the time to demonstrate conclusively his descent from the Gloucestershire family.3 As a crest, he took a pair of silver wings emerging from a gold naval crown. The wings had also been included in the arms of the Brownings of Coaley and apparently alluded to the helmet adornments of their Frisian ancestors.

  Montague Charles and Fanny had four other children. The second son, Arthur, born in 1864, joined the Army as an officer in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, but died at the age of 29. The only daughter, Helen, born in 1865, had a serious accident whilst playing leapfrog with her brothers as a child: she fell very badly, injuring her spine and, although she could walk with some difficulty, she spent much of her time in a wheelchair. The third son, Berthold, born in 1867 and known to family and friends as Bertie, obtained a MA at Christ Church, Oxford and then followed his maternal grandfather and a number of other Hogg relatives into the Church of England. In due course he became rector of Pakenham, two villages away from Fornham St Martin.

  Frederick Henry, the youngest child, was born in Pakenham on 1 August 1870. Unlike his father, Freddie was sent to school at Wellington College, possibly with a career in the Army in mind, as the school had a reputation in that direction. It is likely that his mother influenced the decision: Fanny’s brother had been at Eton and was unhappy there. Freddie did well at Wellington, both in the classroom and on the playing field – indeed he proved himself to be an excellent sportsman, representing the school in the cricket first XI in both 1887 and 1888 and in the rugger first XV in 1888. The sport at which he excelled, however, was rackets, in which he was in the school first pair for three years. When he went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1889, Freddie continued playing rackets at the highest level, gaining his half-blue in the match against Cambridge in 1890. He subsequently went on to win the Amateur Doubles Championship twice, in 1893 and 1895. With a powerful forehand from his preferred position on the right hand side of the court, he was considered by many to be the best amateur of his generation, in a game dominated by amateurs.

  Freddie proved to be a good cricketer at Oxford as well and, although he failed to win university honours in the sport, he played for his college in 1890 and 1891. He never rose to the same heights as in rackets, but he continued to participate as a serious amateur, playing for the MCC until his late thirties and going on tour with the club’s team to America in 1909. He was elected to the MCC committee in 1920 and, prior to the Great War, also became a committee member of both the two great ‘nomadic’ amateur cricket clubs, I Zingari and the Free Foresters.

  When Freddie came down from Oxford, having decided not to take his degree, he did not follow his two brothers who had joined the services or the one who had taken holy orders, but chose rather to go into the wine trade. A short time later he joined the family firm of Twiss & Brownings, whose main business was the importation of Hennessy brandy, having acquired the sole agency in 1840. The partners were his father, two of his uncles and two of his cousins, most of whom did not actually work in the business. Freddie, who became the senior partner of Twiss & Brownings in 1905, formed a close friendship with the Hennessy family, which was continued by subsequent generations.

  The wine trade suited Freddie’s character well. Sir Samuel Hoare, writing of him in The Times after his death, said ‘Friendship was the very essence of his life. No trouble that he would not take for a friend, no sacrifice that he would not make. You just had to ask him for his help and advice and it was yours in all its value and profusion.’ Another unnamed correspondent described his character: ‘Gay, witty, with an acute sense of humour, “la joie de vivre” was in his blood and he made everyone round feel as he did. Shrewd and gifted with great common sense, he was above all things human, and though gay and debonair he sympathised with the troubles of others as if they were his very own.’ There may be some hyperbole in such sentiments, but Freddie was clearly both genuinely popular with and much valued by his friends.

  One such friend was Rupert, the son of Richard D’Oyly Carte, who had brought together W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan to create the Savoy Operas. Richard had also built the Savoy Hotel, which was op
ened in 1889, and in 1903, two years after his father’s death, Rupert became chairman of the hotel company. Freddie was invited to join the board and in due course also the boards of the sister companies owning and managing the Berkeley and Claridges hotels. He used to lunch or dine regularly at the Savoy, where he was able to entertain his wide circle of friends.

  Notwithstanding his very recent start in business and his busy social and sporting life, Freddie also found time to get married, on 1 March 1894 at St Mary Abbots, Kensington, to Anne Alt. Always known as Nancy, his bride was the daughter of Colonel William Alt and his wife Elisabeth. Elisabeth’s father, George Earl, was a scientist, author, ethnologist, traveller and linguist of some distinction. In 1830, at the age of fifteen, he sailed for Australia, where he interested himself in the affairs of the aboriginal peoples. He accompanied Darwin in the Beagle, acting as an interpreter of the various native languages in which he had become proficient, and was a friend of Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. His travel books were best sellers of their day. He eventually became Assistant Resident Councillor and Police Magistrate of the Straits Settlements, where he died in 1865.

  William Alt’s own background was as interesting as that of his father-in-law. Born in 1840, his father died when he was very young, leaving his mother nearly penniless, so he entered the merchant navy at the age of twelve, transferring to the China Customs Service seven years later. He left China for Nagasaki almost immediately, when that port was opened for the first time to foreigners other than the Chinese and the Dutch, registering with the British consulate as a general commission agent. In his first decade there he amassed a considerable fortune, which allowed him to build a 60-foot yacht named Phantom for his personal use and to build a very substantial house on the southern slopes of a mountain overlooking the city.4 William became a prominent figure in the local community, being elected in 1861 as one of the initial committee of the Chamber of Commerce and in 1862 to the newly formed Municipal Council.

  On his way back to England on business in 1863, William met and fell in love with Elisabeth Earl in Province Wellesley, where her father was the Magistrate. On his return he accompanied Elisabeth and her parents to Australia and they were married in Adelaide. They returned to Nagasaki, before moving on to Osaka, when that city too was opened to foreign trade in 1868 and then to Yokohama eighteen months later. In 1871, William’s poor health required him to return to England permanently and he and his wife settled first in Surrey and then in Kensington, at the same time acquiring a villa at Rapallo in Italy, where they used to spend the winter. He became an officer in the 22nd Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps, usually called The Rangers, becoming in due course its Colonel and receiving the Volunteer Officers’ Decoration. Appointed a Companion of the Bath for his contribution to British interests in Japan, he donated much of his fine collection of Japanese art to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  Nancy was the fifth child and fourth daughter of William and Elisabeth Alt. She was born in 1872 after the couple’s return to England and was followed by two more sisters and another brother. She was by all accounts a charming young woman at the time of her meeting with Freddie Browning, when she was twenty-two and he was twenty-three, and Freddie’s parents were delighted with her. As far as the marriage was concerned, it was certainly happy enough initially, though Nancy had to fit in with Freddie, whose sporting and social activities remained very important to him.

  The couple bought the lease of a house at 31 Hans Road, just off Brompton Road, and lost no time in starting a family. Helen Grace Browning, always called by her second name, was born at the family home on 7 March 1895 and Frederick Arthur Montague Browning on 20 December 1896.

  Chapter 2

  Tommy (1896–1914)

  Although he was christened after his father and two of his uncles, virtually nobody ever called the young Browning by any of his given names, except the first on formal occasions. To the family and to close family friends, he was always Tommy. This was apparently the name of a toy monkey to which he became much attached as a baby and which he may well have resembled. Whatever the case, the name stuck to him.

  In later life Tommy used to say that he was born in the piano department of Harrods, the side of Hans Road on which the family house stood having by then been torn down to make room for the expansion of the department store. Number 31 was to be his home for much of his childhood, although Freddie and Nancy subsequently moved to 44 Lowndes Street, a few hundred yards away.

  A member of a very large family herself, Nancy would have loved to have had more children. Freddie, on the other hand, considered that he had done his bit and that to enlarge the family would require him to sacrifice some of his other activities, notably the sporting ones, which he was not prepared to do. Conjugal relations therefore came to an end after Tommy was born and Nancy turned increasingly to religion. In this she was doubtless encouraged by the numerous clerics on the Browning side and particularly by her parents-in-law, who were both devout Christians. The strong faith of his mother and his paternal grandparents did have an impact on Tommy himself. He became a regular churchgoer from childhood onwards and, whilst he never wore his religion on his sleeve, he regarded it as a central tenet of his life and conducted himself according to a moral code which was very much based on Christian ethics.

  One other aspect of Tommy’s childhood would return throughout his life and it concerned his health. From time to time, generally when he was overtired, he would be afflicted by severe stomach pains, which when he was young could only be relieved by his mother gently rubbing the spot. Known in the family as ‘Tommy’s tum’ and to himself as ‘me tum’, this ailment was never satisfactorily diagnosed. It could be brought on by strenuous unaccustomed exercise, but was possibly more nervous in its origin. Over time he learnt how to control it, but when it struck it was generally quite debilitating and would effectively put him out of action for anything between a few hours and some days. His cousin, Hubert Browning, who witnessed an attack whilst staying with their mutual grandparents when Tommy was in his early teens, certainly felt that it was as much psychological as physical, but saw that he was in quite considerable pain. It was a harbinger of health problems which would plague him all his life and even have an impact on his career.

  This apart, Tommy had a happy childhood. He adored his mother, whom he always called ‘Mumbo’, and had a good relationship with his father. Freddie was unquestionably a loving parent to both his children, writing the most affectionate letters whenever they were away, but he never allowed them to interfere with his many activities. Partly as a result of this, as Tommy and Grace grew older, they spent more and more time away from London, usually with their two sets of grandparents. The senior Brownings still lived at Brantham Court when the children were young, but moved later to Bramfield House, Hertford. Tommy’s aunt, Helen Browning, who was mostly confined to a wheelchair, lived with them and Tommy became extremely fond of her as well.

  Perhaps more surprisingly, once they had reached the ages of about five and six, Tommy and Grace spent time with their Alt grandparents at Rapallo on the Ligurian coast and, on at least one visit, the two of them were there for nearly nine months. By this time William Alt liked to spend the autumn, winter and spring in Italy, as the mild climate helped to alleviate his bronchitis and the children would go out by boat with their nanny to join him and Elisabeth. The Alts also had a house in Airlie Gardens, between Holland Park and Church Street, Kensington, which was supposedly high enough to avoid the fogs and smogs that plagued London at this time and which affected William’s chest so badly. In November 1908, on the one occasion when William either decided not to go to Rapallo or planned to go later than usual, he contracted pneumonia and died at the relatively young age of sixty-eight. The villa was sold soon afterwards, but Elisabeth continued to live in London with her two unmarried daughters until she herself died in 1923.

  As Tommy grew older it became clear that he was developing an assertive character, indeed he became incre
asingly boisterous and at times disruptive, to an extent that his mother, the normally gentle ‘Mumbo’, often lost her temper with him. Notwithstanding the fact that she was some twenty-one months older, he tended to dominate his sister Grace, who was inherently rather lazy and would have preferred to stick to her books, but was invariably co-opted into his games in a subservient role. If she declined to participate he would pull her hair until she begged for mercy. He also delighted in breaking all the glass in the greenhouses and, on occasion, throwing stones at the gardeners. Freddie decided that the only course of action was be to send him to boarding school as early as possible and in September 1905, three months before his ninth birthday, he was despatched to West Downs School, Winchester.

  Exactly why Freddie chose West Downs for his son is not recorded. It was at the time a relatively new school, having been founded in 1897. The founder and headmaster, Lionel Helbert, was a remarkable man. He had had a brilliant academic career at Winchester and at Oxford, where he was a contemporary of Freddie’s, and it is possible that they knew one another, although they were at different colleges. They might also have met in the years after coming down from university, as both had wide circles of friends, although Helbert was in a very different milieu as a Clerk to the House of Commons. He had, however, long been attracted to schoolmastering and decided to start his own prep school. With his sister, Lady Goodrich, he found some defunct school buildings on the hill leading west out of Winchester, refurbished them and opened West Downs with just three pupils.

  By the time Tommy arrived the number had been built up, very largely as a result of the connections Helbert had made from his time at the House of Commons, and was in the region of sixty-five. Helbert was in many ways years ahead of his time. He took a very personal interest in all the boys, not only from an academic but also from an extra-curricular perspective, and took the trouble to get to know their parents as well. On certain days, notably his own birthday and Trafalgar Day, he would take the whole school up on the South Downs for a picnic. His selfless interest in the boys was displayed on one occasion on behalf of Tommy. The boy contracted chickenpox just before the start of one Christmas holiday and Freddie refused to have him home. He spent the whole holiday in the school sanatorium, being ministered to by such of the staff as remained and by Helbert himself.