by M. M. Kaye
Hurrying back to Tetworth, Tacklow hopefully showed it to his parents and grandparents. But it failed to make the smallest impression. The chances are, of course, that none of them had ever even heard of Henry Irving (‘An actor-fellow, for heaven’s sake! What next?’). In any case, young Cecil was destined for service in India where the family links were strong, three of his father’s first cousins having served in the East India Company; Charles Kaye in the Madras Civil Service and the other two, Sir John, the historian, as political secretary, India Office, and his brother Edward as a General in the Bengal Artillery. Then there was John’s son Ernest, who was in the Bengal Police, and … but why go on? The list is a long one. In any case it was the duty of the eldest son to follow his father into the ICS* and since my grandfather’s views on the matter were fully endorsed by his formidable wife Jane — who was a Beckett and a tough character if ever there was one — there was nothing more to be said. One did not argue with Victorian parents. Tacklow abandoned the unequal struggle.
The elder of his two younger brothers, my Uncle Elliot, was graciously permitted to choose which service he would enter. Provided, of course, that it was an Indian one. Whereupon, apparently with the object of irritating his papa and mama rather than from any love of playing trains, he chose the Indian Railways, and, when forced to abandon this deliberate tease, stuck out for joining the Police. And did so. The youngest brother, Alec, a born black sheep if ever there was one, flouted tradition and refused to have anything whatever to do with India, or the forces of law and order either, and, metaphorically speaking, ran away to sea. In point of fact he set sail, steerage, for Canada, and was written off as a dead loss. Letters occasionally turned up from him, but only at long intervals. He seems to have worked for a time as a logger and then as a trapper (furs, one presumes?) and later, inevitably, taken part in the great California Gold Rush. He ended up as a mining engineer; at which he would appear to have been reasonably successful, for he acquired a house on Vancouver Island and a wife.
I don’t know what happened to the house, but the wife was not a success. She seems to have been a confirmed hypochondriac who enjoyed ill-health to the hilt, and the last piece of information I ever heard on the subject of this unknown, shadowy, black-sheep uncle was a tale that when the wife of his bosom took to her bed he took over the cooking and the housework, and one day, while busy preparing the midday meal, he was interrupted by the appearance of the afflicted lady in the kitchen, announcing that she was about to die. To which my uncle replied firmly: ‘Well you can’t die here! I’m busy.’ History does not relate what happened after that. Presumably she went back to bed while Alec finished basting the joint and making an apple pie. There were no children.
In addition to his brothers Elliot and Alec, Tacklow had a couple of sisters. One older and one younger than himself: my aunts Molly and Nan. I never met Nan, who died in India before I was born. And I regret this because according to Tacklow she was a darling and everybody loved her. When she came out to India to join her parents she was instantly besieged by suitors, and I remember him telling me that a snobbish acquaintance of his, who had been strongly critical of parents who brought pretty daughters out to India, declared that for his part he would never allow any sister of his to come out; why, the girl could easily marry a nobody — ‘some dreadful fellow in the Railways’! To which Tacklow replied amiably that his sister Nan had done exactly that: married a ‘fellow in the Railways’. The fellow in question was John Polwhele of Polwhele, whose name and manor are listed in Domesday Book. Sadly, there will be no more Polwheles of Polwhele, for her grandson, my cousin Reggie’s only son, died in a road accident; so now the ancient manor-house in Cornwall, with its minstrels’ gallery and its windows that had watched for the Armada, ‘and a ghost on the stairs’, has been sold to strangers.
Nan’s older sister, Aunt Molly, had already done her duty as a well-brought-up daughter by marrying Richard Ebb Hamblin of the Bengal Civil Service, and in 1886 she presented her parents with their first grandchild, a daughter. Her second child, another girl, born just over a year later, lived for less than eight weeks; to be followed by a third who did not even live as long as that. The wives of the British who served India paid a heavier price for that privilege than their critics realize. A fourth daughter, like the first, survived into old age, and my cousin Dick, the younger of their two brothers, died only very recently. The elder was killed in the First World War at the age of twenty-two.
Now that I am in my own ‘sere and yellow leaf’ and have learned a little more about life and what it can do to people, I realize that there was a lot to be said for Aunt Molly, and that much should be forgiven someone who in her early twenties had to endure the loss of two successive babies, and, in middle age, the death in action of a beloved son. But as I only learned all that after she herself was dead, I made no allowance for her. And I still regard her as a major battle-axe who, given half a chance, could have cut Napoleon down to size in two minutes flat and put the fear of God and Britannia into Ghengiz Khan and Attila the Hun. She also possessed an impressive moustache and no patience with children, and I disliked her so much that in later years I changed the spelling of my name from Molly to Mollie as a breakaway gesture: a small private form of UDI. Tacklow was scared to death of her, and when his father died he made no attempt to lay claim to any of the family possessions which should by rights have been handed down to the eldest son, but which she calmly appropriated. He did not even squeak when, without consulting him, she gave away the delightful portrait of Joseph Kaye (which now hangs in the Court Room of the Bank of England) solely because it turned out to be too large to fit into her new house! He was a quiet man, my father; one who disliked loud voices and any form of family discord.
Tacklow had been a house-prefect for two terms when he left Winchester in 1886 with the dutiful intention of following in his father’s footsteps and entering the Indian Civil Service.
In those days it was customary for young men wishing to join the ICS and become what Anglo-India referred to, acidly, as ‘the Heaven-Born’, to attend a London crammers. In other words an establishment devoted to cramming young hopefuls with the brand of knowledge they would require in order to pass the rigorous examination for the Indian Civil Service. There were similar crammers who did the same service for would-be candidates for the Army; a task that schools of that period did not undertake — a rare exception being Kipling’s school at Westward Ho!, Devon, which specialized in Army classes for the entrance examination into the Royal Military Academies of Sandhurst and Woolwich.
To a young man recently freed from the restricted life of a public school, Victorian London was a revelation: a glittering, gas-lit city full of theatres, music-halls and bars, and pretty ladies and their beaux — those bewhiskered ‘swells’, ‘mashers’ and ‘stage-door johnnies’ who drove around London in hansom cabs or open landaus, and could be seen of a morning riding in Rotten Row. Young Caecilius Kaye, up in the big City to acquire knowledge of a strictly academic kind, turned his back on cramming and spent his time instead in riotous living. It was probably the only time in his life that he really let go and in company with several like-minded friends enjoyed himself in a thoroughy uninhibited manner.
Together they worshipped at the shrine of such glittering stars as Nellie Farren, darling of the music-halls, and laughed and applauded that famous singer of comic songs, Corney Grayne. Brought up as a member of the Church of England with overtones of the Kirk of Scotland (a relic of those holidays spent at Riccaton?), he shocked his sternly Anglican landlady by attending service three Sundays out of every month at Westminster Cathedral in order to hear Santley sing — that well-known song-bird used to sing the solos — while on the fourth Sunday he would go to Brompton Oratory* in order to gaze at Mary Anderson, a stunningly beautiful American actress whose photograph, hand-painted on picture-postcards, sold by the thousand, and with whom every male in London, including my impressionable parent, was in love.
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bsp; When his crammers closed for the holidays he went ‘on the hummel’ in Germany, enjoying walking tours in the Black Forest, downing steins of beer in ancient taverns, singing glees with students at Heidelberg and learning to speak German like a native. Once he and a friend were arrested and only just escaped being thrown into jail because the friend was accompanied by his dog, a dachshund named Bismarck (no quarantine laws in those days!). The local Polizei, who appear to have lacked a sense of humour, took exception to the name on the grounds that it was an insult to the Great Man. However, their fury changed to smiles when Tacklow explained that since it was well known that ‘the mad English’ doted on dogs, the name bestowed on this particular one had naturally been most carefully chosen, and far from being an insult was the highest of compliments.
On another and much later occasion, long after the crammer days were over, he and an Army friend were on a walking tour and had stopped for a beer and a bite at an inn in Heidelberg which was patronized by one of that famous University’s military clubs. They were placidly drinking beer when a young man entered and every other man in the place, with the exception of the two Englanders, sprang to his feet, clicked his heels together and bowed. The newcomer glared at the two, and marching over to their table inquired haughtily why they had remained seated instead of acknowledging the entry of a Captain? Tacklow rose courteously and explained that they happened to be strangers: Englishmen on a walking tour who were ignorant of local etiquette; adding that, incidentally, his companion happened to be a Major. The Captain bowed deeply, and turning to face the crowded room said: ‘Gentlemen! this gentleman is a Major.’ Whereupon the entire company leapt to their feet as before, clicked their heels together and bowed smartly to the Major before resuming their seats and getting on with the drinking. Tacklow said that he found the incident curiously disturbing and was not surprised when, just over a decade later, the First World War broke out. He had expected something of the sort to take off a good deal sooner.
Those earlier walking-tour holidays, together with the term-time frivolity in London in the bright morning of his life, were a part of his past that he was always to look back on with deep affection. And his description of that time was so vivid that I sometimes feel that I too knew and lived in Victorian London in the days before that magnificent weapon of destruction and din, the motor-car, was invented. In Caecilius’s city of hansom cabs and horse-drawn buses, of pea-soup fogs and crossing-sweepers, lamp-lighters and muffin men, Sherlock Holmes and Oscar Wilde … a London in which men wore ‘toppers’, ‘Derbys’ or cloth caps, and women’s skirts and petticoats brushed the pavements while their hats soared skywards from vast platters that sprouted ostrich feathers or piles of fruit, flowers and tulle — the whole edifice skewered to their hair with fearsome-looking hatpins.
London provided him with so much fun that he neglected his work: imagining, as too many intelligent people have done before him, that when examination time arrived he was clever enough to play it off the cuff. But Nemesis overtook him and disaster struck. His name did not appear on the ‘Pass’ list. C. Kaye had failed the ‘Indian Civil’. Well, as I have already mentioned, my grandfather was a Victorian parent. In other words, a martinet. He was also well aware that his eldest son could have passed that exam with ease and that there was no excuse for failure except idleness and riotous living.
Punishment was swift and, though possibly just, harsh in the extreme: both on Tacklow and the nation. He was not permitted to take the examination again. Since he had not cared enough to give his attention to passing it, he would enter the Army instead and see if he could make a career for himself in that! It was a horrifying prospect. And an unforgivable one, for if ever anyone was totally unfitted to be a soldier it was poor Tacklow.
There was no appeal. My deflated parent, fully aware that he had thrown away a career that would have suited him down to the ground, and had no excuses, said nothing. Because there was nothing to say. He returned sadly to London, this time to the Army crammers, and set to work. And it was not long before his new tutors realized that they had got hold of something really remarkable and backed him heavily for the Army Stakes in the betting book run by the various London-based crammers. Their entry romped home an easy first, leaving the remainder of the field far behind, and not only notching up higher marks than had ever been recorded before, but creating a record that can never be taken away from him: he was the first candidate to achieve five figures.
Not surprisingly, having made his point, Tacklow sat back and took little further interest in matters military. But his time at Sandhurst was not wasted, for it was during his final term there that the Government sent down a man from Army Intelligence (or whatever they called it in those days) to lecture the cadets of the Royal Military Academy on ciphers, with particular reference to the ‘Playfair’ which was at that time the only really safe one, since — and he explained why — it was insoluble. When the lecture ended, Tacklow’s room-mate went up to the speaker and asked to be given a message in Playfair because, he said diffidently, he — er — thought that perhaps he had seen a way in which it could be solved. The lecturer was not amused. Had he really been wasting his valuable time explaining to these so-and-so young pups why the Playfair was insoluble, only in order to have one of the damned puppies calmly claiming to see a way in which it could be broken? The puppy in question stuck valiantly to his guns, and eventually the lecturer gave way and handed over a message in Playfair.
Tacklow, who had no interest whatever in ciphers, was pressed into service as a sort of Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And though he did not understand what on earth the boy was driving at, he obligingly read off columns of numbers and/or letters in his free time for several days running, and was rewarded by his room-mate’s yell of triumph when the thing suddenly came out and the Playfair was successfully broken. He never heard the result of that breakthrough, or knew what became of the boy who made it. The Playfair continued, for years, to be regarded as insoluble, and Tacklow told me he suspected that the fact that this was untrue had been hushed up: the Intelligence boffins hoping that the enemy would just toss it into their waste-paper baskets in the belief that as it could not be cracked, why waste time over it? He was also certain that his one-time room-mate must have died young, for otherwise he could not have failed to make a name for himself.
* Owner, the then Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.
* Paying pupils were called ‘Commoners’, while those who had won scholarships were known as ‘Scholars’.
* Indian Civil Service.
* The Cathedral and the Oratory are both Roman Catholic places of worship.
Chapter 3
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Orwell, Animal Farm
Apart from the episode of the Playfair cipher, which was to have a profound effect on Tacklow’s future, only two other incidents of any special interest happened to him during his time at Sandhurst. I am not even certain that the first of these actually occurred at the Academy itself; it could have happened at a ball given at some private house during the holidays. But whether the setting was an end-of-term ball at Sandhurst or one in some stately home, Tacklow, much to his dismay, found himself put down to partner a young and very minor German ‘royal’ for one of the dances — probably because he could speak her language with great fluency.
She turned out to be a pretty young woman with a dazzling peaches-and-cream complexion, a slim, hour-glass figure, the bluest eyes he had ever seen and the golden hair that all proper Princesses should have. She was also very shy: almost as shy as he was! But in his own words, ‘a darling’. He was very taken with her. Her name was Princess May of Teck and he had every reason to remember her, for a year or two later she became engaged to young ‘Eddie’, Duke of Clarence, eldest son of the future Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. And when less than a month after that poor Eddie died of pneumonia (fortunately, it would seem, since he appears to have been a bad hat*), his grandmo
ther, Victoria, who had arranged the match because she thought that ‘dear May’ would make an admirable Queen of England — and how right she was! — set about re-engaging her to Eddie’s younger brother, George, with whom, according to the press, she had been in love all the time, though expediency and a strong-minded mother had forced her to accept the proposal of the late Duke of Clarence. The dutiful May accepted George and eventually became that much-loved and greatly admired character, Queen Mary, grandmother of Elizabeth II.
The second, and far more intriguing incident, was a curious and completely inexplicable affair that fascinates me to this day. The RMA* used to run a betting book on the Derby, and the cadet in charge of this operation asked Tacklow if he’d care to have a flutter? My parent, no betting man and totally uninterested in racing, hunting or horses in general, cast an eye down the list of runners and seeing no name that attracted his attention, declined. But that night he dreamt that he was at a race-meeting — something he never attended in his life.…
He was standing among a dense crowd of jostling, peering people who were all looking in one direction, and he could hear a thunder of approaching hoof-beats that grew louder and louder until, over the heads of the crowd, he caught a brief glimpse of jockey caps flashing past and heard a roar of cheering. The race was obviously over and a man standing near him tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘So-and-so’s won’, mentioning the winning horse by name. Tacklow turned about and saw the numbers going up on a board and, at that point, woke up. Since his memory worked entirely by sight (as, to a large extent, does mine) he remembered the number next morning though he had completely forgotten the name. However, he hunted up the cadet with the betting book and said he had decided to put his all on number 16, or whatever; his all being £10, which was a vast sum in the days when a farthing (a quarter of an old penny) could still buy a stick of candy. But as the animal who bore the number was an outsider and the odds against it winning were in the region of 100 to 1, the cadet regretfully declined to accept the bet on the grounds that should the impossible happen, there would not be enough money in the kitty to pay out that amount. So Tacklow agreed to a reduction of the odds from 100 to 20, and won a staggering £200.