Pearls before Poppies

by Rachel Trethewey

  Lord Kitchener’s sister used the Pearl Necklace Appeal to commemorate this key event in the war while also marking a very personal grief. Capturing the private man behind the public figure, accompanying the rubies were three pearls, given ‘one for Ferby, one for little Marion and one from little Pet Evie’. This was one of the most unusual donations of the whole collection as it seems that it was made in the name of family pets. The whole Kitchener family were devoted to animals and Lord Kitchener adored dogs. Showing his sense of humour, he called his gun dogs Aim, Fire, Shot, Bang, Miss and Damn.7 As this donation suggests, relaxing with his family Lord Kitchener was very different from his tough image. After his death, his relatives were determined that the tender and affectionate man as well as the heroic figure should be remembered.

  In November 1916, his first cousin wrote to her son wanting to share ‘one of those little gleams of family affection which steals into the lives of even the greatest men’. In her letter she explained:

  You will read many histories of him and many biographies and they will all speak of his greatness but it will not be recorded, perhaps [because] it is known to few, how great too was this Kitchener of heart. It was in the rare glimpses of family life that his kindness could show itself.8

  She recalled how ‘Cousin Herbert’, as a young ‘stripling’ gave his treasured stamp collection to her invalid brother, Tom. As he grew older, his ‘grace, simplicity […] and his total absence of guile’ struck her. He often saw his cousin’s family when he was on leave and during these visits he filled her house with his ‘most delightful laugh’.9 When he returned to the army, he left his beloved dog ‘Bang’ with them and gave the family another one called ‘Bangle’.

  No one knew better than Millie Parker the softer, generous side of her brother’s personality. As Lord Kitchener never married or had children of his own, Millie’s family were particularly important to him. He was godfather to her second son and paid for her daughter Frances’ education at Cambridge. During the war, brother and sister had a ten-minute chat every fortnight. Early in the war, Kitchener told her that the Germans would take a great deal of beating and that the conflict would last three years, which was much longer than many people thought.10 In their conversations, Millie often gave her forthright opinions, frequently criticising the ‘red tape’ of Whitehall which she believed was getting in the way of the war effort.11

  When news reached Millie of the sinking of the Hampshire while she was at a charity bazaar in Essex, at first she could not accept her brother was dead. As his body had never been found, conspiracy theories and myths swirled around the tragic event. Some people believed that he had been kidnapped, others that he was in an enchanted sleep in a northern cave ready to reappear at Britain’s moment of greatest danger.12 Even the rational Raymond Asquith could not help suspecting that Kitchener would stroll back into the House of Lords, as strong and silent as ever, combing seaweed out of his hair.13 For a time Millie believed that he was a prisoner in Germany. However, by July she was facing the reality, writing to a friend:

  It is a miserable time for all. What makes it more so for us is the mystery which is made over the loss of HMS Hampshire and the constant rumours which go on – Many will not believe Lord Kitchener is really gone from us – I personally have no hope and the reports are very trying entirely owing to our being given no information as to where the fault lay or the cause of the disaster.14

  In reply to one of the many letters of condolence she received, she shared her feelings of loss, writing, ‘No good life is wasted; the influence remains, but I feel victory without my brother will be very much saddened. So many of us will feel this, having lost so many of our loved ones.’15 With no grave to grieve at, perhaps the donation of rubies and pearls was Millie’s way of finally laying her brother’s memory to rest.

  As Kitchener had been such a lynchpin in the war it was appropriate that his rubies should form the clasp holding the pearls together. He was closely connected to many of the men who were commemorated in the Red Cross Necklace. Before the war he was a welcome guest of the Lansdownes at Bowood and the Grenfells at Taplow. A friend of Willie Grenfell since 1885, he always visited the family on his first Sunday back in England after his adventures abroad. He told Ettie Grenfell that he had no home, but when he came to their house it felt like home.16

  During these visits, he developed a special rapport with Julian Grenfell. When they first met in 1899 the young boy had no idea who Kitchener was, but he readily accepted his invitation to come for a walk before breakfast. They then spent hours fishing and talking about Julian’s dream of becoming a soldier. The older man became a role model for the boy, who admired his self-restraint and tremendous willpower and identified with his dislike of superficial social life. Kitchener told his young confidant that the two things he could not stand were state dinners and being photographed.17

  Kitchener saw the Grenfell boys’ potential, writing to Ettie, ‘Much love to Julian and Billy, what splendid boys they are I expect one of them will have to be prime minister.’18 With no son of his own, they, like his nephews and nieces, helped to fill the gap. He told Ettie that after Julian had been to college he should become a cavalry officer and he would make a first-rate soldier of him. After one visit to Taplow, Kitchener asked for a photograph of his protégé, it was the only picture he kept on his desk at the War Office.19 When he heard that Julian had died he was deeply distressed.20 He wrote to Willie Grenfell, ‘I grieve with you both – I loved poor Julian and feel his loss badly – He was a splendid solider and served his country right well.’21

  When, two months later, Kitchener heard the news that Billy had also been killed, it was the only time in the war that he broke down in office. He had to stop working for an hour to regain his composure.22 He wrote to Ettie, ‘You know how sincerely I grieve with you. It is sad for us, but not for them. You have given your country of the best, for they were both splendid and gallant soldiers and have done their duty nobly.’ In his letter to his old friend he admitted to a degree of war weariness and self-doubt, writing, ‘We all wish sometimes that the trumpet would sound for us, but we have to stick it out and do our very best until the release comes. I only wish I could do more, or rather that what I do was better work.’23

  Although, the Kitchener rubies belonged beside the pearls given for his surrogate sons, there was an irony that they should be donated to an appeal headed by Lady Northcliffe. No man could have done more than Lord Northcliffe to undermine Kitchener. In May 1915, Northcliffe used the full weight of his newspapers to attack the secretary of state for war, claiming that he had starved the army in France of high-explosive shells and had sent instead shrapnel which was useless in trench warfare. An article in the Daily Mail on 21 May 1915, headlined ‘The Shell Scandal: Lord Kitchener’s Tragic Blunder’, blamed his incompetence for thousands of soldiers’ deaths. It urged that he should be dismissed.

  However, Northcliffe’s attack backfired as Kitchener was so popular. All day phones at the newspaper rang with protests from readers angrily denouncing the attacks on Kitchener and saying they would never buy the ‘damned rag’ again.24 The Daily Mail’s circulation dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000 and special police had to guard its office at Carmelite House.25 Copies of the paper were ceremonially burnt on the steps of the Stock Exchange. In railway compartments, if a Daily Mail was brought in the company would seize it, tear it into fragments and throw it out of the window.26 As ever, Margot Asquith was vehement in her denunciation of Northcliffe, writing that he was pro-German and a wicked man. According to her, Kitchener was a much better fellow.27 She wanted to see ‘proper’ censorship of the press and asked Kitchener why he did not have Northcliffe arrested.28

  However, never one to surrender, Lord Northcliffe continued his onslaught. He told a colleague he was willing to take the personal opprobrium and it was better to lose circulation than lose the war. His pressure was partly responsible for Asquith re-forming his government as a coalition. Kitchene
r remained secretary of state for war, but all production matters were taken away from him and given to Lloyd George at the new Ministry of Munitions. Elements of Northcliffe’s accusations proved to be true and Kitchener’s credibility among his Cabinet colleagues was undermined, but he never lost the admiration of the public. Lord Northcliffe was one of the few not to grieve when he heard that the Hampshire had sunk. Instead he commented, ‘Providence is on the side of the British Empire after all.’29

  Magnanimously, in 1918 Millie Parker put aside any negative feelings she had towards the Northcliffes to help the Red Cross Pearl Appeal. She had already learnt to put the past behind her in her own family. Before the war her daughter Frances, known as Fanny, had been a suffragette. Both Fanny’s mother and her uncle were disgusted by her involvement. It was particularly embarrassing for Lord Kitchener because he had paid for her to be highly educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. However, Fanny was more like her uncle than he would have admitted, because as a militant suffragette she showed the same sort of dauntless courage. Until 1913 she was the organiser of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Dundee. She was imprisoned on several occasions for causing damage to property and her photograph was circulated to police around the country as one of the most ‘wanted’ suffragettes. In July 1914, she appeared in court in Ayr under the alias ‘Janet Arthur’. Accused of trying to blow up Burns’ Cottage at Alloway, she refused to enter the dock and would not recognise the court’s jurisdiction. Instead she shouted quotations from Burns’ poetry and accused the authorities of torturing women.

  Fanny was taken to Ayr Prison, pending further inquiry. While in prison she went on hunger strike and refused food or drink for four days before she was transferred to Perth Prison where she was force-fed. Over the following days, force-feeding took place on seven occasions.30 Fanny wrote about her horrific experiences in an article, which described how she was held down by six female warders and slapped in the face. The doctor tried to force her mouth open with a steel gag, and when that failed a nasal tube was forced down her nostril causing extreme pain. On another occasion, three female warders tried to feed her by the rectum. Fanny struggled against them and was screaming in agony. They later subjected her to ‘a grosser and more indecent outrage’. The medical report by Dr Lindsay of Perth Prison indicated injuries consistent with an instrument being introduced into her vagina causing abrasions.31 She described the experience as torture.

  When her family heard what was happening her brother negotiated her release from prison to a nursing home, where she was examined and found to be in a state of collapse.

  Within weeks, the war changed the whole political landscape for suffragettes like Fanny. In August 1914 the WSPU called a truce and offered to put their army at the service of the government. In return, suffragette prisoners were released. Fanny’s case never came to trial because of this amnesty. However, not all suffragettes accepted this reconciliation. Sylvia Pankhurst and her new Federation of East London Suffragettes remained committed to pacifism. This group and the Women’s Freedom League were the only suffragettes who continued to campaign for the vote during the war.32

  Other suffragettes saw the war as a chance for women to prove themselves worthy of citizenship. Fanny threw herself into war work, becoming honorary organiser of the Women’s Freedom League National Service Organisation, which put women workers in touch with employers to find the right work for them. She also served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps at Boulogne and was awarded an OBE for her dedication.33 The co-operation of millions of women changed the attitude of many opponents of women’s suffrage, including Lord Northcliffe. His newspaper, the Daily Mail, had first coined the term ‘suffragette’, using it to separate militant activists from less violent suffragists. Although it was intended as an insult, Emmeline Pankhurst defiantly accepted the label.

  At the height of suffragette activity in 1912, Northcliffe promised Lord Curzon that his papers would do anything they could for the anti-suffrage cause.34 However, by the end of the war the press baron used the Northcliffe press to reflect his change of heart. The Times, which had opposed the women’s cause for almost half a century, now completely reversed its policy. The newspaper magnate himself talked to Prime Minister Lloyd George about granting women the vote. No doubt he was influenced by his wife’s exceptional abilities when he wrote, ‘The women are wonderful. Their freshness of mind, their organising skill, have been magnificent. Men are making too great a mess of the world and need helpers without their own prejudices, idleness and self-indulgence.’35

  In 1918, the British Representation of the People Act, which enfranchised women over the age of 30, became law. It acknowledged the great sacrifice women had made during the war. However, it excluded many of the female munitions workers who were too young to vote and it deliberately kept women as a minority of the electorate.36

  The war brought Millie and her daughter closer together. After several years of estrangement they were now both committed to the war effort. Millie had the same fighting spirit as her brother and daughter. During the war she was a leading campaigner for the temperance movement. At this time, there was a widespread fear that working-class women were using their separation allowances to buy alcohol and get drunk in public. In October 1914, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to Lord Kitchener that ‘although it sounds horrid’, his information showed that there was truth in this rumour. In response, a public meeting was held at Caxton Hall on 12 November 1914 calling for total abstinence during the war.37 Millie did her bit by encouraging women to join the League of Honour, in which they pledged themselves to purity, teetotalism and prayer. She went around the country speaking out against alcohol. In Glasgow in 1915 she told a packed audience, ‘My brother is trying to beat the Germans. It is not his place to try and beat drink; it is the place of every Britisher to back him up and stop this horrible, degrading and miserable state the country is in.’38 At another meeting she described the alcohol trade as ‘a vampire’ and claimed that people who treated a soldier to a drink were ‘not only fools but rogues. Every man who drank in this country was a thoughtless man.’39

  Alcohol had become a major problem during the war; the government believed that it was undermining munitions-making and shipbuilding. Lloyd George claimed that drink was one of the greatest threats to victory. He started a campaign asking national figures to promise not to drink for the duration of the war.

  In March 1915, the king agreed to set an example by promising that no alcohol would be drunk in the royal household until the war was over. It was an act of solidarity showing that George V did not expect his people to make a sacrifice that he was not willing to make himself. However, in private the king admitted he hated doing it. Knowing his feelings, when the royal cellars were locked up his servants placed a large wreath made of empty bottles and tied with a crepe ribbon outside the door with the word ‘Dead’ written on it.

  His courtiers were equally unhappy to swap the finest wines for barley water and ginger beer. Ettie Desborough, who was one of Queen Mary’s ladies-in-waiting, observed that the only cheerful person at court was Margot Asquith, who took copious swigs from a flask of brandy which she claimed was for ‘medicinal reasons’.40 The king later told Margot that he had been talked into heading the campaign on false pretences. He said that he had given up alcohol thinking that the government was going to pass drastic legislation on the issue. However, now he had committed to it he could not go back on his pledge.

  It seems that Parliament was not as high-minded about drinking as it was about gambling. Members rejected the idea that the Commons and the Lords should become an alcohol-free zone. A heavy drinker himself, Asquith took little interest in his colleague’s campaign. Churchill also thought this sacrifice ridiculous. There was also opposition to any form of prohibition in the country. In 1915 a pamphlet was published by ‘The League of the Man in the Street’, complaining that this was an assault on the drinking habits of the working man. ‘Pump puritans�
�� and ‘killjoys’ were attacked for interfering with ordinary people’s rights and liberties. In contemporary cartoons, Lloyd George was satirised as a phony St George trying to slay the dragon drink.41

  However, by the autumn, Lloyd George had made drink forbidden in pubs, restaurants and clubs unless served with a meal. The hours during which spirits could be bought were also decreased. Under the so-called ‘beauty sleep order’, clubs had to close by 10.30 p.m. However, this had the unplanned effect of increasing the number of underground nightclubs.

  In November 1915, restrictions were placed on the sale of beer and spirits. Trying to end weekend binges that affected work in the factories on Monday, it was ruled that no beer and spirits could be bought on Saturdays and all alcohol sales were to be cash only. By May 1916 brandy was made unobtainable without a doctor’s prescription.42 Millie’s temperance movement was gaining ground, but her aim remained to have total prohibition introduced. It seems that her donation of rubies and pearls represented not just one hero but a family of campaigners.

  The Kitcheners were not the only ones to give precious jewels for the clasps. In total, nearly fifty rubies were donated. Mrs Hewitt sent one in memory of her husband, Rifleman F.J. Hewitt, with the message, ‘More precious than rubies to his wife.’43 While Mrs Arthur G. Hordern gave two rubies, ‘In honour of our gallant Australians’.44

  Another of the clasps also symbolised the importance of the Empire. Lady Wingate, who had organised the pearl collection in Egypt, gave a sapphire and diamond clasp to the appeal. Her husband, Sir Reginald Wingate, was Kitchener’s successor as Governor General of the Sudan before becoming High Commissioner in Egypt. The two men had been old friends, serving together in the army for almost thirty years. Although Wingate was overshadowed by Kitchener’s dominant personality, he worked very effectively as the leader’s right-hand man behind the scenes. As a bachelor, Kitchener had no time for his married officers’ attempts to maintain their family life. Wingate told his wife there was no point mentioning her to him as he always retorted that it was a mistake for officers to marry.45