During this winter I wrote my first book. I learned from England that my letters to the Daily Telegraph had been well received. Although written anonymously ‘From a Young Officer’, they had attracted attention. The Pioneer too was complimentary. Taking these letters as the foundation, I resolved to build a small literary house. My friends told me that Lord Fincastle was also writing the story of the expedition. It was a race whose book would be finished first. I soon experienced a real pleasure in the task of writing, and the three or four hours in the middle of every day, often devoted to slumber or cards, saw me industriously at work. The manuscript was finished shortly after Christmas and sent home to my mother to sell. She arranged for its publication by Longmans.
Having contracted the habit of writing, I embarked on fiction. I thought I would try my hand at a novel. I found this much quicker work than the accurate chronicle of facts. Once started, the tale flowed on of itself. I chose as a theme a revolt in some imaginary Balkan or South American republic, and traced the fortunes of a liberal leader who overthrew an arbitrary Government only to be swallowed up by a socialist revolution. My brother officers were much amused by the story as it developed and made various suggestions for stimulating the love interest which I was not able to accept. But we had plenty of fighting and politics, interspersed with such philosophisings as I was capable of, all leading up to the grand finale of an ironclad fleet forcing a sort of Dardanelles to quell the rebellious capital. The novel was finished in about two months. It was eventually published in Macmillan’s Magazine under the title of Savrola, and being subsequently reprinted in various editions, yielded in all over several years about seven hundred pounds. I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading it.
Meanwhile my book on the Frontier War had been actually published.
In order not to lose two months by sending the proofs back to India, I had entrusted their correction to an uncle of mine, a very brilliant man and himself a ready writer. For some reason or other he missed many scores of shocking misprints and made no attempt to organise the punctuation. Nevertheless The Malakand Field Force had an immediate and wide success. The reviewers, though sarcastic about the misprints, etc., vied with each other in praise. When the first bundle of reviews reached me together with the volume as published, I was filled with pride and pleasure at the compliments, and consternated about the blunders. The reader must remember I had never been praised before. The only comments which had ever been made upon my work at school had been ‘Indifferent’, ‘Untidy’, ‘Slovenly’, ‘Bad’, ‘Very bad’, etc. Now here was the great world with its leading literary newspapers and vigilant erudite critics, writing whole columns of praise! In fact I should blush even now to transcribe the glowing terms in which my ‘style’ was commended. The Athenoeum said ‘Pages of Napier punctuated by a mad printer’s reader.’ Others were less discriminating but even more complimentary. The Pioneer said something about ‘a wisdom and comprehension far beyond his years’. That was the stuff! I was thrilled. I knew that if this would pass muster there was lots more where it came from, and I felt a new way of making a living and of asserting myself, opening splendidly out before me. I saw that even this little book had earned me in a few months two years’ pay as a subaltern. I resolved that as soon as the wars which seemed to have begun again in several parts of the world should be ended, and we had won the Polo Cup, I would free myself from all discipline and authority, and set up in perfect independence in England with nobody to give me orders or arouse me by bell or trumpet.
One letter which I received gave me extreme pleasure, and I print it here as it shows the extraordinary kindness and consideration for young people which the Prince of Wales8 always practised.
MARLBOROUGH HOUSE,
April 22/98
MY DEAR WINSTON,
I cannot resist writing a few lines to congratulate you on the success of your book! I have read it with the greatest possible interest and I think the descriptions and the language generally excellent. Everybody is reading it, and I only hear it spoken of with praise. Having now seen active service you will wish to see more, and have as great a chance I am sure of winning the VC as Fincastle had; and I hope you will not follow the example of the latter, who I regret to say intends leaving the Army in order to go into Parliament.
You have plenty of time before you, and should certainly stick to the Army before adding MP to your name.
Hoping that you are flourishing,
I am,
Yours very sincerely,
A.E.
There was no more leave for me until the regimental polo team went north in the middle of March to play in the Annual Cavalry Tournament. I was fortunate enough to win a place, and in due course found myself at Meerut, the great cantonment where these contests usually take place. We were, I think, without doubt the second best team of all those who competed. We were defeated by the victors, the famous Durham Light Infantry. They were the only infantry regiment that ever won the Cavalry Cup. They were never beaten. All the crack regiments went down before them. The finest native teams shared a similar fate. All the wealth of Golconda and Rajputana, all the pride of their Maharajahs and the skill of their splendid players, were brushed firmly aside by these invincible foot soldiers. No record equals theirs in the annals of Indian polo. Their achievements were due to the brains and will-power of one man. Captain de Lisle, afterwards distinguished at Gallipoli and as a Corps Commander on the Western Front, drilled, organised, and for four years led his team to certain and unbroken victory in all parts of India. We fell before his prowess in this the last year of his Indian polo career.
Meerut was 1,400 miles north of Bangalore, but it was still more than 600 miles from the front. Our leave expired three days after the final match of the tournament, and it took exactly three days in the train to return to Bangalore. A day and a half were required on the other hand to reach Peshawar and the front. I was by now so desperate that I felt the time had come to run a serious risk. Colonel Ian Hamilton was at length recovered from his accident, and had resumed the command of his brigade on their return from Tirah. He stood in high repute in the Army, was a close personal friend and old brother officer of Sir George White, and on excellent terms with Sir William Lockhart. With Ian Hamilton I had long been in close correspondence, and he had made many efforts on my behalf. His reports were not very encouraging. There were many posts to be filled in the Expeditionary Force, but all appointments were made from Calcutta and through the Adjutant-General’s department. There was only one exception to this, namely appointments to the personal staff of Sir William Lockhart. I did not know Sir William Lockhart, nor so far as I could recollect had either my father or my mother made his acquaintance. How should I be able to obtain access to him, still more to persuade him to give me one of the two or three most coveted junior appointments on his staff? Besides, his staff was already complete. On the other hand, Colonel Ian Hamilton was in favour of my running the risk. ‘I will do what I can,’ he wrote. ‘The Commander-in-Chief has an aide-de-camp of the name of Haldane, who was in the Gordon Highlanders with me. He has immense influence – in fact, they say throughout the Army, too much. If he were well disposed towards you, everything could be arranged. I have tried to prepare the ground. He is not friendly to you, but neither is he hostile. If you came up here, you might with your push and persuasiveness pull it off.’
Such was the gist of the letter which reached me on the morning after we had been defeated in the semi-final of the tournament. I looked out the trains north and south. There was obviously not time to take a day and a half’s journey northwards to Peshawar, have a few hours there, and make the four and a half days’ journey south within the limits of my expiring leave. I was bound, in short, if I took the northern train and failed to get an appointment at the front, to overstay my leave by at least forty-eight hours. I well knew that this was a military offence for which I should deservedly be punished. It would have been quite easy in ordinary circumstance
s to apply by telegraph for so short an extension; but once my plan of going to the front had been grasped by the regimental authorities, it was not an extension I should have received, but an order of immediate recall. In all the circumstances I decided to take the chance, and I started for Peshawar forthwith.
In the crisp air of the early morning I sought with a beating heart Sir William Lockhart at his headquarters, and sent my name in to his aide-de-camp. Out came the redoubtable Haldane, none too cordial but evidently interested and obviously in two minds. I don’t remember what I said nor how I stated my case, but I must have hit the bull’s eye more than once. For after about half an hour’s walking up and down on the gravel path Captain Haldane said, ‘Well, I’ll go and ask the Commander-in-Chief and see what he says.’ Off he went, and I continued pacing the gravel alone. He was not gone long. ‘Sir William has decided,’ he said when he returned, ‘to appoint you an extra orderly officer on his personal staff. You will take up your duties at once. We are communicating with the Government of India and your regiment.’
So forthwith my situation changed in a moment from disfavour and irregularity to commanding advantage. Red tabs sprouted on the lapels of my coat. The Adjutant-General published my appointment in the Gazette. Horses and servants were dispatched by the regiment from far-off Bangalore, and I became the close personal attendant of the Captain of the Host. To the interest and pleasure of hearing the daily conversation of this charming and distinguished man, who knew every inch of the frontier and had fought in every war upon it for forty years, was added the opportunity of visiting every part of his army, sure always of finding smiling faces.
For the first fortnight I behaved and was treated as befitted my youth and subordinate station. I sat silent at meals or only rarely asked a tactful question. But an incident presently occurred which gave me quite a different footing on Sir William Lockhart’s staff. Captain Haldane used to take me with him on his daily walk, and we soon became intimate. He told me a good many things about the General and the staff, about the army and the operations as viewed from the inside, which showed me that much went on of which I and the general public were unconscious. One day he mentioned that a newspaper correspondent who had been sent home to England had written an article in the Fortnightly Review criticising severely, and as he said unfairly, the whole conduct of the Tirah expedition. The General and Headquarters Staff had been deeply wounded by this cruel attack. The Chief of the Staff, General Nicholson – who afterwards rose to the head of the British Army and was already well known as ‘Old Nick’ – had written a masterly, or at least a dusty, rejoinder. This had already been dispatched to England by the last mail.
Here at any rate I saw an opportunity of returning the kindness with which I had been treated by giving good and prompt advice. So I said that it would be considered most undignified and even improper for a high officer on the Staff of the Army in the Field to enter into newspaper controversy about the conduct of operations with a dismissed war-correspondent; that I was sure the Government would be surprised, and the War Office furious; that the Army Staff were expected to leave their defence to their superiors or to the politicians; and that no matter how good the arguments were, the mere fact of advancing them would be everywhere taken as a sign of weakness. Captain Haldane was much disturbed. We turned round and went home at once. All that night there were confabulations between the Commander-in-Chief and his staff officers. The next day I was asked how could the article already in the post be stopped. Ought the War Office to be told to put pressure upon the editor of the Fortnightly Review, and forbid him to print it when it was received? Would he be likely to obey such a request? I said he was presumably a gentleman, and that if he received a cable from the author asking him not to print the article, he would instantly comply, and bear his disappointment as he might. A cable was accordingly sent and received a reassuring reply. After this I began to be taken much more into the confidential circles of the staff and was treated as if I were quite a grown-up. Indeed I think that I was now very favourably situated for the opening of the Spring Campaign, and I began to have hopes of getting my teeth into serious affairs. The Commander-in-Chief seemed well pleased with me and I was altogether ‘in the swim’. Unhappily for me at least my good fortune had come too late. The operations which were expected every day to recommence on an even larger scale gradually languished, then dissolved in prolonged negotiations with the tribesmen, and finally resulting in a lasting peace, the wisdom of which as a budding politician I was forced to approve, but which had nothing to do with the business that had brought me to Peshawar.
Thus the beaver builds his dam, and thus when his fishing is about to begin, comes the flood and sweeps his work and luck and fish away together. So he has to begin again.
8 Afterwards King Edward VII.
Chapter XIII
A Difficulty with Kitchener
THE fighting on the Indian frontier had scarcely closed before the rumours of a new campaign in the Soudan began to ripen into certainty. The determination of Lord Salisbury’s Government to advance to Khartoum, crush the Dervish power and liberate these immense regions from its withering tyranny, was openly avowed. Even while the Tirah Expeditionary Force was being demobilised, the first phase of the new operations began; and Sir Herbert Kitchener with a British and Egyptian force of about 20,000 men had already reached the confluence of the Nile and the Atbara, and had in a fierce action destroyed the Army of Mahmoud, the Khalifa’s lieutenant, which had been sent to oppose him. There remained only the final phase of the long drama of the Soudan – the advance 200 miles southward to the Dervish capital and the decisive battle with the whole strength of the Dervish Empire.
I was deeply anxious to share in this.
But now I began to encounter resistances of a new and formidable character. When I had first gone into the Army, and wanted to go on active service, nearly everyone had been friendly and encouraging.
…: all the world looked kind,
(As it will look sometimes with the first stare
Which Youth would not act ill to keep in mind).
The first stare was certainly over. I now perceived that there were many ill-informed and ill-disposed people who did not take a favourable view of my activities. On the contrary they began to develop an adverse and even a hostile attitude. They began to say things like this: ‘Who the devil is this fellow? How has he managed to get to these different campaigns? Why should he write for the papers and serve as an officer at the same time? Why should a subaltern praise or criticise his senior officers? Why should Generals show him favour? How does he get so much leave from his regiment? Look at all the hard-working men who have never stirred an inch from the daily round and common task. We have had quite enough of this – too much indeed. He is very young, and later on he may be all right; but now a long period of discipline and routine is what 2nd Lieutenant Churchill requires.’ Others proceeded to be actually abusive, and the expressions ‘Medal-hunter’ and ‘Self-advertiser’ were used from time to time in some high and some low military circles in a manner which would, I am sure, surprise and pain the readers of these notes. It is melancholy to be forced to record these less amiable aspects of human nature, which by a most curious and indeed unaccountable coincidence have always seemed to present themselves in the wake of my innocent footsteps, and even sometimes across the path on which I wished to proceed.
At any rate, quite early in the process of making my arrangements to take part in the Soudan campaign, I became conscious of the unconcealed disapproval and hostility of the Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, Sir Herbert Kitchener. My application to join that army, although favoured by the War Office, was refused, while several other officers of my service and rank were accepted. The enquiries which I made through various channels made it clear to me that the refusal came from the highest quarter. I could not possibly hope to overcome these ponderous obstacles from the cantonments of Bangalore in which I lay. As I was entitled after the Tirah Expeditio
nary Force had been demobilised to a period of leave, I decided to proceed without delay to the centre of the Empire and argue the matter out in London.
On reaching London I mobilised whatever resources were within my reach. My mother devoted the whole of her influence to furthering my wishes. Many were the pleasant luncheons and dinners attended by the powers of those days which occupied the two months of these strenuous negotiations. But all without avail! The obstacle to my going to Egypt was at once too powerful and too remote to be within her reach. She even went so far as to write personally to Sir Herbert Kitchener, whom she knew quite well, on my account. He replied with the utmost politeness that he had already more than enough officers for the campaign, that he was overwhelmed with applications from those who had what would appear to be far greater claims and qualifications, but that if at some future time opportunity occurred, he would be pleased, etc., etc.
My Early Life Page 16