It was almost two months since the commander-in-chief had first made his offer. John had finally caved in.
I found his capitulation utterly baffling. All along, he had refused to be a party to string-pulling: ‘my temperament will not allow of it,’ he’d told Charlie. Yet here he was telling his mother that he was ‘ready’ to do what she wanted.
My first thought was that the sight of the gassed soldiers had frightened him. But then just twenty-four hours earlier, in the letter he wrote to his father, he was angry, not fearful. It wasn’t the letter of a man who wanted to run away; on the contrary, he seemed anxious to exact his own revenge on the Germans.
Violet’s behaviour was also confusing. From the outset, she had been at pains to conceal the moves she had made behind John’s back. Now, out of the blue, it seemed that she had admitted to him that she had engineered the job at General Headquarters. Why choose this moment to come clean when, just a few weeks earlier, she had lied to John to hide the fact that she had asked Lord Curzon to find him a job at St Omer?
And why wasn’t John furious with her? He had been furious with her then: now he appeared relaxed, even sanguine, at the prospect of her intervention. ‘Do what you yourself want,’ he had said.
So what had she said to him? It must have been something dramatic to cause his change of heart.
Violet’s letter was not in the Muniment Rooms at Belvoir. But there were three other potential sources of information: John’s diary, Sir John’s papers, and those of Guy Brooke.
It was Brooke, the commander-in-chief’s ADC, who delivered Violet’s letter; as John mentioned, they had ‘had a talk about things’. I was hoping that one of them had made a note of their conversation. Since the move to St Omer came at Sir John’s behest, Brooke might also have recorded it in an official report to French.
I looked at John’s diary first. His reply to Violet was dated 3 May. It was more than likely that on such an important issue he was replying by return. This would mean that Brooke had delivered Violet’s letter that day, or the day before. The entries for 2 and 3 May were minimal: John had not referred to Brooke – or his decision to accept the job at General Headquarters. But two words stood out:
May 2, Sunday: … Harry left … Went to see gassed men … Something awfull …
May 3, Monday: … Saw gassed men again …
Harry was John’s cousin – Harry Lindsay; the ‘gassed men’, obviously the victims at the hospital at Bailleul. But what was ‘something awfull’? Was he referring to the condition of the men? Or was this a deliberately veiled reference to his decision to accept the job at St Omer? John’s punctuation and spelling were unreliable. But even he, surely, would have written, ‘Went to see gassed men – something awfull.’ He would not have entered the two words after a full stop, and on a separate line.
The following day, 4 May, John had seen Brooke. ‘Saw Guy Brooke and Sonny Somerset on Sharpenburg. They came to tea,’ he recorded.
Possibly, this was when Brooke delivered Violet’s letter. In which case, John had misdated his reply. But, thinking about it, the date was immaterial. The main thing was that at some point during these three days a conversation had taken place between John and Brooke – one that had a vital bearing on John’s future, which he had omitted to mention. If ‘something awfull’ had happened – was there a connection?
I checked Sir John’s papers. I could find no record of the conversation, or any mention of John’s move to St Omer. Nor could I find Guy Brooke’s papers to see if they would shed light on it. In 1922, he had succeeded his father to become the Earl of Warwick. Yet his wartime correspondence was missing from the substantial collection of Brooke family papers at Warwickshire County Record Office.
It was only many months later – at Plas Newydd, the Marquis of Anglesey’s home, near Bangor – that I discovered what John meant by ‘something awfull’. And it was truly awful.
There, in the Angleseys’ archives, was the letter Violet sent her daughter Marjorie on 3 May. She had just seen John’s account of his visit to the hospital at Bailleul. ‘Darling, this came from J today. Terrifying, isn’t it?’ Most of her letter was devoted to John’s account – she had copied it out. But at the end of it, she had added a note. ‘Brooke was here yesterday. He told me all about the gas. Darling, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I made him take a letter back for J. I told him he must take the job at St Omer. “Don’t do it for my sake. Do it for Haddon!!!” ’
It was Violet’s trump card and she had played it.
Guilt, it seemed, had caused John to capitulate. But then why hadn’t he joined Foulkes’s brigade?
Violet was writing on 3 May. In the weeks that followed, John, of course, was not transferred to St Omer. Instead, on 9 July, he was invalided home to England – a detail that he had spent a good part of his life excising from the record.
So what had happened between these two dates?
The suggestion – from the content of an article that appeared later that summer in The New York Times – is that John’s capitulation was in fact a feint. Whatever guilt he may have felt over the death of his brother, he was not going to let it stand in the way of his duty to King and country.
55
‘Remember, it must be an order,’ John warned his mother when he told her he would accept the job at St Omer.
As the events of the spring of 1915 reveal, his caveat proved to be the sticking point. At General Headquarters, Sir John French’s position as commander-in-chief was becoming increasingly precarious. By the end of May, his fondness for members of the aristocracy was the subject of unwelcome attention. Under the circumstances – as John knew full well – it was impossible for the C-in-C to order him to St Omer.
‘I have more trouble with the War Office than I do with the Germans,’ French complained to Winifred on 21 May: ‘While they are fiddling Rome is burning. What we want is more and more High Explosive ammunition and they do nothing but squabble amongst themselves. I devoutly wish we could get rid of Kitchener at the War Office. I’m sure nothing will go right whilst he is there. It is hard to have enemies in front and behind.’
At the time French was writing he was embroiled in a political crisis – one that would result in the fall of Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government.
On 9 May, after the failure of the Battle of Aubers Ridge, French had spoken to Charles Repington, the Times war correspondent. ‘We had not sufficient high explosives to lower the enemy’s parapets to the ground,’ he told him: ‘The want of unlimited supply of high explosives was a fatal bar to our success.’ His admission caused a sensation: British soldiers were being needlessly killed as a result of the government’s failure to supply adequate quantities of ammunition.
The finger of blame was pointed at Lord Kitchener, under whom responsibility for munitions production fell. Whipped up by Chancellor Lloyd George, who wanted to sideline the Secretary for War, the Daily Mail ran the story under the headline ‘Lord K’s Tragic Blunder’ and called for his resignation.
To French’s irritation, Kitchener had not resigned. Recognizing his own popularity with the British public, he had refused to go. Yet while he remained Secretary for War, ‘The Great Shell Shortage’ split the Cabinet, with the consequence that Asquith’s government was dissolved and a coalition government formed. Within the new government, a new department was created – the Ministry of Munitions – and its responsibility handed to Lloyd George.
The scandal served to increase the enmity between the Secretary for War and his commander-in-chief. Furious at the assault on his authority, Kitchener’s defenders retaliated by launching a whispering campaign against French. Besides accusing him of using the shortage of ammunition to cloak his own failure, they cast doubt over his moral integrity. For reasons of patriotism and discretion their accusations were kept out of the British press. But The New York Times published them in full.
‘The impression has gained ground that he has lost his grip,’ the newspaper reported, ‘an
d that his removal from the chief of command of the troops in France has become a matter of urgent necessity. Little else is talked of in London and in Paris, and in spite of the very strict censorship exercised over the press on both sides of the Channel, the newspapers have been alluding to the matter in a sort of guarded way.
‘The absence of any military censorship in the United States,’ the ‘veteran correspondent’ continued, ‘enables me to write more freely about this condition of affairs in The New York Times than in England or France, though much must necessarily be left unsaid.’
In fact, he left little unsaid. In great detail, he proceeded to outline the whispering campaign against French – a campaign that centred on his relationship with George Moore, and their proximity to members of the aristocracy, both male and female. As the report shows, the very issues that placed a question mark over French’s continued command of the British Army prevented him from ordering John to go to St Omer:
The fact of the matter is that ‘Jackie’ French, as the British Generalissimo is known in the service, has not been altogether himself for the past three years. Son of a country parson, he developed after the Boer war, when he had reached a General’s command, that predilection for the aristocracy which is the besetting weakness of the British ‘bourgeoisie’, and which in his case found its expression in his invariably selecting the members of his staff with a greater regard for their social rank than for their cleverness or military capacity … Formerly a family man, in the best sense of the word, with domestic tastes, and with a charming and devoted wife, and particularly nice children, French became entangled about four years ago in the toils of one of the fastest crowds of titled people in London, of whom a certain Irish peeress was the bright particular star. For a time he was said to have been completely dominated by her influence, which was a matter of common gossip, and then, two years ago, he developed that much-discussed intimacy with his great American crony and friend, George Gordon Moore of Detroit, Mich., and of England …
According to the printed admissions of this Michigander financier and promoter, his friendship with the FM is so close that Sir John has for the past two years made his home under his, that is to say, GGM’s roof, in London, instead of with his family. On the occasion of French’s periodical visits to London, since the beginning of the war, he has always stayed at Moore’s house, and during the intervals Moore has been an almost constant guest of the Field Marshal at British Headquarters in France.
There Moore has been accorded privileges and prerogatives denied to all British visitors, even to members of the Government administration, and to peers of the realm, as well as to distinguished Frenchmen of official rank. In fact, he has been treated by the British Generalissimo, at this headquarters, as if he had no secrets whatsoever from him, official, military, or otherwise.
This naturally has excited all sorts of unfavourable comment and invidious criticisms; the more so as GGM has been charged, not only in the American press but even in London newspapers, notably in the London World, with being associated with a naturalized German of the name of Lowenfeld, in a London concern known as the Investment Registry Company.
Quite naturally this association of the British Generalissimo in France with an American promoter known for his German business affiliations, and the extraordinary privileges accorded to him at British Headquarters, has given rise to much unfavourable comment and criticism in English as well as in French circles. It has served to estrange Sir John from many of his former English and French friends and admirers, who find it difficult to understand why he should select in this time of danger to British Empire, as his principal confidant, a Michigander promoter.
At General Headquarters, Sir John’s staff knew that Moore was behind the move to have John transferred to Foulkes’s brigade. In the public eye, Moore was closely associated with the Manners family – his infatuation with Diana was well known. Under the circumstances, French dared not risk ordering John to St Omer unless he supplied him with proof that he had the necessary credentials to join the top-secret brigade. On his part, John refused to claim the expertise in ‘catapults’ or missile projectiles that French would need.
For six weeks, John dug in his heels. Yet despite his holding firm, in the last weeks of June the flat tone of his diary indicates that the pressure was beginning to take its toll.
On 19 June, John learned that his division was being drafted into the Ypres Salient. There, for the first time, they were to take part in an attack. ‘Damn,’ he wrote in his diary in response to the news. From that moment on, as I’d discovered, he had withdrawn from the dramatic events going on around him – as if something was preoccupying him.
Whatever it was, John had not confided it to his diary. However, a letter from Sir John French suggests that in the days immediately after the North Midlands received the order to move into the Ypres Salient, John was forced to reconsider the commander-in-chief’s offer. Before the order came through, the North Midlands were attached to the General Reserve: John knew that as long as they remained in reserve, his job as ADC to General Stuart Wortley did not expose him to danger.
The move to Ypres changed the position drastically. For the first time, with the risk of his being killed far higher, he really did have to decide whether his first duty was to his family or to his country. It would explain why he wrote ‘Damn’ when he heard he was going to the Ypres Salient, and why, in the days that followed, he seemed so preoccupied.
John had ten days to reach a decision: his division was not going into action until 29 June.
But – around about 21 June – Violet forced his hand. After Charlie told her of the move to Ypres, she sent a telegram to the commander-in-chief.
It is evident from his reply that she had begged him to remove John from the firing line:
23 June 1915
General Headquarters, St Omer
Dear Violet
On receipt of your wire I told them to ask the Division to let Granby join my Staff for a few days temporarily during his General’s absence.
I send you the reply which came from them by return.
This must presume that he himself wishes to remain with his Division and I feel even they would have sent him to Headquarters if he had wanted to go. I can quite understand his desire to remain with his own Staff.
I am afraid in such circumstances there is nothing more to be done.
Please write when you think I can be of use.
Yours etc, John French
It was John’s last chance to escape the fighting. He had turned it down. Whatever guilt he felt over the death of his brother, he hadn’t allowed it to sway his decision. His first duty was to his country.
This was the situation on 23 June, as the commander-in-chief relayed it to Violet.
Sixteen days later – on 9 July – John was invalided home from the Front on a hospital ship. He never returned.
His departure coincides with the start of the last and the most mysterious of the gaps in the family letters at Belvoir.
Years later, when John came to look back on this episode, he had wanted to wipe the record entirely. He had done all that he could to make certain that no one would ever discover that he had been invalided home from the Front.
It was his War Office file that had revealed the details of the event he’d spent a good part of his life – and his final hours – trying to conceal. Among the documents inside it was a report, written by an army surgeon, which detailed the circumstances of his departure:
The above-named officer [Lt. J. H. M. Marquis of Granby] was sent back from France on 9 July suffering from diarrhoea, the effect of old malarial poison contracted some time ago in Rome; of a very obstinate character, with abdominal pain and symptoms of dyspepsia. It is surmised that the abdominal discomfort may indicate a condition of chronic appendicitis.
The putative cause of John’s illness, as I’d discovered, was nonsense. The ‘old malarial poison’ was alleged to have stemmed from his time at th
e British Embassy in Rome in 1909. Yet there was no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that he’d ever had malaria.
If the cause of his illness was specious, it cast doubt over whether he was in fact ill when he left France. Certainly, from what I knew of his activities at Belvoir after 9 July – fishing, shooting, a round of house parties – he appears to have been fit and well.
But, at the same time, I could not believe that John would have faked illness to escape the Front. From September 1914, he had resisted every one of his mother’s efforts to keep him out of the war – the last, just sixteen days before he was sent home. The impression I was left with was of a brave man with a strong sense of integrity. It wasn’t of a man who was contemplating, or who would have countenanced, running away.
There was something else. Among Violet’s gold-dusted letters, I’d found a note which suggested that she had fixed the outcome of the medical board John attended in September, two months after he left France. Even Violet realized that she had behaved appallingly. ‘Darling – I must fight! Don’t be cross with me,’ she begged Charlie. ‘Other mothers do nothing. What do they get for their bravery? The worst.’
It appeared John didn’t fail the board because he was feigning illness: it would seem he failed it because Violet told the War Office to fail him. The morning after, clearly ignorant of his mother’s manoeuvrings, he’d sent a telegram to his sister Marjorie: ‘Six weeks more leave STOP Damnation STOP Bitterly disappointed STOP.’
But then, if he was innocent, why had he wanted to destroy the records for this period?
And if he hadn’t been faking illness, why had he left the Front?
The obvious assumption was that, somehow, Violet had been behind his escape.
For once, however, it seems Violet was innocent. As far as I was able to, I checked her movements over the course of the week before John left for France. I couldn’t see anything untoward. From 28 June to 3 July she was at Arlington Street. Judging from the letters that remain at Belvoir, far from plotting to spring John from the Front, she was preoccupied in hosting a lunch party for the Aga Khan. She seemed caught up in the arrangements – and, afterwards, as she reported to John, in the gossip she had learned from her guests:
The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery Page 36