by Mark Rowe
Beresford had made another stab at Lee, accusing him of ‘ungentlemanlike conduct’. Certainly Lee felt threatened, because he begged Churchill for the Admiralty’s protection, by adding his name ‘even in the most honorary capacity of any one of the numerous committees that you must have at work’. While Churchill had a war to run, and Beresford was the one going after Lee for crossing him, you have to fault Churchill - like so many in authority - for not looking after a well-meaning man who blew the whistle on a wrong-doer. What had Beresford said, exactly? According to Lee, Beresford said: “Feeling is very strong in the service about his being First Sea Lord, it is strongly resented.” When Lee had expressed surprise, Beresford had added: “I am entitled to speak for the service, I know the opinion of my brother officers on the subject. It is very strong. If things went badly at sea, as they may, there would be a howl in the country and the mob would attack Prince Louis’ house and break his windows.”
Was Beresford only repeating what others thought - which was not the same, or as bad, as giving it as his own opinion? As with any loudmouth, or a criminal, if they are caught once, you always have the suspicion they are doing the same thing, or worse, many other times without being caught. This story shows the unwritten rule that men of affairs could say one thing in their members’ clubs, and suppress it or deny it, and say another thing in public. (Surely Beresford’s threat of libel was a bluff; would he want any of it aired in court?)
Quite likely Beresford felt jealous that he did not have an Admiralty job. If he was losing his temper so early in the war, what would he and his kind be like, once things went badly?
IV
Working people were used to things - life in general - going against them. They had their own agreed ways to make themselves feel better. They sang; and nothing serious or uplifting such as the national anthem. When 74 reservists left Gresley in south Derbyshire on Thursday August 6, to march their first ten miles to Derby, they sang such popular (and risqué?) songs as ‘Hello, hello, who’s your lady friend’ and ‘Everybody’s doing it’. When someone shouted, ‘shall we be beaten?’ they roared, ‘no!’.
The more common cry and answering shout, as made by the men in the motor buses taking them from Beresford’s meeting at Sheffield to the recruiting halls, was ‘are we down-hearted?’ and ‘no!’. Men, even from different factories or neighbourhoods, plainly knew it and responded to it. As the first half of the phrase admitted, you might feel down-hearted, on the football field, at work or on strike, or leaving home for war. The group denial, the united voice, gave the individual new strength to carry on; or at least made it harder for him then to give up. Here, among the soldiers and sailors, was a sort of unity, a rapidly deepening comradeship against a common danger. While (if only the soldiers knew it) Beresford ranted against the First Sea Lord (behind his back) and gave a deceitful speech a few days later, the soldiers and sailors were risking their lives. Not that Beresford cared about the men; he only spoke of ‘things’ going badly at sea. When Beresford repeated in speeches that the country was united, behind the soldiers, he was profoundly wrong. Simply by joining the fight, by going abroad, the volunteers separated themselves from the rest of the country and went through experiences that the civilians left behind could not go through, and maybe would even not want to know about. This lack of sympathy for the fighting men began early, at or even before recruitment. Across the country - in Manchester, Sheffield, Derby, though some places reported it more than others - men had to queue for hours to enlist. They had to give up, exhausted, or miss meals, or go back to work because they had taken time off. (And remember, the ‘white feather brigade’ was on the streets!)
It did not make sense; why did it take so long - too few doctors to test recruits, was one excuse - to join the army, while the newspapers were demanding volunteers? The army and government had not expected to have to recruit such a big army; the authorities had enough of a job looking after the British Expeditionary Force. More sinisterly, the army evidently took the attitude that anything was good enough for recruits. They wanted to join? They could wait; they had to learn to do as they were told in the army, anyway. If the army had so little regard for men even as they queued to volunteer, what would it be like on the battlefield?
Chapter 16
Food and other secrets
Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faithfully as the soldier does his, the world would be a better place?
Charles Dickens as The Uncommercial Traveller, in All The Year Round, April 21, 1860
I
The war knocked on Thomas Pickbourne’s door on August 28.
A billeting officer came around on Friday and asked us how many we could do with. My good wife remembering she has a son who is a Territorial said we could do four. Accordingly four was chalked up on our door. They came yesterday (Sunday!) and with them many more, 36 in all. Just at tea time, about 430, we were roused from our teas by the tramp, tramp of a number of soldiers going down the street. They passed our door and we thought they had gone elsewhere but at the bottom they turned sharply and came back halting just outside our door! An officer stepped forward and presented a note to me signed by Captain Hazeldine asking that we should prepare a meal consisting of meat potatoes etc and tea for the whole of them (36) at 7 o’clock! We were astounded and Mrs P almost collapsed. But one soldier brought us a huge joint of meat, another brought potatoes in, another two tea and sugar and dumped them down on our little scullery! The officer in charge apologised for the trouble he was causing us and they decamped promising to return for 7 to 7.30!
So many exclamation marks show how Pickbourne was torn many ways: between Christian charity, respect for authority, and outrage at having his day of rest (and not someone else’s) upset. His wife Kate had the grace to see that these young men were someone’s sons, and their son Frank (in camp at Derby race course, then Houghton Regis near Dunstable) might be glad of a good deed by someone like them. The fact was, however, that the Pickbournes had three hours to prepare a meal for 36.
Well there was nothing for it but to make the best of it. And so with the help of Mrs Swann next door and a young fellow who said he was to help us cook we set to work. I took off my coat and commenced cutting slices from the huge piece of beef and mamma cut up some onions. Wilfred and the ‘cook’ cut up potatoes. Mrs Swann took some meat to cook in her kitchen and so we were all at it. Am glad to say we got the whole thing cooked lovely for 715 and about 730 the soldier lads trooped down the street, stood outside our door in single file, came in one by one to receive their ration of meat, potatoes and tea till all were served. And this was on Sunday! Such an experience we have never had and do not want repeating. Still we felt a certain pleasure in doing it. For were we not helping our soldier lads who are going if need be to lay down their lives to defend us. Most of them are from Carlisle and Cumberland.
The Cumbrians were fed in that Northamptonshire village of Upton that Sunday evening not because the whole country was united behind the troops. As it happened, Pickbourne knew Cumberland; he had visited the small town of Brampton only in July, to preach as a guest of his former Methodist minister, Henry Scott. The meal was possible because all classes were used to preparing and eating the same few basic ingredients, cooked or cold. Food had to be cheap, easy to prepare and carry, and had to fit you for heavy work or exercise. An unnamed horseman in the Leicestershire Yeomanry, living in a field at Diss in Norfolk by early September, wrote that he ate ‘bread and bacon for breakfast, stew for dinner, and bread and jam for tea, and my word, we can eat it!’. Then as now, such simple food suited masses of people. It was good enough then for the well-off, too: vicar’s daughter and diarist Dorothy Wright and her mother ate bread and cheese on a moors walk from Whitby during their Easter 1914 holiday.
Of all the diary-keepers of 1914, William Swift in Churchdown went into most detail about his meals, perhaps because food was relatively more important in the old
man’s life, or because as a widower he did his own cooking, unless his neighbour Mrs Phelps ‘sent in’ a meal. Swift recorded an apple tart from her for Sunday lunch on August 9. Swift had to leave the morning church service early, ‘during the singing of the Benedictus as in Harry’s absence there was no dinner unless I cooked it and which I had to do’. On August 12, Mrs Phelps sent ‘R Mutt, cabb, potatoes, apple tart’. The next meal Swift described from Mrs Phelps a week later was the same, mutton with vegetables, apart from ‘K beans’ for cabbage. On one of Mrs Phelps’ ‘off days’, Swift cooked nearly the same for himself: potatoes, tomatoes and bacon; the apple tart he had for afters may have been a piece of Mrs Phelps’. The diet may have been healthy, but heavy and unvaried. On a visit to Cheltenham on August 20 - for tea to mark his relative Walter Hambling’s silver wedding anniversary - Rose Hambling was having indigestion; Swift recommended ‘Savoury and Moore’s absorbent lozenges’. He used to buy them on occasional shopping trips to Gloucester, one and fivepence a box from Boots. Swift did not say whether he sucked the lozenges as a luxury, or to treat another effect of a stodgy diet: wind. On August 26, he admitted that he took an afternoon walk, ‘very slowly for I had flatulence badly, but afterwards felt all the better for the exertion,’ as he put it.
A typical meal of his was roast meat or chops, potatoes and green vegetables, and sago pudding. According to his diary he was growing several rows of potatoes; Brussels sprouts, broad beans, cauliflowers, Savoy cabbages, beets and onions; and had raspberry and currant bushes. Unless it was raining, the upkeep of his garden took some hours each day, with help sometimes from visiting sons and grandsons. Despite the drudgery of cutting a hedge, tidying the road in front of your house, and the like, gardening was valuable and gave you a place in the give and take of village society. Swift’s family regularly left with windfall apples, and fruit, to eat themselves or to sell: Annie Swift on August 21 for example ‘took 20lb of Victoria plums kept for her to make into jam’. Sharing produce was an excuse to visit other gardeners. On August 11 Swift ‘went to Henry Morris for carrots’ and inside saw ‘Mrs Morris who was sitting in the settle and with her Mrs Seborne her near neighbour who is very kind to her and goes in several times in the course of each day and with whom I had a pleasant chat’. On the way home, presumably, Swift ‘fell in with Mr Merrell who hawks fruit &c, bought a couple of cucumbers from him’.
The labour that went into growing, and preparing food for the plate, meant that better-off people might well leave such work to servants (besides washing, dusting and so on). Swift did his own housework, but was occasionally a spectator in the homes of people who did have servants, as on August 16 when invited to Sunday tea by a Miss Court. She was renting Green Hayes, from John Jones, one of the leading figures in the village. Swift reported that Emily Prince was Miss Court’s domestic, possibly a girl he knew from teaching her. In a matter of fact way that may have hid his amusement at people not like himself, Swift wrote: “Miss Court complained of the obtuseness of Mr J H Jones’ domestic in not turning on the water for her drinking purposes from Barrow Hill, Mr J H Jones’ residence ... Emily P was dispatched to see to it. Then the next upset was Emily had not got the kettle boiled for our tea; she Miss C had to put fir cones on to hasten the matter.” Swift and Miss Court talked about Abergavenny, the corner of Wales that Swift had taught in as a young man before bringing his family back to Gloucestershire.
Miss Court may have wanted to excuse the late tea; she may have enjoyed an audience to hear her grumble about servants; or the old schoolmaster Swift may have looked like a wise and trustworthy listener that people could speak freely to, and even share secrets with. The humbler sort of villager came to Swift, as someone who had taught their children (and maybe themselves). He could help with the occasional legal business or serious letter that was beyond some. In mid-August, after his Aunt Sarah Pick was given notice to quit, she was posting on her landlord’s letters to Swift for him to write her appeal to stay. In July Swift read a woman’s will, made a clean copy of it, and with his son Harry witnessed it.
Swift’s family told him some secrets, maybe not for advice, but on the principle of a problem shared is a problem halved. Walter Hambling called on Monday August 17:
... he told me how he was entangled with Charles Hambling’s two daughters, one of whom had married a sergeant in the Army and had started a market gardening business in Hayden, bordering on Staverton and in order to do so had borrowed nearly £100 from him and an additional sum from Mr and Mrs Carter, Annie Hambling, and seemed in no hurry to refund. And he was afraid it was a bad go.
If Swift gave Hambling advice, he did not say so; it sounded like the age-old story of a family stuck with an in-law who abused their trust. Hambling may simply have wanted to unburden himself to someone who understood. Mr Walker, who visited Swift on July 13 and September 7 and twice in August, may have felt the same. His married daughter was in a lunatic asylum at Binstead in Surrey and the son-in-law had sent his son to an asylum in Germany, seemingly to get rid of him. Mr Walker was unsurprisingly depressed after visiting his daughter, who was sane enough to be ‘discontented with her surroundings ie the other patients who made unearthly noises crowing like a cock, grabbing at her victuals on her plate &c’. What must have made it worse for Walker was his ‘wife’s nervous state and her reproaches’, because Mr Walker could not free their daughter. Whether because Walker asked too much, or Swift had had his fill of it all, even Swift ran out of goodwill: “He several times spoke quite in heat and I felt bound to check him and to tell the truth I was glad at his departure.”
II
Besides public business, the stuff of newspapers, meetings, and commerce, beyond even the unremarkable dealings of family and friends, that seldom left a trace, there were the private matters of every man and woman, intimate or even shameful things seldom admitted, even in diaries. Even the notes made by a diarist may be beyond understanding now, such as the circle and cross each month in Dorothy Wright’s diary, a week or two apart (the start and end of her periods?). Things that people took for granted, such as food, or baths, were not thought worth noting. That makes it hard to say anything in general about people’s habits. At the back of Robert Blakeby’s 1914 diary were dates ‘when I had a bath during the year’, and ‘how was the water’. He had his first on January 9 (‘cold’) and nine by April 9, but only one more, with a question mark against it, on August 7 (‘water nice and hot’) before the eleventh and last in November. Did Blakeby go months without a bath? If so, did he wash himself in other ways? In midsummer, did he smell? How typical was he?
If people were shy of writing intimately about themselves in the most intimate place possible, a diary, how much more shy they were about airing such things in public; and not only the physical details of their toilet, but the inner workings of their mind. People in 1914 were as curious as in any other era about others, and above all about extremes - murders, and divorces. Many other things affected lives, without quite ever becoming the business of some institution and making the public record: a child deemed insane, or neglected, an animal treated cruelly, an in-law who took a loan and never paid it back. Some people had strange, unseen streams running through their life, that usually they chose to hide, for the sake of a quiet life. M W Colchester-Wemyss revealed one case in his July 1914 letter to the King of Siam. Perhaps because he was short of a topic of proper news, he gave his letter over to a near-miss he had, with a neighbour in Westbury-on-Severn. He described Miss Day, the tenant of Westbury Court, as a ‘distinguished lady of about 40 ... violet coloured eyes and perfectly white hair’. Whether Colchester-Wemyss liked the woman, or her wealth, or both, they agreed to marry. Miss Day said she had a fortune, but kept making excuses about where it was and why she didn’t have it to hand. Maybe Miss Day was trying to keep what was hers from her husband-to-be; she may have been pretending that she was more of a catch than she was, to trick someone well-off into marriage; or, her fortune was
in her head and she wasn’t sane - or at least not sane enough to marry. Colchester-Wemyss decided that Miss Day’s fortune was imaginary, and he broke off their engagement. It was a rare and intriguing glimpse of how, in a generally plain and earthy society, with pungent smells to match, not everything was as met the eye.
Chapter 17
Rumours
Untruth did not begin with us; nor will it end with us.
The last line of August 1914, a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I
The last phenomena of August 1914 - little remembered, as they showed British civilians as gullible or stupid - were the absurd rumours of a Russian army in transit through Britain. This was however only the final fairy-story or unnecessary panic of the month, that began on the outbreak of war, when selfish but jittery householders hoarded food, or anything they could afford. As Goonie Churchill did in Cromer, in places the traders or local civic leaders (who quite often were tradesmen) informally enforced rational shopping, telling traders not to sell to strangers, or give any customer too much. Similarly at a bank - where people afraid for their deposits might take out all their money and cause the crash they feared - other customers and bank staff could police behaviour, and shame the worriers out of withdrawing unnatural amounts of money. Newspapers, also, could ask their readers to behave. For example the Willesden Chronicle of Friday August 14 noted the market in food was ‘almost normal again’:
Panic mongers would now appear to have diverted their attention from the food market into an equally foolish channel, for throughout the week remarkable rumours have been afloat as to houses having been raided in Willesden and found to be in occupation of hostile foreigners who have stored there innumerable bombs, rifles and ammunition ... there is not the slightest foundation for such wild stories ...