1900-1904.
To pass from the proud position of a leader at school or college to the
blank insignificance of the outer world is a trying experience for most
people, but the Twins were not conscious of any difficulty. They were
too utterly unsentimental to moon over the past; they had always been
very modest about themselves and their accomplishments, and they were
profoundly excited about the new life which lay before them. Rivy was
soon absorbed in the City (after making a fruitless attempt to enlist
when war broke out), learning a strange jargon, puzzling over unfamiliar
standards of value, and beginning to lament a defective education.
Francis had a harder fate. Typhoid checked him on the threshold of
soldiering, and he had the unpleasant duty of spending a year in trying
to get well.
He sailed for South Africa in December 1899, for the sake of the voyage,
intending to return by the next boat. At the Cape, however, he fell in
with his brother John, who was acting as war correspondent, and was fired
with the wish to see another brother, Harold, who was then in command of
Brabant’s Horse. During the voyage out he had suffered much from what he
thought was lumbago, but which was really an affection of the spine due
to the fever, and his time in South Africa was one long bout of pain.
He went by sea to East London, and then up country to join Harold. He
trekked for some days in a springless wagon, which did his back no good,
and finally collapsed in a Dutch farm eighteen miles from Cradock, and
had to finish his journey lying in a chair on a cart. After some days in
Cape Town he went to the baths at Caledon, where his health improved; but
the return voyage in March 1900 knocked him out again, and he came home
worse than when he had started.
But an English summer and a Scots autumn cured him. The Duke and Duchess
of Somerset took him yachting with them in the Hebrides, and those windy
seas restored him to health. One of the party was the Gaekwar of Baroda,
of whom Francis reported: “I have made pals with the Maharajah, and am
going to dine with him in London, and he is going to show me all his
jewels and Indian costumes. I believe his pearls are like eggs. He asked
me to stay with him in India—he has got over 300 horses, very good
tiger-shooting and pig-sticking. He said, ‘Your visit won’t be official,
so you need bring no suite.’ He pronounced it like ‘suit,’ so I said,
‘All right, only my old blue one.’” Lady Anne Murray allowed him to camp
at Loch Carron, where he killed his first stag and his first salmon. Here
is his record of two days, in a letter to Miss Sybil Murray: “I left Loch
Carron yesterday; beastly day—pouring and blowing. However, I fished hard
at Balgey, got bored and soaked, and at 4—just as Donald said it was
hopeless—whack! a salmon. In the end we got five trout and one salmon.
This morning I got up at 6.30, went on the hill, and after a good stalk
got up to four beasts. One rose, then another, and flukily and luckily
I got both—one a fair beast, the other a good one. By this time it was
12.30. I ran home to Loch Carron, ordered a cart, had a glass of the best
port, and set out in torrents of rain for Balgey. Met Donald, who said
I was luny. Fished in a fearful storm, and at 6.30, very dark, misty,
and wet, whack! a salmon. Up at 6.30, two stags; four miles’ run home,
fourteen miles’ drive, salmon; three miles on here—not a bad day! If that
is not sport, what is? Did you ever hear such luck as two salmon in two
days to a novice?”
In October he was back in London, where he was passed fit by a medical
board, and ordered to Cairo to join the militia battalion of the Seaforth
Highlanders. He had himself measured for a kilt, which, as he says,
made him very shy. After some hunting with Rivy at Melton, and various
shooting parties—at one of which he was shot in the leg by a neighbouring
gun on two successive days!—he sailed in November for Egypt.
There he spent the better part of four months, working for his army
examination, playing a good deal of polo, and occasionally riding
steeplechases. He found the life boring, for he was eager to get into
regimental work, and Egypt, while the war was going on in South Africa,
was too much of a backwater for a soldier. Lord Cromer greatly impressed
him, and he saw a good deal of him as a friend of Windham Baring’s. “To
hear him talk is worth hearing,” he wrote to Rivy, “as he is quite the
biggest man we have—in fact, in his place, bigger than Chamberlain. He
has told me not to chuck polo, and that work five hours a day is ample.”
He got his commission in the 60th in May 1901, when he was at Malta,
whither he had gone in the end of March. There he acted as an extra
A.D.C. to his uncle, Lord Grenfell, who was then Governor, and laboured
to cope with the intricacies of Maltese etiquette. On one occasion
the Archbishop of Malta attended a large reception at the Palace, and
his devout flock wished to kiss his hand as soon as he appeared in the
doorway. Francis attempted to move him on, and was haughtily told, “You
do not know who I am. I am the Archbishop.” The extra A.D.C., knowing
only one brand of archbishop, sought another member of the Staff in
despair, saying, “The door is quite blocked, because that old gentleman
has gone luny and thinks himself the Archbishop of Canterbury.” At Malta
Rivy joined him for a little, and the Twins rode many races on their
uncle’s ponies. There used to be an irritating bell rung in a chapel
close to the Palace, and one day to the joy of the household it suddenly
stopped. Lord Grenfell, anxious to discover the reason, found that the
Twins had driven the bell-ringer from his post by pelting him with coal!
On their way home it is recorded that in Paris, in some café or other
public place, they forgathered with a French soldier. In their zeal for
information they asked him in their best Ollendorff, “Qu’est-ce que vous
pensez de l’affaire Dreyfus?” The question, delivered in a clear, boyish
voice at a moment when French feeling on the matter was hectic, secured
an embarrassing attention for the travellers.
[Illustration: THE TWINS WITH LORD GRENFELL AT MALTA, APRIL 1901.]
In the autumn of 1901 Francis was with the 60th at Cork, whence he sailed
in December for South Africa. He indited a farewell letter to Rivy, “the
final time I will write you about my affairs before we meet again, you
a wealthy City man, and I a poor subaltern with a V.C.” There are some
characteristic messages. “Send me cuttings out of papers sometimes, such
as very good speeches, debates or leading articles in the _Times_ [he had
always a craze for leading articles]. You might send me a few big races
and some hunts, also any of our pals’ weddings, big cricket matches, or
any divorce of some pal of ours, or anything startling in the papers....
Work hard at the City, keep fit, teetotal, and mind the girls” [his
sisters]. A month later he was planted on a hilltop near Harrismith.
The last months of the South African War were not an enlivening moment
to start on the profession of arms. The great hours of the campaign were
over, and the war had become a thing of barbed wire and blockhouses,
varied by more or less futile “drives” when the Boer commandos evaded
the snares ingeniously set in their sight. Francis would have been very
happy in the “drives,” and did his best to get his old friend Harry
Rawlinson[2] to take him with him; but the discipline of the army
confined him to garrison work, and, instead of being with the hunt, he
had to content himself with the duties of earth-stopper. His letters
chiefly tell of meetings with other bored friends, such as Francis Scott,
in casual blockhouses, and of the amassing of live stock. “I have no
right to any horses; however, I have two good riding ones, including
a polo pony and three cart ponies.” ... “I have bought a Cape cart of
a Dutchman, newly done up, for £10. I really gave him £10 as a tip,
and he went and stole the Cape cart.” ... “I have now got four ponies,
two good ones. Rather an odd thing happened about one of the ponies we
commandeered. First time I used him was to send him to get some milk.
Funnily enough, it seemed he belonged to the milkman.” He started
polo under difficulties, and complained that no shooting was possible
at Harrismith, as “all the buck lay the same way as the Boers.” He
discovered that he had been meant by Providence for cavalry rather than
infantry—a discovery hastened by the arrival of the 14th Hussars. “By
Jove,” he writes, “there is a difference between cavalry and infantry. I
mess with them. At mess the sergeant-major says, ‘What will you drink,
sir? I have only whisky, lime-juice, and champagne.’” It is difficult
to see how this resourcefulness in drinks can have mattered much to
Francis, who, like Rivy, was a consistent teetotaller; but he liked a
lordly way of doing things. “The only way I can make you feel what this
life is,” he wrote, “is to compare it to your being asked to stay at
Melton for five or six months, being offered mounts every day, hearing
of the best of sport, and seeing every one going out and not being
allowed by your taskmaster to go. That describes this job exactly; only
with hunting, you know, you can hunt next year or a year to come, but
here I know I shall never get another job of Boer pursuing.” He deeply
sympathized with the view of an Eton friend who turned up one day with
the words, “O Lord! Twin, which is the way to England? I’ll not be a
soldier a week after I get home!”
The tedium of those Harrismith days was not improved by Rivy’s
letters—for from now onward the Twins maintained a methodical
correspondence. Rivy was enjoying that golden time which comes only once
in life—a popular young man’s first entrance into the great world. He
was by way of learning the ropes in the City, and engaged in small but
complex transactions on Francis’s account, since he had the management
of the latter’s slender patrimony. The letters are full of City gossip,
which greatly perplexed the lone soldier at Harrismith. “Love to all,
including the Jew man who helped to make £27 for me. Southern Pacifics
sound good, and are in the papers. I can’t find Leopoldinas anywhere
under City, Stock Exchange, or Markets. What does Yankees mean? Yankee
what? I can’t find that either.”
In January 1902, Rivy was given a post in the office of the Charter
Trust, of which his brother Arthur was a director and Lord Grey chairman.
But he had plenty of time to spare for amusements, and his letters were
full of tantalizing accounts of runs with the Quorn and the Belvoir and
the Windsor drag, dances, week-ends at Cliveden, Ascot, and Westonbirt,
parties in London, endless bachelor dinners. Rivy was always an excellent
letter writer, and at this stage had not the acute educational interest
which appeared later, though I find him advising Francis to learn the
_Times_ leaders by heart to improve his style, “because they are very
good English.” Usually his epistles are vivid diaries of his doings. The
record of old runs is apt to be “like mouldy wedding cake,” but here is a
description of a day with Waldorf Astor’s drag.
“I rode Jim Mackenzie’s runaway; they put an india-rubber bit
in his mouth which was useless. We started over the rails at
Hall Barn, and then went right-handed up the hill to the farm
at the top. Near the farm my quad took charge, so I sat back
and rode at one of those large white gates, hit it very hard,
pecked very badly, and was shot off. I was soon up. We then
checked in Slough road. We started off again down that ride
where I once fell over a hurdle with the drag. The grey[3]
ran away and took full charge; first down a steep hill over
some rails; then across the road into a plough, where I got a
little pull; then over about four fences, and then in jumping
a small one he landed on his head and lay there for about five
minutes. I took the saddle off and let him get his wind; then I
hacked to the check, which was at the Gerrard’s Cross gate of
Wilton Park. We started again up the park over the stile in the
corner, then right-handed over those two wire fences between
the farm and Pitland; then bore a little to the left—you know
where I mean—through the fence between the larches and that
steep lane. I remembered there was a pit somewhere there, but
couldn’t remember where. To my horror I found myself unable to
stop about five yards from it. So I sat like a mouse, and the
brute slithered half-way down, then jumped about ten feet, and
away again, as it was open at the bottom. Dalmeny thought I was
dead, when to his surprise he looked down and saw me half-way
across the next field.”
Rivy’s letters contain lists of the friends he ran across, the ladies
he danced with, and occasional gobbets of political news like this:
“Rosebery wrote to the _Times_ yesterday to cut off all relations with
C.-Bannerman; which has made rather an excitement.” Or bibliographic
notes such as: “I will send you out next mail a very good book, _Science
and Education_, by Professor Huxley, which I have marked in several
places—a sort of book you can read over again. I have often noticed
lately, in the leading articles in the _Times_, ‘as Professor Huxley
says.’” Printing-house Square has rarely had a more faithful adherent.
But here is a record of a startling adventure.
“I got a wire from Horace Farquhar [Lord Farquhar] asking me
to go and dance at 10.30, so I dined at home and went round.
On taking off my coat I asked if there were many people. ‘Yes,
my lord—the King and Queen.’ I walked upstairs where a lot of
people were standing, and I ought to have stayed there. But
like an ass I barged into the drawing-room, where every one was
standing at attention. The King walked up and shook me warmly
by the hand. I didn’t know whether to kiss it or kneel down or
what, so I just calmly said, ‘How do you do, sir?’ At that he
started off in the most fluent French. ‘What, sir?’ More fluent
French. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ I didn’t understand one word
he said, so he repeated the French, in which I caught the
words ‘tante’ and ‘malade.’ ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ I said,
standing on one leg. Then he said in English, ‘And how is your
aunt?’ ‘Very well indeed, sir.’ ‘Oh no, the one who has been so
ill. I am so glad she is much better.’ ‘Thank you, sir, she is
very well.’ I simply didn’t know what to do or say. ‘Are you
going to stay here long?’ (I thought he meant stay dancing.)
‘No, sir; I am going away early.’ ‘I hope you will stay here
some time, as you are such a great traveller. How do you
propose to go home?’ (He meant home to France.) ‘I thought of
going by the Underground, sir.’ That put an end to it. I gave a
sort of bow, and went over and shook hands with Lady Farquhar.
I then sneaked into the corridor, where we stood about for some
time. Afterwards I saw Horace Farquhar, and he said the King
had taken me for a Frenchman called Paul de Jaucourt, nephew
of Mrs. Hartmann, who has had bronchitis. Princess Pless heard
my conversation with the King, so I asked her if I had made
a blazing fool of myself. She said I had got out of it very
well, and never noticed anything except she could not make out
why he spoke French. After I had gone out he asked, ‘Who was
that?’ ‘Grenfell!’ ‘Good gracious, I have been talking French
to him and asking about his aunt! Why didn’t they tell me?’ He
was rather sick, I believe, as he hates making mistakes....
Everybody has heard the story, and roars with laughter.”
In March Francis was allowed to join his brother Harold’s column in the
Western Transvaal, and for the next three months had all the movement
he wanted. It was just after Lord Methuen’s _contretemps_, and the Boer
general opposed to them was the redoubtable Delarey. He found himself
among old friends, such as Jack Stuart-Wortley and Freddy Guest, and the
details of the life approximated to the cavalry standard. “Old H. is
splendid. Catch him roughing it! He has got an A1 tent he bought at home
with every sort of thing inside. We halt, and in about five minutes it
looks as if we had been there for ever.... On trek his bridles, buckles,
boots, breeches, etc., look as if he was at Melton hunting, they are
so clean. I have got three niggers now, and hope to be the same.” On
1st April they just missed rounding up a Boer convoy, and Francis was
speedily disillusioned as to what galloping meant in that kind of war.
“Your opinion is—and mine used to be—that you saw Boers and galloped at
the charge, same speed as the Derby; but it is very different. Here you
have a horse with a kettle hung on him, coat, mackintosh, water bottle,
cap, man, 200 rounds ammunition, and into the bargain a great crock. You
can imagine the pace we go.” He was pessimistic, too, about the war and
its progress. “How they can say we have conquered this country Heaven
knows. If you leave your blockhouse you get sniped, and if you go out
with 500 men you get jolly well kicked back into camp. The Boer roams
about the whole country as he likes, and yet it is ours.” On the 11th,
however, he obtained his desire, and was for the first time in a serious
action at Moedwil, where his column had six killed and fifty-three
wounded. “Up to now I had no time to notice wounded, or even to feel in
a funk. But the moment the show stopped I felt as if I had had a good
shaking and hated it.” He was mentioned in dispatches, to his intense
annoyance. “Let those that deserve it be mentioned. My job was only a
sort of head-waiter’s.”
On the 6th of June peace was signed. Harold started for home, and Francis
found himself in Johannesburg. There, as the army broke up, he met a
host of friends, and sampled also the local society. He played polo,
raced, sold horses, speculated a little like every junior officer at the
time, and was lucky enough, through good advice, to make in diamond mines
a considerable sum of money, which enabled him to think seriously of
going into the cavalry. Spurred on by Rivy’s entreaties, he did his best
to learn something about gold-mining, and became terribly confused in his
earnest study of the markets. He gives amusing pictures of the queer,
cosmopolitan life of the place—amusing because they are the work of a
shrewd and yet most ingenuous observer. Every one who remembers those
days on the Rand will appreciate such a note as this: “Old B. has made a
lot of money here. The other day he found in the card-room a Jew learning
poker. He gave £10 for another Jew’s seat, and then took £300 off the
learning Jew. He wasn’t born yesterday.”
Presently he returned to his regiment at Harrismith, and stayed with it
till the end of the year. He had outstayed his leave on the Rand, and
when he arrived at Harrismith was put under arrest. The man who preceded
him in his interview with the commanding officer was overcome by the
heat, and was carried out in a dead faint. When Francis was led into the
presence he observed cheerfully to the colonel, “I hope, sir, you are
not going to be so hard on me as you’ve been on that poor chap.” _Risu
solvitur curia._
Sir Hereward Wake, who was with him during those months, writes: “I
played with Francis, Geoffrey Shakerley, and Roddy Brownlow in what
was, I think, the first polo tournament Francis played in. It was at
Harrismith. There were thirteen teams in, and we (_i.e._ the 60th) won.
We used to have the most awful rags in the mess in those days, and I
will never forget Francis. He was by far the worst of us, though he was
a teetotaller.” He made strenuous efforts to get away from South Africa,
and an A.D.C.-ship to Lord Dudley in Ireland and the chance of service in
Somaliland were discussed in turn in the brothers’ letters. But nothing
happened till the battalion was ordered to India, and Francis returned to
England in February 1903.
At this period Rivy’s letters are the better reading. New horizons were
opening up for him everywhere, and he gave Francis the benefit of his
enlightenment. That summer and winter, in the intervals of dancing, polo,
and hunting, he reflected profoundly, and his own and Francis’s careers
were the object of his thoughts. He had discovered that he was very badly
educated, and was determined to remedy the defect. “It don’t matter a
damn, I do believe, not having learned at Eton as long as one does so
now.” So he set to work at a queer assortment of books, and sent the
results of his cogitations to Francis. Here are some extracts:—
“Any one can improve his memory. The best way is learning by
heart, no matter what, and then, when you think you know it,
say it or write it. After two or three days you are sure to
forget it again, and then, instead of looking at the book,
_strain your mind_ and try to remember it. Above all things,
always keep your mind employed. One great man (I forget which)
used to see a number on a door, say 69, and try to remember
what had happened in all the years ending in 69. Or see a
horse, and try to recall how many you have seen that day. When
riding or walking, try to recollect the sayings or events in
the last book you have read, or the daily paper. Asquith always
learns things by heart. He never wastes a minute; as soon as
he has nothing to do he picks up some book. He reads till 1.30
every night; when driving to the Temple next morning he thinks
over what he has read. Result: he has a marvellous memory, and
knows everything.”
“I am reading Rose’s _Napoleon_, and will send it to you. What
a wonder he was! Never spent a moment of his life without
learning something.... I went and saw the Coronation from
Montagu House. The usual show, but I had a good yarn with
Francis Scott.”
“I enclose a copy of an essay from Bacon’s book. Learn it by
heart if you can. I have, and think it a clinker.”
“Since 1st June I’ve read Macaulay’s essays on Chatham, Clive,
and Warren Hastings. Then an excellent book, _Map of Life_,
by Lecky; Bacon’s _Essays_; _Life of Napoleon_, by Rose,
and _Last Phase_, by Rosebery. I have also finished _Life of
Macaulay_, most interesting. I’ve always wondered how our
great politicians and literary chaps lived.... I also send
you a Shakespeare. I learned Antony’s harangue to the Romans
after Cæsar’s death by heart. I am also trying to learn a
little about electricity and railroad organization, so have
my time filled up. I tried to buy Moltke’s _Life_, but it is
25s.! _Pickwick Papers_ I also send you. I have always avoided
these sort of books, but Dickens’s works are miles funnier
than the rotten novels one now sees. We shall have to start a
correspondence comparing the books we read. Probably you will
hate the ones I like, and _vice versa_, but I’m sure you will
love Clive.”
“I have learned one thing by my reading and conversation with
professors. You and I go at a subject all wrong. Don’t read
_Life of Wellington_ and the history of his wars, but take a
period and study it as a whole.”
There are pages of explanation of City matters, which Francis cannot
have read unmoved, as Rivy during the summer contrived by injudicious
investment to lose a considerable sum of money for him. It is curious to
find Rivy with his ambitions herding among the _rastaquouère_ crowd of
minor speculators, intent on little gambles in matters where he had no
serious knowledge. Sometimes the wave made by some big vessel carried
forward his small cockle-shell, but more often it submerged it, and there
was a sad explanatory letter to his partner at Harrismith.
About this time—when such explanations were over—Rivy took to lecturing
Francis on his duties, and tried to inspire him with his own aims.
“H. writes to Arthur that you have the wildest ideas—want to return at
once, get into a cavalry regiment and play polo—and that the sooner you
chuck polo and look at the serious side of life the better. I am awfully
disappointed, as I hoped to plug at the City and get to the top of the
tree, and you at the top of soldiering, instead of a loafer who only
plays polo. England would have finished the war sooner if we had had more
Kitcheners and fewer polo pros.” That was all very well, but in nearly
every letter of Rivy’s there were lyrical accounts of his own games at
Ranelagh and Roehampton, and a good deal more about horse-coping and
bachelor dinners than about books. Francis, in his Harrismith solitude,
may well have considered that his physician himself needed a little
healing. And when at Christmas the same earnest apostle of self-culture
went to Paris on education intent, the exile in South Africa may have
reflected that he too would be ready to follow a path of duty which led
through dinners at the Embassy, _Les Folies Dramatiques_, Maxim’s, and
the Café de Paris.
One pleasant trait of Rivy’s was that he felt bound to pass on to Francis
any good talk he heard, and faithfully to describe his week-ends. He was
at Terling when the news came of the signature of peace in South Africa.
“Lord Rayleigh is a very scientific fellow; in fact, he is
about a generation in front of his time. I don’t think I
have ever enjoyed a Sunday so much. Lady Rayleigh is Arthur
Balfour’s sister. The party included Arthur Balfour, Lord and
Lady Ribblesdale, Lord and Lady Cobham, Miss Lyttelton, Lord
and Lady Cranborne, and Mr. Haldane, K.C., who is supposed to
be the cleverest lawyer and philosopher. It was ripping to hear
those fellows talk.
“On Saturday Balfour got a cable from Kitchener to say the
voting was going very close, which sent me to bed with rather
a headache. However, they kept the telegraph office open all
night, and at ten o’clock Sunday morning he got a telegram
to say, ‘Delegates have signed peace; Secretary for War is
consulting Prime Minister about publishing news.’ In the
afternoon he got another telegram to say that they would
publish the news at four o’clock. I was rather in hopes that
they would keep it till Parliament met on Monday, and then one
would have got it about five hours in front of everybody else.
After dinner on Saturday they discussed peace. Balfour said he
did not like the telegram at all, but what made him hopeful was
that the City was so confident. In all probability the City
knew more about it than he did, as he only heard the news from
Kitchener and Milner, against telegrams from all over Africa.
This came as rather an eye-opener to me when one considered
that fellows in the City were looking to Arthur Balfour as
knowing about ten thousand times more than they did....
“I had a good talk to Haldane late in the evening about
America, the Shipping Combine, etc. He said that the great
difference between the American and the Englishman was that
the American boy was always thinking how soon he could get on
in business, while the latter was always thinking how long he
could keep out of it....
“Ribblesdale is the best fellow you ever met. For five
minutes he talks about Shakespeare, and for ten minutes about
fox-hunting.”
It was on this visit that Rivy heard Mr. Balfour and Lord Rayleigh
praising _Alice in Wonderland_. Deeply impressed, he bought the book as
soon as he returned to London and read it earnestly. To his horror he saw
no sense in it. Then it struck him that it might be meant as nonsense,
and he had another try, when he concluded that it was rather funny. But
he remained disappointed. He had hoped for something that would afford
political enlightenment.
In February 1903 Francis came home, under orders for India. I think it
was on this occasion that Rivy met him at Southampton and found that he
had omitted to bring any money. Francis, having spent all his during the
voyage, was in the same position. Both happened to be wearing suits of
an identical brown. Stewards and other people expecting tips, pursuing
Francis, were suddenly and awfully faced by the apparent duplication of
their quarry. They gave up the quest and retired to reflect on their sins.
The brothers were together for the better part of seven months, so their
faithful correspondence ceased. They lived with their sister Dolores at
17 Hans Row, and had a pleasant summer of balls and polo-playing. Their
likeness was a great amusement to them, and often at dances they would
change partners, who were quite unconscious of the difference. Rivy used
to breakfast at eight and leave for the City, while Francis got up at a
more leisurely hour, to the confusion of a new parlour-maid. “This is a
funny place,” she declared. “One of the gentlemen has had two breakfasts,
and the other has disappeared without having any.”
In September Rivy departed for America “to learn business,” taking with
him a case of his brother’s champagne as provender for the road. He
visited many cities, both in the United States and in Canada, acquired
a mass of miscellaneous information, and made the acquaintance of Mr.
Bonbright, in whose London house he afterwards became a partner. The
diary which he kept on his tour showed that he would have made a good
commercial journalist, for he had the liveliest interest in all new
business organizations and mechanical processes, and considerable power
of describing them. He met a variety of people, from Mr. Chauncey Depew
and Mr. Hill, the railway magnate, to some of the American polo players
whom he was afterwards to know better. The trip was an admirable bit of
education, for it gave him a host of new friends, and the weeks of solid
work which he put in in a Trust office in New York were an excellent
apprenticeship. The diary is as serious as the works of Mr. Samuel
Smiles, but now and then he deals with other things than business. In
Denver he went to church.
“As I was approaching it a nice-looking man accosted me. ‘Guess
we’re late. My name is James; what’s yours?’ ‘Grenfell,’ says
I, wondering what he wanted with me. As we entered the church
my new friend told me I might sit in his pew. I never enjoyed
a service so much. It was high church. They had women in the
choir and cheery hymns. Just before the sermon the Rector,
instead of announcing banns of marriage as I expected, said,
‘Friends, Christmas is nearing. I’m going to have a rare old
Christmas. These last three years I’ve been starving myself,
but I’m going to alter all that. Everybody, I hope, will join
in making Christmas happy. Why, in old times they used to
carry the parson out on a stretcher.’ I thought this the most
outspoken, first-class parson I had yet struck.”
To his delight he found Waldorf Astor in New York, and the two returned
home together in December.
Meantime Francis had left for India, and early in November was with the
60th at Rawal Pindi. There his soul was at once torn with longings.
The sight of racing studs and much polo inflamed his ambition, and the
proximity of the 9th Lancers awoke all his hankerings for the cavalry. He
had wanted to join the 17th Lancers, but now transferred his affections
to the Ninth, which contained many old friends. At first he did his
best to be patient, aided by a wise letter from Harry Rawlinson and some
trenchant remarks from Rivy. But the longing could not be repressed, and
the _cri de cœur_ breaks out in every letter. “I dined with the 9th last
week. By Jove, Mate, a cavalry regiment is different ... ten old Etonians
... nicest chaps on earth ... Colonel won the National ... a fizzer,” and
so on. His chief argument was his great keenness on polo, about which
he could rouse little enthusiasm in his own regiment. He argued thence
to military superiority. “David Campbell[4] is adjutant, and fairly
puts in ginger. You can imagine a show run by David Campbell, who is
very good at polo, mad keen soldier, won the Grand National and Grand
Military.” In December it was: “By Jove, Mate, I do hate this walking. It
does make one’s mouth water to see those chaps riding.” He did not much
approve either of the way the foot-slogging manœuvres were conducted.
“The one idea of the umpire is to see who has the most men. If you have
a battalion very strongly entrenched and are fought by one and a half
battalions, you are said to be beaten. Yet in South Africa fifty Boers
delayed and made it dashed uncomfortable for Buller’s whole army.” He
finished off with the novel plea: “Infantry soldiering is dashed rot and
dashed _expensive_. I have worn out all my walking boots, and now my calf
has grown so I cannot get on my polo boots!” In despair he besought Rivy
to see if the _Daily Telegraph_ would send him as correspondent with the
Tibet Expedition.
So the first part of 1904 was passed by Francis in a state of
considerable disgruntlement. Not that he was unhappy. He had fallen in
love with India and the modest pleasures of a soldier’s life there; but
the vision of the joys of cavalry was always at hand to tantalize him.
The 9th Lancers warmly urged him to transfer, and he wanted it done at
once, that he might have the summer for polo practice and then, as he
said, “win everything next year.” But the War Office does not move in
such torrential fashion, and, moreover, his uncle and his relations
generally were doubtful of the wisdom of the step; so for months there
was a complicated correspondence in which Francis filled the part of
the moth desiring a star. He did his best to work for his examination
in Hindustani, a language which he reprobated on the ground that it was
without “literature and fairy tales.” But he very often broke loose, and
went off to polo matches and steeplechases up and down India, excusing
himself to the censorious Rivy thus: “While working I thought to myself,
‘Why make life a burden, and chuck everything, and then probably fail?
By not buying ponies now I cannot get a chance for next year.’ So I
got leave and started off——” The result appeared in the next letter.
“Yesterday I rode in a steeplechase. Arrived on the course full of dash
and no end of a swell. Left it like the chap who last fought Pedlar
Palmer—black eye, stupid, hand like an apple, and lame!” Then he would
return penitently to his books. “The munshi says I haven’t a chance of
passing. By Jove, Mate, I am beginning to feel the effects of never
learning Latin Prose at Eton.”
About this time the correspondence between the brothers was remarkably
candid. Rivy had a typist to dictate to, Francis scribed with his own
(usually damaged) hand; so when Rivy’s epistles were scrappy Francis had
something to say. “I have a tremendous lot to tell you, but I am so angry
with your letter this mail that I won’t write more. It is too bad, Mate.
I sweat like blazes to write to you, and I receive a type-written letter
from you signed by an infernal clerk.” Each gives advice to the other
with the utmost frankness. For example, Francis: “Take a tip from me,
old boy: go gingerly with the reforms in your office. Don’t rush in and
say, ‘This is dashed badly done. In America it is done like this.’ We are
all so apt to do this, as our family is enthusiastic and impatient. It
only gets chaps’ backs up and makes everything more awkward.” And Rivy:
“You say the races are awful rot. Why the deuce do you attend them then?
Oughtn’t you to be spending your time much better? If you spent the time
with a book in your hand instead of at some silly race meeting, where you
loaf the whole day, it would do you more good.” And again on the cavalry
question: “I would like to see all your ponies break down and draw your
nose to the millstone [_sic_]. At this moment you look on the Ninth as
everything. In a few years you will probably be looking on them as the
greatest rotters. Remember that the majority of men who have become great
have done so through the necessity of having to work to get their bread
and butter.” But Francis occasionally got back on his mentor. “Yours of
29th February to hand—rather a rotter. It does seem funny you starting
polo again. Here am I in the home of polo—a ground half a mile off—and I
haven’t played at all, and don’t seem to want to. Your letter saying I
was so out in £ S. D. made me put up all my ponies for sale.” Francis had
considerably outrun the constable in his expenditure, and Rivy had taken
him gravely to task, adding morosely that things were so bad in the City
that stockbrokers were beginning to pick up cigarette ends in the street.
His wrestlings with Hindustani had soured Francis on the intellectual
life, towards which Rivy sought to goad him. His letters contain some
sensible remarks on the Tariff Reform controversy then raging, but
that is all, save for the flickering interest in art revealed by one
postscript: “What is the name of the chap who did the pictures of naked
ladies at Hertford House, and those things in the Duchess’s room at
Blenheim? Not Boucher, was it?” Rivy, on the other hand, was grappling
manfully with his education. In January he was reading Creevey, and
much struck by his resemblance to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. “It
shows that the times of Pitt, which I have always looked on as beyond
reproach, differed very little from our own.” At Terling he met Raymond
Asquith—“whom I have always heard of as the cleverest person of the
day”—and was much impressed by Raymond’s habits. “When I arrived at the
Rayleighs’ there were a whole lot of fellows talking in the smoke-room
and blinking at the fire, except one. Of course you can guess who it
was—Asquith reading in a corner. In the train coming up, while I read
four pages of my book he read twenty of his.” He was desperately afraid
of getting the reputation of a _flâneur_. “Harry Longman said to me quite
seriously, ‘I congratulate you, Rivy.’ ‘What for?’ says I. ‘I hear you
and Francis are millionaires.’ ... What a curse it is the way our family,
especially you and I, seem to get talked about! Serious people look on
people who are always talked about with suspicion. I hate being a sort of
Jubilee Juggins of the gossip world.”
He procured a coach, with whom he read history several hours in the
week, and he strove to move in intellectual society. “I had a topping
evening. I had written to ask two professor chaps to dinner, one of them
von Halle, head professor in Berlin, the other Mackinder. You would have
laughed if you had seen them. They came and dined at the Bath Club at
8.15. About 7.30 I got into such a funk at what the devil I should say to
them that I got Cecil to come as well. However, as always happens with
that sort of chap, they were most easy to talk to and most entertaining.”
He attended political meetings, notably Mr. Chamberlain’s in the City; he
dined with Lord Rosebery the evening before the opening of Parliament,
and he treasured every fragment of good talk he heard to send to Francis.
At Easter he went again to Paris, and wrote an amusing account of a stag
hunt at Fontainebleau. What with one thing and another he had a most
varied spring and summer, and his diary is filled with polo matches,
City gossip, and the record of dinner-table conversation in about equal
proportions. Here are some specimens of the last:—
“Met Jack Morgan,[5] who told me this anecdote. His mother went
to see an ostrich farm in California. The keeper, pointing to
two fine ostriches, said, ‘Those are Lord and Lady Bobs. Bobs
is a very docile animal, and very nice to Lady Bobs. Those two
are Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. Old Morgan is a crusty brute, and will
have nothing to say to his wife.’”
“Met Harry Rawlinson in the Park. Talked of Stonewall Jackson,
his power as a leader of men and judge of character. Lee was
the thinker and Jackson the actor. Harry R. poked my pony in
the ribs and said, ‘What sort of thing is that?’ whereat my
beast promptly landed his a kick in the stomach.”
“After dinner went to an ‘At Home’ of Mrs. Sidney Webb. Met
some rum-looking coves there. Had a talk with Mrs. Webb
about fiscal policy. A Free Trader joined in, and I argued
disgracefully, proved nothing, expressed myself badly, and was
rather trodden on by the Free Trader, who knew his points.”
“Dined with Lady Salisbury in Arlington Street—a jolly party,
composed of Lord Hugh Cecil, Winston Churchill, Lady Mabel
Palmer, Neil Primrose, Lady Crewe, Lady Aldra Acheson, and Sir
Edgar Vincent. Sat next and bucked to Lady Aldra. W. Churchill
held forth at dinner to the whole table, discussing invasion.
Salisbury said he thought that if one was going to make a
speech one ought to do nothing else the whole day.”
“Dined with Lord Rosebery. Party included Dowager Duchess of
Manchester, Revelstoke, Crewe, Lady Sibyl Grant, Dalmeny, Mr.
and Lady E. Guinness, Brodrick, Haldane, Lady Gerard, etc.
After dinner Lord Rosebery and Brodrick chaffed each other.
Rosebery quoted some speech of Gladstone’s. ‘Yes,’ says
Brodrick, ‘but he continued to say’—and quoted some more of the
same speech. How on earth do these chaps get their memories?...
Rosebery came and talked to me. I do look up to that man....
He told a story of Lord Robert Cecil, who is noted, like all
Cecils, for his ignorance of horses. A case came up in the
courts at which reference was made to a horse’s knees. ‘Which
knee—fore or hind?’ asks Cecil.”
During that summer Rivy had a somewhat serious love affair. He was not
what is commonly called susceptible, and made ready friendships with
women as he made them with men. His letters are full of the “jolly
little ladies” and “capital girls” that he was always meeting. But now
he stumbled on something rather like a “grand passion,” and he sighed in
vain. The experience made him for the rest of his life curiously tender
and sympathetic towards others in a like case. I never heard Rivy laugh
at even the crudest romance. For a little he was very miserable, and in
the orthodox way he thought of travel. There was another reason why he
should go abroad. The South African market was in a bad state, and since
his work on the Charter Trust was concerned with South Africa, he thought
it right that he should go out there and judge things for himself. At the
back of his head was a plan to join Francis in India. Sir Clinton Dawkins
encouraged the project, so on 23rd July he sailed for the Cape.
Meantime in India the unwilling rifleman was hovering about the candle
of the 9th Lancers. He applied for a transfer, and then, on the advice
of his relations, withdrew his application. He was much encouraged by a
letter from Sir Douglas Haig, who was then Inspector-General of Cavalry
in India.
“DEAR FRANCIS GRENFELL,—I shall be delighted to assist you in
any way I can. First, I think you wise to join the Cavalry,
because you will have greater opportunities of acting on your
own, and more independence than in the Infantry.
“Next, as to the regiment. You can’t do better than join the
9th.
“Lastly, as to working it. Don’t fret about two or three
years’ seniority. You must risk something, especially in the
Cavalry. Officers seem to play leap-frog over one another in
the most surprising manner nowadays. So my advice is to take
the first chance you can of joining the 9th, either by transfer
or exchange.... Arrange to come and stay with me here for two
or three weeks, and we will do our best to push the matter
through.”
For the rest Francis’s letters are filled mainly with obscure details
about a buggy to be bought at home, notes about matches and race
meetings, and boisterous complaints about the aridness of Rivy’s
epistles. “A very moderate letter from you.... You say nothing of the
National, nothing of Cecil, Harold, Arthur, the girls or the uncle. Buck
up, old boy, and make that typewriter move. Are you so busy you can only
spare time to write ‘Yours, Rivy’ (badly written), and even have to hand
the envelope to be addressed by a chap whose writing made me think it
was a bill?” To which Rivy retorts: “The last two pages of your letter
are occupied with telling me of a pony of yours that was gelded. Cannot
you find something more interesting and instructive than this to tell
me? I don’t care a blow whether every pony in India is gelded to-morrow
morning.” But the gelding, judging by his exploits, was worthy of a
letter. Says Francis later: “My pony Snipe that was gelded has recovered
wonderfully, and laid out two syces. One he kicked in the kidneys. The
next day he boxed the new syce, got free, and caught him on the eye with
his hind-leg; so he also lies for dead.”
In spite of his anxieties about his future, Francis had a pleasant
year. He played in polo teams which won the championships at Poona and
Umballa, and at the latter place he met Lord Kitchener, who, to his
surprise, knew all about his cavalry ambitions and approved them. The
news that Rivy was to visit him stirred him to immense exertions, for he
was determined that the traveller should have the best that India could
offer. He was now genuinely in love with the country.
“It is the best I’ve struck, once you’ve forgotten England. It
is not that it is so much cheaper (which it is), but the great
thing I find is that every one is so much poorer. No bachelor
seems to have more than about £600 a year, and many £100, and
the married about £2,000. I am looked on as a Hoggenheimer,
whereas in England you contrast with fellows like Harold
Brassey. I live like a king—servants, carts, horses galore.
What more can one want except a wife—but on that point there’s
a famine in the land.”