Witness to History

by Victoria Schofield

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ISBN-13:	9780300182149
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	07/16/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

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WITNESS TO HISTORY

The Life of John Wheeler-Bennett

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By Victoria Schofield

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Victoria Schofield
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-18214-9

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Chapter One

The Undertow of History

I spent my childhood in the age of security.

John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett was born just after the dawn of a new century and of a new reign. When Queen Victoria died in 1901, her son, Edward VII – the Peacemaker – ascended the throne. Acute appendicitis meant that the new king's coronation was postponed until June 1902 – the year of John's birth. As a future royal biographer, he would have liked the rough coincidence of a coronation with his own arrival in the world, on 13 October. John's father, John Wheeler-Bennett, was over sixty; the son of John Bennett of Portsmouth and Mary Wheeler, in 1889 he had added Wheeler to create, by Deed Poll, his hyphenated surname. When the young John was christened, he too was given his grandmother's name which explains how he became John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett; to his family and friends he was always 'Jack'. His mother, Christina, the daughter of Alexander and Ruby McNutt, was half-Canadian, since her father came from Nova Scotia, and half-American, because her mother was from Virginia. Jack's eldest brother, Jamie, had died from typhoid fever aged nine in 1894. His other brother, Clement, was born in 1887. His sister, Constance Irene, was born in 1895. 'When Jack was born I was very jealous,' Irene later recollected. 'I had been almost an "only" for seven years, and I distinctly remember climbing on to my father's knee and saying, "You will love me best, won't you, Daddy?"' Irene soon got over her jealousy and remained 'devoted' to her younger brother all his life.

The Wheeler-Bennetts' home was near the village of Keston, near Bromley in Kent. They lived in a grand Victorian house, surrounded by acres of land, gardens and a lake where the Ravensbourne river had been dammed and from which the house took its name. Wheeler-Bennett senior was a wealthy businessman with an interest in the firm of Canada Packers, one of the pioneering meat packaging concerns in Canada. His partner was the Canadian Joseph Flavelle. With Wheeler-Bennett's worldwide business interests, which included ownership of Hay's Wharf in the docks of London, there was easily enough money in the family to have servants, gardeners and a chauffeur. In his leisure time, John Wheeler-Bennett senior enjoyed shooting and was an early golf enthusiast. In 1912, he sent the first private economic mission into Siberia in collaboration with the Russian administrator Prince Paul Dolgorouki, a progressive aristocrat who was interested in developing the resources of this part of the tsarist empire. On this occasion, the venture got no further than generating a report. Also among Wheeler-Bennett's commercial contacts were Chinese traders; some lines of verse, current at the time of the Sino-Japanese War in the late nineteenth century, had pervaded the young Jack's nursery – sung to him by his nursemaid ('it had to be my nursemaid, my nurse was far too dignified and stately to countenance anything so vulgar as doggerel!'):

    Chinee soljee man
    He wavee piecee fan,
    He shoutee hipollay for Empelor
    He winkee-blinkee eye
    Say mally bye-and-bye
    When Chinee soljee marchee home from war.

Although, as the young Wheeler-Bennett later wrote, by the time 'this piece of pro-Chinese propaganda' had reached his night nursery – 'somewhere about 1905' – it was wonderfully out of date, it engendered in his mind a fascination with the Orient. Jack also had an early career in acting: at the age of five he performed in a play called The Season, written by a young (and later celebrated) writer, Margaret Kennedy, who lived near by. As his sister recalled, 'Jack, with his red hair and alabaster complexion, was Autumn, and looked lovely in flame-coloured trousers and little green tunic.' Jack was not athletic but he enjoyed riding, and Irene remembered how they used to be sent together to an old-fashioned hotel at St Leonards-on-Sea: 'We loved this and used to ride from the local riding stable.' By contrast, their elder brother, Clement, was a remote figure; by the time Jack emerged from the nursery, he had finished at Rugby and was studying medicine at Christ Church, Oxford.

Jack's father was old enough to be his grandfather, and he describes being transfixed by 'the undertow of history' while listening to his description of the Battle of Waterloo. 'He was a brilliant and vivid raconteur, and, so animated and realistic were his descriptions of the carnage of the Sunken Road and the desperate courage of the last charge of the Old Guard, that I was both terrified and fascinated and spent many a sleepless night in consequence.' Contemporary events were also making a lasting impression: in 1910, Edward VII died and the Wheeler-Bennetts occupied a stand in the Edgware Road along which the funeral cortege would process to Paddington station and onwards to Windsor for the late king's burial at Frogmore. Together with the new king, George V, marched his cousin the German emperor, Wilhelm II, and the old duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria's last surviving son. 'Although what impressed me most deeply at the time was the sight of Caesar, the late King's wire-headed terrier, being led by a royal groom behind the charger with boots reversed in the stirrups, I do remember these three figures in scarlet with plumed helmets and thinking that the one with the upturned moustaches [Kaiser Wilhelm] was the most regal-looking of all.' The following year, the coronation of King George V 'was the occasion for a big house-party' at Ravensbourne. 'Every room was filled with visitors from all parts of the Empire and from the United States.' One of his mother's friends who had come from the United States presented her with a copy of The Long Roll, a novel on the American Civil War by Mary Johnston.

My mother was not particularly interested in it but she read parts of it aloud to me, and far-reaching effects upon my life began. At nine years old I had barely heard of the great American struggle, but I became immediately fired with its magnificent gallantry and its poignant tragedy ... From this early experience derived not only my lifetime avocation but in due course my deep affection and admiration for the United States and for its fundamental greatness and virtue.

As a young boy, Wheeler-Bennett also became aware of certain domestic political issues that made his father's blood pressure rise: the Parliament Act of 1911 and the Home Rule Bill of 1913, as well as growing unemployment. 'My father,' he later recalled, 'would become choleric, speaking of His Majesty's Government of the day as "a pack of confounded radicals" and of Mr Lloyd George as "a howling yahoo".' At such times, his mother found it prudent to keep the newspapers hidden until after lunch. When, following the formation of the Balkan League in 1912, war was declared on Turkey, first by Montenegro, then jointly by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, the young Wheeler-Bennett followed the events of the 'Balkan wars' with 'keen interest in the newspapers and on war maps, on which I moved parti-coloured flags as the fronts ebbed and flowed in the tide of battle'. Nursing 'delicate' health, he had 'plenty of time for reading', developing what he called 'a kind of schizophrenic romance between the actual happenings in Europe and the lure of the past glories of the Orient'. He 'devoured all Chinese history', following avidly the chronicles of Marco Polo, determining one day to see for himself 'the palms and temples of the East'.

Jack Wheeler-Bennett's preparatory school was Wellington House, Westgate-on-Sea, near Margate, on the Isle of Thanet at the extreme eastern tip of Kent. In the Easter holidays of 1914, with Irene at finishing school in Paris, the Wheeler-Bennetts took a European tour. 'It was a memorable experience for a boy of [nearly] twelve and, though I have subsequently travelled throughout the world, the romance of that first contact with Europe is still with me,' he recalled. But, much as he enjoyed the experience, in later years he thought that he had inherited some of his father's xenophobia, which made him prefer Americans to continental Europeans. On their itinerary were the cathedral cities of Belgium and, at the young Wheeler-Bennett's insistence, they visited the battleground of Waterloo. To his disappointment, the guide lacked his father's narrative skills. In Berlin, he saw again his moustached hero, Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II, reviewing the Prussian Guard at Tempelhof, outside Berlin. The Wheeler-Bennetts then travelled onwards to Austria. A visit to the opera in Vienna provided a glimpse of the ageing Emperor Franz Joseph I seated in his imperial box. 'When I next returned to Europe, Belgium was in ruins, and the German and Austro-Hungarian empires had ceased to exist.' The year 1914 brought another excitement. Irene turned eighteen and her younger brother was allowed out of school to attend her 'coming-out' ball in July. 'To my young eyes it was the loveliest thing I had ever seen. A ballroom under a marquee was built out over the lawn ... thousands of fairy-lights illuminated the grounds ... it was a warm moonlit night ... there were fireworks and lovely things to eat and I was allowed to stay up till midnight.' Describing the experience as a 'dream of delight', only later did he recognise that 'we were even then dancing on the brink of a volcano'.

In distant Bosnia, Emperor Franz Joseph's nephew and heir, Archduke Ferdinand, inspector general of the army, was overseeing manoeuvres. The Serbian nationalists, however, were displeased by his presence. In their opinion, Bosnia, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, occupied by Austria in 1878 and annexed thirty years later, was still under 'foreign' rule. Impervious to warnings that his life might be in danger, on Sunday, 28 June the archduke and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, processed openly through the streets of Sarajevo. An assassination attempt failed. Instead, an officer travelling in the next carriage was wounded by a Serbian assailant. Later the same day, when the archduke and the duchess went to visit the wounded officer in hospital, another assassin – Gavrilo Princip – got close enough to the royal cavalcade to draw his revolver and fire two fatal shots. The duchess took the first bullet; the second bullet hit the archduke. Instead of exacting retribution within the confines of the empire, the Austrian government did not wish to move against the Serbs without German support. Unlike many of his colleagues, Wheeler-Bennett senior foresaw the danger of a widening conflict: during the weeks after the assassination, he reorganised his finances, divesting himself of his European interests and reinvesting the capital in Australian and Canadian securities, as well as transferring holdings in the United States to Canada. 'It was,' Wheeler-Bennett later recollected, 'a singularly wise decision.'

Over the next few weeks, diplomatic exchanges took place. Russia announced that it would defend the Serbians – its Slavic brothers – and vacillated between partial and full mobilisation. A month after the assassination, Austria declared war on Serbia. When the Austro-Hungarians mobilised their army, the Germans followed suit. On 1 August, Russia and Germany declared war on each other. France, an ally of Russia, came out in support of Russia. Within days, Britain, which had signed an 'Entente Cordiale' with France in 1904, was drawn into the conflagration. In the preceding years, influenced both by improving relations with France and Russia and fears of German naval expansion, which seemed to threaten the British Empire, an expectation had already arisen that Britain would support the French if they were attacked by Germany. Furthermore, an 1839 treaty pledged Britain and other signatories (including Prussia) to defend Belgium's neutrality. Thus, when German troops advanced across the Belgian border, the British government felt compelled to honour its obligations and, on 4 August, war was declared on Germany. Italy remained neutral, but Austro-Hungary and Germany acquired a new ally in Turkey, whose diplomatic approaches to Britain and France had been rejected. Although Turkey did not undertake offensive action until the end of October, that country's allegiance to Germany was evident in the presence of the German warships Goeben and Breslau in the Dardanelles.

For the young Jack Wheeler-Bennett, the late summer of 1914 'was the most exciting I had ever spent'. Clement, who had gone from Christ Church to St Thomas's Hospital to become a doctor, joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon lieutenant. Irene was working with one of the Voluntary Aid Detachments – known as VADs – which had been formed to provide medical assistance to the wounded, and was busy cleaning the rooms of buildings which had been requisitioned as hospitals. Within no time, as the toll of the fighting grew, the beds were filled with wounded Belgian and British soldiers. Although the Belgians were initially received warmly, Wheeler-Bennett senior refused to let them stay at Ravensbourne, instead encouraging his wife to rent a separate house for them. In later life, Wheeler-Bennett appreciated his father's decision as the Wheeler-Bennetts were thus distanced from the commotion when rows broke out among the refugees. On the other hand, the British soldiers 'were heroes whom I could comprehend, and my greatest delight was to visit them, bringing with me cigarettes and sweets, and listening to their stories'. When Irene was transferred to the Third London General Hospital in Wandsworth, her younger brother was allowed to attend the concerts given there at weekends. 'I recall the exhilaration of sitting among that vast audience in their hospital "blues" and joining in the choruses of every popular music-hall song, ancient and modern.' 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary', 'The Broken Doll' and 'Roses of Picardy' were among his favourites.

Jack Wheeler-Bennett found that the war had an impact at school too. Most of the young teachers had volunteered. The headmaster at Westgate became 'the personification of a British jingo', exhorting the boys to accept that there were some things they were going to have to go without and giving them daily renditions of the despatches in the newspapers. 'He read very well, and his rendering of the account of the landings at Gallipoli, for example, moved me greatly.' Wheeler-Bennett's first personal experience of the war came when he was lying on the lawn at school watching 'with feverish excitement' a dogfight between a British and a German airman.

Adjustments also had to be made at home. Petrol rationing and difficulties in getting servants meant that the Wheeler-Bennetts closed Ravensbourne during the winter. They took up residence in the fashionable Alexandra Hotel just off Hyde Park Corner in London. Wheeler-Bennett senior was working for the Red Cross and was also one of the original members of Major Rothschild's Military Advisory Committee, as well as being chairman of the finance department of the Kent County hospitals, for which service he was made a Companion of the British Empire (CBE). Family lore related that – together with his business associate, Joseph Flavelle – Wheeler-Bennett was responsible for importing much needed bacon from Canada. He refused the peerage he was offered because his North American wife, Christina, did not 'fancy it'. Flavelle, on the other hand, was happy to accept a baronetcy for reorganising the munitions industry during the war as chairman of the Munitions Board.

By the summer of 1915, the fear of a large-scale invasion of the south coast of England meant that extra precautions had to be taken, which, for the boys at Westgate, involved preparing to evacuate the school at a few hours' notice. Jack Wheeler-Bennett, still only twelve, had been made 'head of the school, and thus occupied the unenviable position of a sort of quasi-adjutant to the Headmaster'. Even so, he enjoyed the secrecy – lest the younger boys get frightened – of the preparations which involved planning to cross the Stour river, which separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of Kent. Each boy was to carry a knapsack containing a change of underwear and some toiletry articles. Jack's particular duty was to organise the boys in groups under his fellow monitors. 'Fortunately – for the thought now of shepherding some sixty small boys on a trek in the grey dawn fills me with horror' – they were never required to put the plan into action.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from WITNESS TO HISTORY by Victoria Schofield Copyright © 2012 by Victoria Schofield. Excerpted by permission of YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps....................vii
Acknowledgements....................ix
1 The Undertow of History....................1
2 Youthful Illusions....................14
3 International Traveller....................23
4 The Tragedy of Weimar....................60
5 Twilight....................89
6 The Perils of War....................117
7 Political Warfare in America....................143
8 The Horrors of Peace....................170
9 High Honour....................197
10 The Sixties....................217
11 Memories....................252
Notes....................285
Select Bibliography....................326
Index....................330