Having spent much of his childhood playing war games in the park at Sledmere, reading books on the great generals, and studying Vauban’s theories of fortification in the Library, it is not surprising that Mark had an affinity with the military. His heroes were Marshal Saxe, Marshal of France in the reign of Louis XV, and the Emperor Napoleon, as whom he had a penchant for occasionally dressing up.
In his first year at Cambridge, he had decided to apply for a commission in the army, filling in the required E536 form ‘Questionnaire for a candidate for first appointment to a Commission in the Militia, Yeomanry, Cavalry or Volunteers’. Citing his height to be 5 ft 11¾ inches, he had applied to and been accepted for a volunteer militia battalion, the Princess of Wales’s Own Yorkshire Regiment. In this he was following in the footsteps of his ancestor, Sir Christopher Sykes, who in 1798 had raised his own volunteer militia, the Yorkshire Wolds Gentlemen and Yeomanry Cavalry, to help defend the neighbourhood in case of an invasion by Napoleon. Though Mark had done some training with the Regiment in 1898 and 1899, it must still have come as a shock to hear, in the middle of his Michaelmas Term, that they were to be mobilized to serve in South Africa.
‘I now have to go to South Africa’, he wrote to Henry Cholmondeley, ‘which is the most infernal nuisance.’3 It was a nuisance compounded by the fact that his mother’s debtors were once again clamouring for payment and Mark, fearful that his father was immovable in his refusal to pay up, felt himself bound to step in to prevent the whole estate going ‘to the thieves’ shelter’.4 Such a disaster was not inconceivable, since the sums involved were huge, the entire debt being calculated at £120,000.5 ‘[I]f I make myself liable for all these immense sums,’ he wrote to Edith, ‘and no arrangement can be made with my father, with the Estate duty added to all, I shall stand in a somewhat precarious position’. What he found most humiliating, however, was ‘to be constantly arguing on a hypothesis of my father’s death which is to me the most loathsome feature of my repulsive affairs’.6
Over the next two months Mark fought hard to reach a settlement that would be agreeable to all parties, while simultaneously having to be prepared for his leave to be cancelled, and his subsequent departure for South Africa. The number of false starts was marked by the numerous letters of farewell he received from Edith.
In return he kept her entertained with tales of his daily life. He was at Sledmere at the end of March for his coming of age, a very muted affair owing to the war.
These last days have seen me amusing myself by reading old books and arranging a room for me to sit in … I have been receiving piles of congratulatory telegrams and letters concerning my coming of age, mostly of this description …
‘13 Queer St.
Dear Sir,
I hasten to congratulate you on your majority, should you Sir require any small temporary loan from 5 to 20,000 pounds etc, etc …’
I received a silver inkstand from the labourers, a very pretty thing, where at I was very pleased.7
He also amused her with some of the nonsense written about him in the local papers.
By the way, it never rains but it pours … an extract from the Yorkshire Evening Post. ‘Mr Mark Sykes who has just come of age … is a fine singer and can tell a yarn with anyone.’ Fine Singer!! I’faith a fine singer, that should amuse you. See me sing
or tell a yarn with anyone.8
Back in London, on April Fool’s Day, he took a friend to dinner and a play. ‘I had great fun before the play,’ he told Edith.
I have a little friend not a bad fellow, but an esthete [sic], who is very decadent in fact. Likes Burne-Jones pictures, Aubrey-Beardsley [sic], Ibsen plays, Revolting French Novels, and only likes dining at the Trocadero Restaurant where the food … consists of Truffles and hot pâté de foie gras … I said dine with me at the Marlboro … after a little arguing he agreed, and came expecting rich filth, now for a punishment I ordered
Scotch Broth (with vast lumps of meat floating in it)
Boiled Turbot (fresh and enormous)
Beefsteak Pudding (Suety, wholesome, succulent, heavy, hot, crammed with Oysters, Lark’s Kidneys)
Boiled Oranges and Rice Pudding (a nursery dish)
Welsh Rarebit (in a dish the size of Lake Windermere)
Hard English Cheese and Brown Bread
Wines. Still Hock 1876.
Poor little thing, I believe you would have pitied him, he gasped at the Scotch Broth, gaped at the Turbot and the Beefsteak Pudding, words cannot describe appearance, his poor little decadent stomach fairly rose,
the effect of the huge dish of Welsh Rarebit I must leave to your imagination suffice that he staggered from the table almost speechless and the best of it is he cannot be revenged on me because I can eat anything.9
All the while the negotiations between Mark’s parents were becoming increasingly frustrating: ‘things do not look so well as before,’ he wrote in early April, ‘as my father now says he won’t do anything before I return from the War because says he “I might be killed and then of course he wouldn’t have to pay anything at all.” This hardly strikes me as a very noble thought.’10 The stress began to take its toll. ‘I have very little to tell you,’ he added, ‘but you’ll be glad to hear I am steadily losing flesh. I am now reduced to 12st. Have lost 6lbs.’11 The greater the indecision, the more angry he became. ‘My father arrives tonight,’ he wrote a week later, ‘another struggle with him, tomorrow lawyers, another talk, the day after if all goes well an unsatisfactory settlement … a surly misanthropy begins to pervade my nature … I have never lacked bodily comfort and never experienced mental rest, for this reason am I misanthropic yet how can one help it the world is bad, vile, corrupt, and there is no remedy, socialism is ridiculous, Anarchy is futile, reforms bring no good, only stamp old evils to raise new. There is no Utopia, evil triumphs, religion is dead, honesty never existed … The whole world is a mass of individuals struggling for their own ends … here you have a party, some ends are gained and they break asunder and fall on one another, fighting, struggling, and the most noble calling of this vile race of mortals is the military, for it is for their mutual destruction.’12
Three days later, on the evening of 20 April, a solution was finally thrashed out at a meeting in the Metropole Hotel in London. ‘Oh my dearest co-religionist,’ wrote Mark, ‘At last it is finished. I’m sitting here writing to you, your photograph is in front of me – well it is all over. I must tell you me dear co-relig what happened … After arguing, fighting, changing, erasing, quarrelling, cursing, to-ing and