I was Red – I was never Green, I never had any use for neutrality in this war, so little indeed that though I have done all in my power to forestall such a terrible possibility, I believe I would fight against Eire if it came to the pinch.48
Although written to impress upon a sceptical government his value as a soldier in the fight against Nazism and probably causing consternation among his nationalist admirers, it displays little that could be said to be inconsistent with his actions and speeches down through the years.
Chapter 3
Awakenings
Gibraltar
Sir George had been appointed Governor General of Gibraltar but, because of his poor health after the siege of Ladysmith, he was not able to take up the position until well into 1900. He appointed his son as an aide-de-camp (ADC) when Jack had returned to the Gordon Highlanders’ barracks at Aberdeen after his own campaign had finished in 1902. White described himself as an ‘invitation ADC; managing the invitation list, making out the plan of the table, writing the menus and dancing with the plain women’.1 Gibraltar was a port of call for the northern European aristocracy who might be heading for the Mediterranean by sea for their vacations and for more important diplomatic missions in North Africa. In fact, Sir George’s autograph book for that period is filled with illustrious signatures and provides a comprehensive list of mainly British but also some European members of the dominant elite of the time.2 His daughter Rose, along with her three sisters and her mother, Lady Amy, provided in-house diplomatic services for visitors, and Rose describes a visit by King Edward VII when he commented on what a fine looking woman Lady Amy still was. The king had a penchant for inviting ladies to dinner specifically without their husbands, ‘to equalize the party a little’ according to the innocent Rose.3
France and Germany at that time had been wrangling over the benefits they wished to bring to Morocco, and although the conference of Algeciras did not take place until 1906, the year after the Whites left, there was much activity and sabre-rattling in the meantime. Even the British Royal Navy, whose country had even less business in the proceedings, was occupied in steaming up and down in battle formation through the straits and carrying out various naval manoeuvres. Here Jack White, so reticent in his criticism of his military commanders in Africa, emerges in full iconoclastic regalia. He maintained that ‘the royalties were the business agents to get their countries a place in the Moroccan sun, and Gibraltar was the jumping off ground’. He goes on to critique generally and analyse specifically some of these people, with a particular emphasis on the ‘courts’ that accompanied them:
My experience included Edward VII of England and William II of Germany and one or two minor lights. It would be presumptuous to say I had seen through them and what they stood for; but they no longer interested me. I was inoculated against that particular form of hypnosis. They were no different from other people. They were the summation of, shall we say, the most ordinary and least interesting side of other people. Their function, I had seen as invitation A.D.C., was to bring out in strong relief an aspect of other people which at other times lurked in decent concealment. Far be it from me to claim that I was exempt from this undesirable aspect myself. I was as big a snob as the rest; but with one eye open.4
This development in perception he claimed had come about through a transformative experience, Damascene in its suddenness and scope. He described it as something that ‘changed the very mechanism of my consciousness and the whole course of my life’.5 It will have to be examined in greater depth later because it remains as a continuing theme through the rest of his writings, in particular those at the end of his life. However questionable his powers of perception may be in analysing the types of individuals who made up the two principal entourages in Gibraltar, it is compensated for by the colourfulness of his descriptions:
I was struck with the greater naivete and greater sincerity of the [Germans]. That the Kaiser was a bit of a mountebank I could see even then. I am convinced that his gentlemen could not. When the Kaiser would summon one of his suite to be presented to my mother with an ‘Ach, you have not met my Admiral von Tirpitz’ even that bewhiskered old pirate evidently became ‘the proudest man that ever scuttled a ship’. These immaculate military or naval chromographs, hung with decorations principally for lunching with people, literally glowed with pride at any sign of this Imperial notice. And they spoke of the Kaiser with a reverence, watched him with a henchman’s tenderness, that was obviously genuine.
Edward’s atmosphere was quite different. His inner circle, or the men I saw nearest to him, were either intimate or privileged jesters like Lambton or Charlie Beresford, or very well bred superior flunkies like ahem! some others. Certainly there was nothing naïve about either themselves or their attitude to their master. The flunkies could and did demand from others the reverential attitude they assumed themselves, but one felt it was an assumption. The jesters in their intimate gossip constantly undermined it.6
The analysis of the latter is probably the more accurate; there seems to have been affection in his portrayal of the Germans that possibly biased his outlook.
Certainly the purpose of the visit of Edward, father of the empire, positioned there only for the convenience of the likes of Admiral Charles Beresford, resonates with a very probable reality. Beresford combined his employment as a sailor with the political duties of a member of parliament and the commercial interests of a representative of the Associated Chambers of Commerce.7 In fact, the visitors’ book from that time, apart from the signatures of both Edward and the Kaiser and minor royalty like Charles of Denmark, the various princesses, daughters and granddaughters of Victoria, ladies of the bedchamber (Charlotte Knollys), and minor foreign figures (Admiral Valois), also includes those of a considerable number of what could be at best termed entrepeneurs.8 The copperplate signature of Hedworth Lambert (1856–1929), described by White as an intimate jester, is there.9 He, apart from a dilettantish career in the Navy, inherited a considerable estate on condition that he assume the name of Meux on the death of Lady Meux who, childless, had taken an inordinate fancy to him which was unlikely to be maternal – they were roughly the same age. He died, also without issue, so her manoeuvre was unsuccessful, and the title died out.10 Another, less elegantly autographed name, was Horace Farquhar, First Earl,11 described by Burke’s Peerage as ‘a cavalier financier [… lucky to have] escaped prosecution for fraud while alive’ and certainly an undiscovered bankrupt who was extremely unpopular ‘despite his wealth and his honours and his generous hospitality or perhaps because’.12 White had few illusions about these people. Interestingly he makes no comment on one of the purposes of the king’s visit at that time (8 April 1903), which was to promote Sir George to the ‘highest rank a soldier can attain’, field-marshal. The king remarked to Lady Amy, ‘I do hope that Sir George will now desist from risking his life in point to point races’, yet nearly a year later, at the age of almost seventy, he finished tenth in a race which Jack won.13
In Jack White’s summary of the change that had begun and was taking place in him, he writes that he ‘had seen two people too close – God and the King’, and this was also to play a part in another seminal moment in Gibraltar, his enchantment with Dollie Mosley. A short story by White, published in 1912, has survived, entitled ‘A Ride in Andalusia’. It describes a journey on horseback from the coast to Ronda, nowadays a well-known tourist town high in the Spanish hills.14 There is little to recommend the story, but it is of interest because Sir George’s biographer, Sir Mortimer Durand, records a visit by him and Lady Amy to Andalusia for one weekend where they stayed overnight in Ronda with Mr and Mrs Mosley, the parents of the same Dollie. Leonard, the father, was later to become estranged from the Whites over their son’s betrothal to her.15 It was inevitable that Dollie would appeal to the king’s ‘predilection for pretty women’, and, as White wrote, ‘half of me was proud of the notice’ taken by Edward.16 Rose White also makes note of it in the aforementioned letter to her Uncle John: ‘Mrs Pablo Lorios and Miss Dollie Mosley (the king more or less hinted that he would like to have the latter two ladies both of whom are very pretty and one or two ladies without their husbands)’ to his private dinner party.17 White’s fidelity to king and country was undermined: ‘This pimping for princes might have its limitations’,18 and was probably further damaged by an incident related by Rose on the