This was in August 1945, six months before he died of prostate cancer; his own diagnosis of what was happening gives an indication of where his interests lay at that time:
I interpret this as part result, part safety valve for the abnormal strain of the messianic consciousness on the brain, and this rise to the brain of the later stages of it is closely connected with the virgin birth, as I grope for its true meaning.31
There is little evidence of his attending religious services, although he would have described himself as Presbyterian and professed a faith in God, but he seems to have perceived his own spiritual beliefs on a kind of political basis, heavily supported with biblical references and mythology. The concept of messiah had an enduring fascination and, it must be stated, in particular as it applied to himself. This raises doubts about his mental stability towards the end of his life, although the more likely explanation is regular overindulgence in solitary drinking. (His daughter-in-law Jennifer, Derrick’s first wife, informed me that the landlady of the local public house had related that, not only did White do a considerable amount of late night drinking in Broughshane in the 1940s, but that the village was accustomed to the clip clop of his horse in the early hours of the morning going on journeys to
no-one-knew-where.)32
Dollie
Allied to White’s spiritual leanings was a conviction that whatever course of action he had decided upon was going to be taken without any consideration for the discomfort – or worse – that he would cause others. According to himself, he wooed Dollie Mosley against the explicit wishes of both families,33 although in the surviving correspondence on the matter there is not the slightest recrimination from either of his parents. This is probably an indication of the indulgence they continually granted their wayward son. White had been posted to India after his father had retired as Governor General of Gibraltar in 1905. When Dollie called off their engagement, he decided, filled with conviction inspired by his ‘liqueur sensation’, to leave India and return to Europe to repair his fractured relationship, a harbinger of the match to come and decades of marital turmoil. (This had been the second such occasion; previously he wrote in detail about getting leave from Kitchener to hurry back and persuade Dollie to change her mind soon after he had arrived at his posting.) This time there was a flurry of letters between Dollie and Sir George and Lady Amy, all written with the spectre of White returning by steamer from the East, undeterred by either the blandishments of his mother or Dollie’s letters. Dollie had been living with the Whites in London when she had changed her mind and agreed to marry White after his first return from India. However, she had once more decided to cancel the engagement sometime in late 1906 or early 1907 and had returned home to Gibraltar. She wrote to Lady Amy on 15 January 1907:
I don’t want my day of arrival to pass away without writing you a few lines. Well here I am! It has been a very sad home coming. […] I could never forget you all and all the kindness bestowed on me when I have been the principal cause of all your anxiety and worry.34
By the beginning of March White was on his way back and Dollie had notified the Whites of her concern because at some stage he had given the impression that he was going to call to Gibraltar. This was, for some reason, totally unacceptable to Dollie’s father, Alexander Mosley. Sir George telegraphed Dollie:
Royal Hospital Chelsea
Miss Mosley, Library Ramp, Gibraltar.
Your letter and telegram received. Jack on Mongolia. We have telegraphed Port Said all we could to prevent him going to Gibraltar but he is intent on learning your unbiased decision from yourself and I recommend your telegraphing decisively to Marseilles your unbiased personal decision about seeing him disclaiming all other influences. We will do our best from here. Show this [to] your father, George White.35
It seems that Dollie then informed her father and came to a decision, because Sir George received two telegrams despatched within minutes of each other. The first, from Dollie’s father, was blunt:
Mar. 6th [1907] At 10.15 a.m. Received 1.00 p.m.
Regret [your] sons proposed action which must inevitably end in grave scandal positively refuse allow him enter my house have done my duty in warning you and am not responsible consequences.
Alexander Mosley.36
The second demonstrated that Jack did not have a monopoly in the future partnership on precipitous decisions:
Mar 6th. Gibraltar at 10.25 [1907]
To: Sir George […] Royal Hospital Chelsea
Have shown your wire to father decided to marry at once against every ones wish nowhere to go will you take me in will wire Jack meet me London – Dollie.37
Sir George replied to her demonstrating the innate kindness of the man together with a commendable lack of animosity towards Alexander Mosley (or Jack, for that matter). He telegraphed her that same afternoon, dispensing with the conventional foreshortened telegram style presumably to ensure that she understood the import of what he wanted to say:
I cannot bear to think you may be taking this vital step to prevent trouble with Jack at Gibraltar without whole heartedly wishing it yourself. Your last telegram suggests this to me. I advise your writing a letter to him here saying exactly what your feelings are as regards marrying him. Wire to him Marseilles that you have written fully here that if he comes Gibraltar you will not see him and he will irrevocably alienate you. If this and what I will wire to him does not keep him from Gibraltar nothing will. Don’t leave your home until you hear from him and also from me from London.
George White – dispatched 6/3/07 5.30p.m.38
Dollie responded in kind in a letter:
I cannot thank you enough for the fatherly interest you have taken in me and for your kind telegrams. […] I am prepared to marry him at once, but I am not disposed to undergo all the worries of another engagement – this would have to be with yours and Lady White’s consent and in your house as my father refuses to have anything to do with it and blames me very much for all the worry I have brought on him and my people. So hoping that we have been successful in stopping Jack at Marseilles and that he has come away with leave and not placed you in worse troubles over me.39
The fact that she was concerned that White might have returned from India while absent-without-leave seemed to be of concern to both Dollie and Sir George; it is an indication of their opinion of his intemperateness. It has not been established what aroused Alexander Mosley’s grievous antipathy to White, but it is unlikely that religious differences were the underlying cause, although Dollie was a Roman Catholic, probably from her mother’s side, which was Spanish. She had written earlier to Lady Amy that ‘father is still very, very angry with me and will listen to no reason, he declares if Jack turns up he will hand him over to the police’.40 It is obvious in that letter that her mother, on the other hand, was well disposed to the Whites. Dollie wrote that ‘Mother is so grateful to you for all you have done for me.’ 41 This, of course, would be surprising if it were otherwise; Sir George, as war hero and as Governor General of Gibraltar, would have established the White family as the cream of high society there. It is probably a good example of Jack White’s ability to exasperate people in even the most favourable of circumstances. White himself often appears puzzled at this tendency of his. He describes a meeting on his earlier mission to Dollie and a subsequent contretemps he had over some religious point of dogma with a Reverend Mother in Kensington Square who was Dollie’s spiritual director. He said to himself, that he was a ‘Fool, having gone to such trouble to get the girl, to be obstructive over these premature details’. But he appeared to be pathologically incapable of compromise on certain beliefs:
I was willing to give up all I had gained [Dollie] rather than compromise the right of my hypothetical hopefuls to extend this new consciousness free of dogmatic shackles. Rome too stood pre-eminently for the subordination of the inner light to external authority, individual vision to collective prudence. Rome was the enemy despite this charming and remonstrant lady.42
Although he was describing his new-found enthusiasm for some kind