I have undertaken to write this book in ‘a perfectly straightforward manner’. I take this to mean to suit the taste of people who believe that the past governs the future but fail to see that the future, much more drastically, governs the past.5
Having declared his willingness to conform, he goes on to blithely ignore this stricture for the remainder of the work. The book is permeated with a bravado that might indicate a traumatic hurt that most adults either come to terms with or develop into a kind of tiresome braggadocio. White was too aware to indulge in the latter and yet reveals an immaturity that bedevilled his relationships, whether with his two wives or the many acquaintances that never seemed to develop into full-blown friendships. For all that, he was a man who stuck to his ideals; not grimly as the cliché would have it, but with a lightness of touch and indeed a humour that very often tempered the radical edges of the policies he pursued. In different circumstances with different opportunities he may have made a far greater mark. Certainly much lesser men than White have occupied much higher echelons in history’s chronicles.
Chapter 1
Beginnings
An Act of Defiance
Doornkop (‘Thorn Hill’), today a suburb of Soweto, was on 28 May 1900 the scene of what became known as the Battle of Johannesburg during the Second South African War, the Boer War. It was one of a series of ridges held by the Boers, and the British generals decided that it should be taken, not by cavalry but by the ‘grunts’, the original cannon fodder, officially known as the infantry. Fourteen rows of these unfortunates, spread across four miles, steadily made their way up the hill under a withering hail of bullets from the Boers. Comparisons have been made with Balaclava and the set-piece battles of that time.
Among the seven battalions were the Gordon Highlanders, and in the midst of these was a young subaltern, James Robert (Jack) White. Although fresh out of Sandhurst, White could clearly see that the Boer had a ready escape route behind the row of ridges they occupied, and while they had targets sufficiently far away to allow escape, they continued to fire. Eighteen of the Highlanders were killed and anything up to 100 wounded – there were at most about 600 of the enemy. Jack and his platoon were in the tenth row, and by the time they got to the top, most of the Boers had cleared off. Having been under fire, possibly for the first time in his career, he still managed with two of his men to be about fifty yards ahead of his line.
As he reached the dugouts that had been occupied by the Boer he spotted a rifle protruding from behind a rock and, quickly grabbing it, apprehended a very frightened youth. As the rest of his men caught up they were all for bayoneting this obviously shell-shocked fifteen-year-old; they believed he had been directly responsible for the death of a number of their comrades. The commanding officer arrived on horseback and immediately ordered him to be shot. White, as he said himself, was overcome with a ‘wave of disgust’ that ‘swamped his discipline’. He turned, pointing his carbine at the officer, and said, ‘If you shoot him, I’ll shoot you.’
If proper procedure had been carried out at that time for this extraordinary act of defiance, Jack White would have been summarily executed. But a combination of good fortune, his forceful personality, and the fact that his father was a field marshal in the same war must have saved him; there is no account of even a reprimand. It does, however, give some insight into the kind of man Jack White was – a consistent supporter of the disadvantaged regardless of the unpopularity or danger to himself.
Origins
The grave of Jack White is to be found in the village of Broughshane, just outside Ballymena. He lies within a few miles of the foot of Slemish, a corruption of Sliabh Mis, the legendary Irish mountain, on whose slopes St Patrick tended sheep and swine. That his final resting place is there is one of those synchronicities of history that hints at grander schemes.
Although only just over 1,400ft and described unflatteringly by geologists as a volcanic plug, it dominates the landscape for miles around. Looking a little like the remnants of a volcano, its steep barren upper reaches contrast dramatically with the well-husbanded farmlands surrounding it. It is a suitable backdrop to finding God, as the founder of Christianity in this island did more than 1,500 years ago. Modern historians do not connect St Patrick with this place; the nearest acknowledgment is that the territory of Miliucc, the petty king who enslaved Patrick, extended to its slopes.
Mythology, however, does not defer to the discipline of history and has a young man escaping bondage from there and subsequently introducing an island to the ‘one true faith’. Or maybe in more mundane terms, delivering Ireland, as it was later called, from the unconscious of prehistory to the modern world. Christianity either coincided with, or was the principal facilitator of, the introduction of writing to the island; the only evidence of the island’s existence up to then, in the outlook of Graeco-Roman consciousness, lay in the glancing references of commentators like Strabo.
Lack of writing is not evidence of primitiveness (in fact a case could be made that this was a conscious abnegation), rather it is an indication of a culture and outlook that contrasted quite substantially with the familiar Euro-centric approach that has established itself over the past couple of millennia. It is fitting, however, that Jack White should be associated with this iconic, and seminal, figure of mythology on the Irish landscape. He was also a representative of alternative perspectives, as Patrick would have been albeit substantially different. He was a sceptic of the status quo who displayed through his actions and writings an empathy with the outsiders and the disadvantaged. This led along the way to charges of incorrigibility and even downright perversity. On the other hand, his conclusion, towards the end of his life, that he was an anarchist corresponds with a philosophy that would not have been out of place with these earlier, pre-Christian communities.
James Robert (Jack) White was born at Cleveland, Montague Place, Richmond, Surrey, England, on 22 May 1879, the only son of Field Marshal Sir George Stuart White (1835–1912) and his wife, Amelia Maria (Amy), née Baly (d. 1935).1 He had four sisters, Rose, who was older than he, May Constance, Amy Gladys, and Georgina Mary.2 Although the family’s permanent residence was at Whitehall, Broughshane, Co. Antrim, Ireland, Sir George (or, as he was then, Major White), was campaigning in India at the time of Jack’s birth. The later-to-become Lady Amy stayed with her parents for the confinement, and Jack White seems to have been quite influenced by his grandfather, an archdeacon, in those early years. George and Amy had actually met in India when he was first stationed there, and they were married in Simla in 1874.
Joseph Baly, Amy’s father, held an MA from Oxford and had spent a considerable time in India in education before temporarily going back to England as Rector of Falmouth. In 1872 he was appointed Archdeacon of Calcutta. The position was essentially a sinecure, but Baly earned a reputation for social work; he was particularly concerned about the plight of Eurasians. He was a popular figure, being described as an extraordinary speaker in the pulpit, ‘and in the dance hall he was an angel amongst mortals’.3 He finally returned to England in 1883, having been appointed ‘chaplain of the Royal Chapel in Windsor Park’, retaining his post until his death in 1909 at the age of 85.4
Practically the only surviving records for that period concerning White are the reminiscences included in his autobiography. His elder sister, Rose, makes only one glancing reference to him when she mentions that she and Jack were read stories by Sir George from Treasure Island, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Alice in Wonderland, and The Little Red Deer.5
Rose compiled a memoir around 1914 as a kind of family history and this provides invaluable detail on Jack White’s antecedents. The White family, according to their own lore, were originally of English Presbyterian stock, not planters in the strictest sense of the term, but refugees from the English Civil War:
The Family of White is of English extraction, and from the County of York, in the West Riding of which they held considerable property in the reign of Charles the First.
Hudson Hall was the name of their residence there, during