It was no more than a last, poignant codicil to the family’s collapse, though, and within twelve months both John Scott and his younger son, ‘Arch’, were dead. It seems somehow appropriate that the last public glimpse of John Scott is of him being pushed in a wheelchair to his daughter Ettie’s wedding, but while his death from heart disease cannot have been a complete shock, or even blow, to his family, nothing had prepared them for Arch’s.
‘I am longing to see old Arch,’ Scott had written in the summer of 1897, ‘and tell him how hopeful I think it all,’ and the following year he got his wish. Arch, home on leave from Lagos, joined him, with the use of the admiral’s spare cabin, for a cruise off the Irish coast in Scott’s ship to thrash out the details of the family’s finances. ‘My dearest girl,’ he wrote to his sister Ettie, ‘Arch has been staying with me for the last few days, he is in great form & looking very well – we have of course talked matters out & I think arrived at a clear understanding as regards the situation.’ ‘Isn’t Arch just splendid,’ he wrote to his mother on 15 October. ‘He is so absolutely full of life and enjoyment and at the same time so keen on his job. I expect he has told you about his hope of becoming a commissioner. He seems to have done most excellent work and shown tact and energy in an extraordinary degree. Dear old chap, he deserves to be a success – Commissioner, Consul, and Governor is the future for him I feel sure.’
Within a month, Arch was dead. He had gone to Hythe to play golf, and went down with typhoid. Just what the news meant to Scott can be felt in his letter to Ettie. ‘My dearest Girl, It is good to hear there was no pain and it is easy to understand that he died like a man. All his life, wherever he went, people felt the better for his coming. I don’t think he ever did an unkind thing and no form of meanness was in him. It is a strange chance that has taken him who perhaps of us all found the keenest pleasure in life, who was always content and never grumbled. Of course, now we know he never ought to have gone to West Africa. After watching him carefully, I saw that despite his health he was not strong and I meant to have a long talk with you on the subject. Too late – doesn’t it always seem the ending of our wretched little mortal plans? Good God, it is past all understanding. He and you and I were very close together, weren’t we? I know what your loss is, knowing my own.’
To his mother, however, none of the bewilderment or anger was ever allowed to surface. ‘My Own Dearest Mother,’ he wrote to her from Gibraltar,
I got your letter this morning. Don’t blame yourself for what has happened, dear. Whatever we have cause to bless ourselves for, comes from you. He died like the true-hearted gentleman he was, but to you we owe the first lessons and example that made us gentlemen. This thing is most terrible to us all but it is no penalty for any act of yours …
In another matter I think I can afford a key other than your construction. Arch and I discussed his commissionership in all lights … and it was in regard to that, that his remark about leaving the artillery fell from him. Of this I am sure: he never regretted leaving Weymouth. Often and often when we were about there he said, ‘Well, old chap, this is all very narrow. I am awfully glad to have got away and seen the world a bit.’
Of course he loved his corps, but he never thought of it as a thing left behind and never was anything but glad to have left the dull routine of garrison duty.
I’m glad you got that nice letter from the Governor. Oh, my dear, it is something to know that everyone thought him a fine chap. His popularity was marvellous – he was such a fine gentleman. God bless you … Don’t be bitter, dear.
Your loving son
Con.
Hannah Scott had joined her daughters in Paris for six months, where they had gone to learn the dressmaking business, but with his father and Archie both dead, the financial burden for the family now fell on Scott, generously helped by Ettie’s new husband, the old Etonian, Unionist MP for Antrim and Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, Willy Ellison-Macartney. ‘It seems to me to boil down to this,’ Scott had written to Ettie only weeks before Arch’s death:
that you & Willy are proposing to act in a most generous manner in the matter of the insurance; mother and the girls (especially the former) have been given new life by the proposal, (which if the business succeeds only moderately well will prove satisfactory all round … )
The saving of Mother’s money has an enormous effect on her peace of mind, as of course was to be expected. Therefore the future arrangements seem to be
You are insured for £1500 & pay something like £45 per annum
Arch pays to the ménage £120 & I some £70
The above £190 plus £30 from Outlands & £30 interest on Mother’s capital – £250 forms the home income
But of above is paid £40 as interest on loan £1000 leaving a net income of over £200
All expenses in connection with the business to come out of the £1000
Expenses of the Paris scheme [the dressmaking] to be debited on the £1000 advance.
It was a bathetic world for an ambitious young naval officer to find himself in, but Scott did not flinch. He had been prepared to sacrifice his career prospects in the immediate aftermath of the financial crash so that he could be at Devonport near his family, but with Archie dead and another £120 to be found, the only thing that concerned him now was promotion.
He might still sometimes wonder ‘whether the game is worth a candle’, but that was just idle talk. In letter after letter he comes back to the subject, and the endless speculation, manoeuvring and jobbing that the whole business of joining ‘the ranks of the advancers’ entailed: ‘if this can be worked I shall have little to grumble at’; ‘in with all the Flagship now’; ‘the Flag Captain is rather a friend of mine thanks to Ettie’; ‘Fraser would of course be only too delighted for me to succeed him’; ‘I can only hope to become known to their successors’; ‘I trust he will not forget me’.
Even before his father’s death he had been aiming high, applying for a berth in the senior Royal Yacht, Victoria & Albert, that would have put him at the heart of that unrivalled nexus of connections and patronage that effectively ran the service. ‘I want you to tell father the following about the Yacht of my year,’ he wrote home with that clear thinking and lack of resentment that always characterised his attitude to what he called the navy’s ‘much gilded’ youth: ‘I fear it will disappoint him – next to my name in the Navy List he will find Stanley – Michael Colme-Seymour & Goodenough – Stanley is a godson of the Queen, son of the Earl of Derby, a nice chap, popular and has war service (though only Egyptian) – Michael Seymour is of course the son of the Admiral which is saying a great deal as by the time of selection, his father will be at Portsmouth in command … Goodenough is very well connected, has been in the Yacht and in the Mediterranean Yacht, has many personal friends in high places, war service and altogether an excellent chance. Mike Seymour tells me all three people will try for the billet – so you see I fear there’s a very poor chance for me.’
Scott was right – Colme-Seymour got the post – but if he failed with the Yacht, he was more successful in his next ambition, joining the flagship of the Channel Fleet under the command of Prince Louis of Battenberg in July 1897. Among all the ships Scott served in, the Majestic and ‘Majestics’ would always hold a special place, and over the next three years he forged many of those key loyalties and friendships – Skelton, Barne, Evans, Egerton, Campbell – that would last his life. It was in Majestic, too, that Scott established himself beyond any question in his profession. He was not sure whether Prince Louis ‘liked’ him or not, ‘but at any rate’, he told his mother, ‘he thinks me able for my work which is the main thing’. ‘I think I said I would tell you about our doings at Palma Bay,’ he reported home in the same letter.
Well, they were most successful. We had a great time at our various exercises and everything went swimmingly; they left everything in my hands and I was a great man bossing the whole show. On the second day