Sir John French: An Authentic Biography

Early Days

A Kentish Celt-A Rebellious Boy-Four Years in the Navy-With the 19th Hussars-"Captain X Trees"-A Studious Subaltern-Chafing at Home-The First Opportunity.

"If I don't end my days as a Field-Marshal it will not be for want of trying, and-well, I'm jolly well going to do it." In these words, uttered many years ago to a group of brother officers in the mess room of the 19th Hussars, Sir John French quite unconsciously epitomised his own character in a way no biographer can hope to equal. The conversation had turned upon luck, a word that curiously enough was later to be so intimately associated with French's name. One man had stoutly proclaimed that all promotion was a matter of luck, and French had claimed that only work and ability really counted in the end. Yet "French's luck" has become almost a service proverb-for those who have not closely studied his career. Luck is frequently a word used to explain our own failure and another man's success.

Not that success and John French could ever have been strangers. There are some happy natures whose destiny is never in doubt, Providence having apparently planned it half a century ahead. Sir John French is a striking instance of this. Destiny never had any doubt about the man. He was born to be a fighter. On his father's side he comes of the famous old Galway family of which Lord de Freyne, of French Park, Co. Roscommon, is now the head. By tradition the Frenches are a naval family, although there have been famous soldiers as well as famous sailors amongst its members. There was, for instance, the John French who fought in the army of King William, leading a troop of the Enniskillen Dragoons at Aughrim in 1689.

Sir John French is himself the son of a sailor, Commander J.T.W. French, who on retiring from the Navy settled down on the beautiful little Kentish estate of Ripplevale, near Walmer. Here John Denton Pinkstone French was born on September 28, 1852, in the same year as his future colleague, General Joffre. His mother, a Miss Eccles, was the daughter of a Scotch family resident near Glasgow.

PLAYING WITH SOLDIERS

Of the boy's home life at Ripplevale very little is known. He was the sixth child and the only son of the family. Both his parents dying while he was quite young, he was brought up under the care of his sisters. But there is no reason to suppose that he was therefore spoilt; for one of these ladies shared in a remarkable degree the qualities of energy and determination which were to distinguish her brother. Young French's earliest education was largely guided by this gifted sister, who is now so well known in another field of warfare as Mrs. Despard.

It is extremely difficult to say what manner of boy the future Field-Marshal was. Only one fact emerges clearly. He was high-spirited and full of mischief. Everything that he did was done with the greatest enthusiasm, and already there were signs that he possessed an unusually strong will.

Inevitably games quickly took possession of his imagination. Very soon the war game had first place in his affections. He was perpetually playing with soldiers-a fascinating hobby which intrigued the curious mind of the rather silent child. French, in fact, was a very normal and healthy boy, with just a touch of thoughtfulness to mark him off from his fellows.

He was not, however, to enjoy the freedom of home life for very long. At an early age he was sent to a preparatory school at Harrow, which he left for Eastman's Naval College at Portsmouth. After the necessary "cramming" he passed the entrance examination to the Navy at the age of thirteen. In the following year (1866) he joined the Britannia as a cadet. Four years of strenuous naval work followed. But like another Field-Marshal-to-be, Sir Evelyn Wood, the boy was not apparently enamoured of the sea. As a result he decided to leave that branch of the service.

That action is typical of the man. He is ruthless with himself as well as with others. If the Navy were not to give scope for his ambition, then he must quit the Navy. Already, no doubt, his life-long hero, Napoleon, was kindling the young man's imagination. But the English Navy of those days gave little encouragement to the Napoleonic point of view. It was bound up with the sternest discipline and much red tape. If rumour speaks true young French was irritated by the almost despotic powers then possessed by certain naval officers. So he boldly decided at the age of eighteen to end one career and commence another.

To enter the sister service he had to stoop to what is dubbed the "back-door," in other words a commission in the militia. It seems rather remarkable that one of our most brilliant officers should have had this difficulty to face. Incidentally it is a curious sidelight on the system of competitive examinations. But there are several facts to remember. Sir John French's genius developed slowly. One does not figure him as ready, like Kitchener, at twenty-one, with a complete map of his career. In these days he was probably more interested in hunting than in soldiering. The man who is now proverbial for his devotion to the study of tactics was then very little of a book-worm. Indeed he seems to have shown no special intellectual or practical abilities until much later in life.

THE "DUMPIES"

In 1874 he was gazetted to the 8th Hussars, being transferred three weeks later to the 19th. At that time the 19th Hussars was scarcely a crack regiment. With two other regiments raised after the Indian mutiny it was nicknamed the "Dumpies," owing to the standard of height being lowered, and it had yet to earn the reputation which Barrow and French secured it. About John French the subaltern, as about John French the midshipman, history is silent. No fabulous legends have accumulated about him. Presumably the short, firmly-built young officer was regarded as normal and entirely de rigeur in his sporting propensities.

The subaltern of the 'eighties took himself much less seriously than his successor of today. The eternal drill and the occasional man?uvres were conducted on well-worn and almost automatic principles. As a result, the younger officers found hunting and polo decidedly better sport. Few or none of them were military enthusiasts; and study did not enter largely into their programme. It entered into French's-but only in stray hours, often snatched by early rising, before the day's work-or sport-began.

Despite constant rumours to the contrary, there can be no question that French was a most spirited young officer and a thorough sportsman. He at once earned for himself the sobriquet of "Capt. X Trees," as a result of his being a "retired naval man." To this day among the very few remaining brother officers of his youth, he is still greeted as "Trees."

As might be expected, French showed no desire to pose as "the glass of fashion or the mould of form." He never attempted to cultivate the graces of the beau sabreur. His short square figure did not look well on horseback and probably never will. But he was admitted to be a capable horseman and to have "good hands." Although not keen on polo he was very fond of steeplechasing. Of his love for that sport there is ample proof in the fact that he trained and rode his own steeplechasers.

A DIFFICULT TEAM

One of his best horses was a mare called "Mrs. Gamp," which he lent on one occasion to a brother subaltern-now Colonel Charles E. Warde, M.P. for Mid-Kent. Riding with his own spurs on French's mare, Colonel Warde was one of three out of a field of four hundred to live through a Warde Union run which was responsible for the death of six hunters before the day was over.

Young French also became a very good whip. Along with Colonel H.M.A. Warde-now the Chief Constable of Kent-he had a thrilling adventure in coach driving. When the regiment first started a coach it was necessary to bring it from Dublin to the Curragh. The two subalterns, neither of whom had ever driven four horses before, commandeered four chargers belonging to brother officers. One of the animals was a notorious kicker. But they took them up to Dublin and drove the coach twenty-eight miles down to the Curragh next day, arriving there alive and with no broken harness!

At that time French differed from his fellow officers probably rather in degree than in temperament. Although a very keen sportsman he did not put sport first. Colonel C.E. Warde, one of his closest friends, gives the following description of the man. "Although he never attempted to go to the Staff College he was continually studying military works, and often, when his brother subalterns were at polo or other afternoon amusements, he would remain in his room reading Von Schmidt, Jomini, or other books on strategy. I recollect once travelling by rail with him in our subaltern days, when after observing the country for some time, he broke out: 'There is where I should put my artillery.' 'There is where I should put my cavalry' and so on to the journey's end."

In spite of these evidences of a soldier's eye for country, there is nothing to show that French had developed any abnormal devotion for his work. He was interested but not absorbed. In 1880 a captaincy and his marriage probably did something to make him take his career more seriously. His wife, Lady French, was a daughter of Mr. R.W. Selby-Lowndes, of Bletchley, Bucks. They have two sons and a daughter.

A few months after his marriage he accepted an adjutancy in the Northumberland Yeomanry. For four uneventful years he was stationed at Newcastle, where the work was monotonous and the opportunities almost nil.

THE WAITING GAME

Naturally the young man fretted very much at being left behind with the Yeomanry when his regiment was ordered to embark for Egypt in 1882. And he never rested until he was allowed to follow it out in 1884. It was in many ways a new 19th which the young officer re-joined in Egypt. The regiment hurried out in 1882 had at last come under a commander of real genius in Colonel Percy Barrow, C.B., and in that commander French was to find his first real military inspiration. It is difficult to judge what his future might have been but for this one man and the Nile Expedition, which proved the turning point in French's career as it did in that of his regiment.

Then, as ever, French was a man who had to wait for his opportunities. He was thirty-two years of age before he saw this, his first piece of active service. Where Kitchener found, or made, opportunities for military experience, French was content to wait the turn of events. So it has been all through his life. He has never forestalled Destiny; he has simply accepted its call. But when an opportunity presented itself he always seized it, and the Nile Expedition was no exception to the rule. Major French, without Staff College training, without the usual diplomas, was to prove himself once and for all a master tactician.

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