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 same night:
‘What did you put in that?’ asked the King when Jack handed him a whiskey. ‘Oh’ said Jack, ‘My father’s whiskey is very white, Sir, there’s more there than it looks’. ‘It’s not the look, it’s the taste’ said the King. ‘And you a Gordon Highlander!’19
The inevitable laughter must have rankled with White and the anger probably still lurked deep within him when, a couple of years later, he was swearing two young recruits in Aberdeen to ‘an allegiance to their liege Lord Edward, his heirs and successors’. This was all ‘irrespective of Lord Edward’s moral condition’, of which he did not approve, so it became the actual moment that precipitated White abandoning his military career.20
White at this stage of his life was living what can only be described as a sybaritic existence. He was the governor’s son with duties of the pleasantest kind and a licence to indulge in his passion for horses. As an old Wykehamist, a graduate of Sandhurst, a decorated war hero, on familiar terms with most of the military powers of the moment, including Kitchener himself, and clearly intelligent, he was set for a very successful career. He had dined with royalty and had become familiar with the affluent power-brokers that accompanied Edward. He was an ideal product and future custodian of the British Empire, the greatest socio-economic structure the world had ever seen. Although it would be another two years before he left the army and formally began to part ways with almost everything he had been bred for, White, according to his autobiography, had already abandoned the values of this society to pursue what he could not articulate.
Inner Life and the ‘Liqueur Sensation’
From a young age White displayed an inability to accept any instruction or diktat without questioning and examining the alternatives. Although his life took a course that seemed to have cancelled out his earlier misgivings and unease, and he had found himself as successful as any other young officer in his position, there lurked under the surface a rebelliousness or an unwillingness to accept the ready path laid out before him. This seeming perversity led him on a road to self-destruction. That is, of course, if the conventional criteria of success being wealth and fame are applied. White’s daemons appeared to urge him to pursue matters beyond the mundane; he had little interest in the social aspirations of his peers. R.B. McDowell, biographer of Alice Stopford Green, the nationalist historian, wrote that White ‘was in many ways a most unworldly man’ and this is probably as perceptive an observation as has been made about him.21 While in Gibraltar White had a transcendent experience which he maintained justified the path he took and somehow blessed his eccentricities despite his friends’ and family’s misgivings.
Displaying what must have been at times an unnerving certainty, White never shrank from the challenge of confronting himself, even in his most egregious behaviour. John Cowper Powys, commenting on a piece of White’s writing, now lost, said it was ‘the most honest attempt he had ever read of a man or woman attempting to explain themselves’.22 This seems to have been the hallmark of White from his time in Gibraltar. His autobiography is replete with musings over the conundrum that he saw himself to be. Unlike many autobiographies, White’s makes no attempt at justifying his actions, which he spelled out, sometimes in their sheer indefensible ugliness. It is doubtful, for example, that many other writers would recount the incident where he had an Indian whipped whose only crime was the irritation he caused White.23 A review of his autobiography in 1930 described it as ‘the most egotistical work which will be published this year’, arguing that
It would be difficult to admire Captain White. Probably he does not admire himself. But, despite certain shocking errors of taste, despite borderland vanity, and despite a blindness
