portrait of him by Philip De László, and it still forms part of the royal family painting collection today.27
On 11 July 1900 Sir George White ‘was sworn in as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the City and Garrison’ of Gibraltar.28 This strategic promontory had been occupied continuously by the British since 1713. It was a staging post for anyone travelling by sea to the Mediterranean, and since the completion of the Suez Canal all shipping bound for the Far East passed through its waters as well. France and Germany during this time were competing for influence in Morocco and a considerable amount of diplomatic activity took place prior to the Algeciras agreement in 1906 shortly after Sir George retired in 1905. The British Empire made its presence felt with flotillas of naval ships steaming around the area in various maritime exercises. The governor’s visitors’ book is replete with a list of the ‘great and good’ as well as those of a more commercial disposition; the fact that it features both King Edward and the Kaiser (twice) indicates the importance of the posting.29 Jack White joined his father there in 1902 as an aide-de-camp and it is probably the only occasion that the two were together for any extended period. It was there also that Jack saw at first hand the real face of imperialism, that is, those operators, those ‘movers and shakers’ whose creed was the garnering of the resources of the world towards primarily themselves.
Chapter 2
Training for Imperialism
Childhood and Education
White’s first reminiscence consists of what he calls his ‘consecutive memories’ at the age of seven when he was told either that no one could stand on a three-legged stool or that he specifically was not allowed to do so. Having done so, and having fallen and cut his head, he still persisted in maintaining that authority was wrong. The floor was uneven; if it had not been so, he would have been unhurt – therefore he was correct in his refusal to accept the edict handed down to him.1 In the early schools he attended he recalls the constant corporal punishment, and although the amount of beatings he took would not have been exceptional in those days, there does seem to have been a rebelliousness in him that made him stand out from the other children.
At the same time, his autobiography demonstrates a remarkable good-naturedness about his recollections of travails, a readiness to accept that people found themselves at the mercy of forces over which they had no control, whether these were external pressures and conditioning, or internal in the sense that it was their nature to behave so. This attitude is one that persisted right through his life, showing itself overall as a lack of bitterness about various injustices that he suffered, coupled with a deep appreciation of kindnesses that were shown him. Of course, this could have been with the hindsight of many years – he was 50 when he wrote Misfit; on the other hand, there are numerous occasions when he attempted to concentrate on what he imagined to be the good side in some recalcitrant opponent. More interestingly, he demonstrated sensitivity to the suffering of others from a young age. He recalls, for example:
periodical killing of pigs in the farmyard that adjoined the school. Pig-killing day was a red letter day to the other boys and myself, but in different ways. They loved it and I dreaded it, I used to shut myself up in the class room and close the shutters to shut out the pigs’ screams.2
He describes, with affection, his first schoolmaster, Dr Williams of Summerfield. Although having ‘flogged enough Latin and Greek’ into him, White still demonstrated an appreciation of what was done for him despite the various grades of punishments he received, ranging from slaps on the hand to more serious lashings. All administered in a courteous way, as he would have it.
He believed he had a dual relationship with another headmaster, Dr Fearon, the ‘Bear’, at Winchester; one was of two equals discussing the vagaries of school, the other was of master and pupil that involved a chronic history of transgression and punishment. White’s account of the conversations he had with the ‘Bear’ is amusing; he suggested that he negotiated his expulsion from the school. At first, this was to avoid expulsion and, then, when he deemed himself tired of the whole system, to actively encourage it. White’s rendering of the bewilderment of the teacher and his subsequent resignation to behaving in a manner contrary to his kindly disposition by expelling the boy is a masterly piece of writing in its overturning of conventional expectations.
White’s accounts of his battles with the housemaster Smith, ‘The Prowler’, are evidence, if there is much substance in them, of a very high-spirited
youth, including stories of attempts at setting off explosions and taking unauthorised trips to town to sample everything from drink to the local girls. However, the most illuminating story details his succumbing to ennui while fielding on the cricket pitch:
It seemed to me I had been there since the world began, and the sun sinking towards the horizon was about to terminate a cycle of creation without incident or meaning. Something must enliven, or, if need be disrupt, this aeonic monotony. The cycle must not close carrying my ego with it to unbroken nothingness. I began to make water for height, not, I think, with any intention of outrage of display, but anaesthetized from the mass-consciousness by my own boredom, and wishing to revive in myself the atrophying faculty of interest in something. I was soon observed, there was a roar of delighted amusement from twenty-two boys; […] I was flogged of course. I was always being flogged.3
This anecdote elevates a conventional account of schooldays to something more significant. Along with the consistent rebelliousness, there was a conviction that he did not really fit in and was in any case disliked by the majority. He appeared to require a continual stimulation and this was often provided by getting into trouble for reasons that puzzled him as much as others. He continues about his punishment:
Thus it has always been, I possess the capacity of being bored to desperation, which moves me to break the mechanical routine under which others silently suffer. They rejoice for a moment at a glimpse of vicarious revolt, then round on the rebel.4
Singled out for general derision, he is sore and surprised to be once again unsupported by his schoolmates. It is as if his display was a desperate foray to achieve popularity and this, briefly attained when they roar with laughter, is again denied him when they realise what he has done.
He puzzles over this, not his seeking of the popular vote, which he probably could not admit to himself, but the fact that even to himself he is incorrigible and incomprehensible. He talks about reaching a ‘desperation point where I knew I was no longer responsible for my actions’ and quotes a previous teacher who said, ‘White, you are in for more trouble than any boy in the school, but you are not the worst boy in the school. For whatever you do you are always found out.’ 5 Then White goes on to consider if he might have wanted to be found out and finally surrenders by saying, ‘I wanted to preserve something, though I don’t know what’, and there is no explanation, thirty-five years later, of what that might be.6
There were further adventures, including an abortive attempt to blow up one of the teachers and another story of having returned to the school dressed up as a prospective guardian. While probably daring escapades judged by any criteria, they are such that a large number of schoolboys could admit to having been involved in without any great sense of achievement; it does, however, indicate high spirits which in view of some episodes from his adult life are not surprising.
In recounting his struggles with various authorities and his almost automatic rejection of anything that was presented to him as received wisdom, White never mentions his parents except when he is finally requested to leave Winchester. Earlier in the text he writes about his doting grandmother, Archdeacon Baly’s wife, and the good priest himself, as a man who had no idea about children, but beyond that he seems to have perceived his life as a solitary, almost orphan-like one. His son Derrick has commented when he first read the autobiography (late in life) that he was taken aback by the seeming self-centredness of the man, but this could
