RITCHENER’S LIFE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4185, 13 September 1939, Page 3

RITCHENER’S LIFE

HIS MEETINGS WITH ROYALTY. (By Basil Fuller.) Did any woman understand Kitchener during the years of his fame and success? Queen Victoria, that shrewd judge of men, though highly of him. In a letter to “K,” Princes Beatrice afterwards revealed that when her mother lay dying at Osborne she spoke his name more than once. Something that was running through her tired mind seemed to puzzle her. There had been times when the Queen had spoken of “K” as an unfathomable riddle. Some of his acts filled her with a vague uneasiness. When Kitchener went to see the Queen • at Windsor Castle after the annihilation of the Mahdi's troops at Omdurman, while his name was ringing throughout the land, she bluntly asked him why he had ordered the destruction of th? Mahdi’s tomb and the throwing of his corpse into the Nile. “K” had been chatting with the Queen good humouredly; he ..was never uncomfortable in her presence. Now the queer heavy lidded eyes bashed and their colour seemed to made.

“It was necessary, Madam,” he said in a cold, rasping vpice. It was as if some unseen stranger in the room had provided the words. It made the lady in waiting shiver. Queen Victoria never mentioned the matter again. “They’re making far too much fuss of me,” was one of Kitchener’s remarks to the Queen at this audience. His whole face registered scorn as the word “they” passed his lips. In the nineties “they” were sheep to Major General Kitchener. “THE FOOLS. THE FOOLS! In this connection Sir lan Hamilton, who was one of “K’s” firmest friends, tells a story. He and “K” were guests at a fashionable theatre party. When the party appeared in the box and craning faces recognised the victor of Omdurman, the whole house rose in a great roar of cheering. Royalty could not have received a louder and more spontantous ovation.

“K,” however, sprang back in the box like a hunted animal, his face convulsed with fury. “The fools!” he muttered, seeming almosst to crouch and grind his teeth. He was shuddering with disgust and was calmed only with difficulty. It was Sir lan Hamilton’s theory that actually his old friend was a bundle of nerves which he controlled only by the force of his iron will. But he never willingly betrayed any emotional strain that he might have felt. When he was driven beyond himself, however, those about him could glimpse another side to his character and often were startled at what they saw.

In the late ’nineties, when Kitchener was over forty and the great favourite and hero of the Queen, she is said on one occasion to have made a rather pointed reference to his bachelor state. Eor a perceptible moment Kitchener was silent. Then he drew himself up, displaying to the full his height. “I’m married to your army, Ma’am," he declared, “and I find it a big enough job without tackling anything else!” “MAN WITHOUT A HOME.’’ Kitchener frequently uttered the expression, “I am a man without a home”; yet, so good were his relations with Queen Victoria and afterwards with King George V and Queen Mary, that he found a homelike quality even as a visitor to Buckingham Palace. When he became rich he had of course, Broome Park. But that was a bachelor establishment and there is no doubt that Kitchener felt his “homelessness” acutely. Until the outbreak of the Great War, for forty years he never spent a Christmas in England. But that was not an unmixed deprivation, for he had a hatred of cold that amounted almost to a phobia—a legacy of the years he spent in the East. During his summer visits .to England he always insisted that he must have a roaring lire and demanded one even In his bedroom.

A story about Kitchener’s love of excessive warmth belongs to the time of the Great War. Mr Lloyd George, when Minister of Munitions, called on one occasion at the War Office to see Kitchener who, although it was high summer and heat wave weather, sat as usual before a roaring fire. L. G. blandly remarked that he had often observed that soldiers- liked heat, “No doubt,” he said, “they are preparing themselves for conditions in the next world.”

“K” smiled at the thrust and retorted that there was another side to the argument. He thought the reason why some people— politicians, for instance —could not stand heat might be that it made them think too vividly of the. probable temperature of their future home! IN A SMALL BEDROOM. He never had a real home of his own in London. When, after Omdurman, he was acclaimed as “the avenger of Gordon,” when Parliament vot-

ed him a large sum of money and thousands of people, particularly women, considered that nothing that could be done for him could possibly be too good, he lived in a small bedrom near the Junior Services Club. There, in plain surroundings and narrow space, he took his meals and spent his spare time.

But when, in 1902, he became Commonder in Chief in India, his residences in Simla, Snowdon HalJ and Wildflower Hall, were famed for their hospitality and the beauty of their interiors. Lady Curzon, wife of the Viceroy, became a friend of Kitchener’s and found much pleasure helping him in the decoration of his homes.

He was afterwards grateful to her for her gifts of four beautiful gold salt cellars, which completed a set he was collecting. The cloud, which eventually spoiled the relationship between Lord Curzon and Kitchener did not affect the latter’s high opinion of Curzon’s beautiful wife.

That high opinion even survived a very awkward incident. At a ViceRegal dinner Lady Curzon suddenly discovered to her horror that no place at the chief table had been reserved for the Commander in Chief. She immediately rose and went to look for Kitchener to explain and apologise. She was just in time to see his carriage going away. “Kay,” in deep anger at what he believed to be a deliberate insult, had promptly left. At the time Lord Curzon and Kitchener were involved in a dispute over administrative problems. Shortly after the dinner incident Lord Curzon resigned, as “K’s” views were upheld by the Home Government. THE FIRST GREAT STEP. The first great step m Kitchener’s career was his advancement to Sirdar of the Egyptian army in 1892. This marked his development from a soldier only to soldier-cum-administra-tor and the promotion meant that he must assume many more social responsibilities that he really found attractive. In his early years in Egypt he had been looked upon as a forbidding and almost uncouth person. Even years later, when he had all the money and resources for hospitality that he could possibly need, although his efforts at entertaining were extravagant enough, he often somehow contrived to send his guests away with the impression that they had bored him.

“K” was never an. easy man to understand, and even when a person could call himself “K’s" friend he might still have to excuse discourtesies and aberrations that some people would consider fatal to friendship.

Both King George V and Queen Mary understood him, however, and none of his friends was more loyal than they. Whenever “K” felt depressed during the Great War he had only to go to Buckingham Palace for his self-confidence to be restored and his outlook brightened by a talk with the King. George V admired Kitchener profoundly, and had implicit faith in him. At a time when Cabinet Ministers were intriguing to oust Kitchener the King made him Knight of the Garter, giving him thus the highest possible honour he could confer on a subject. THE PRINCE AND WAR SERVICE. When the Prince of Wales, now Duke of Windsor, pleaded witli “K” to be allowed to go to the front, and argued that as he had three brothers lie did not matter which if he were killed, Kitchener replied dryly, “The possibility of your being killed is not the important point. What we are afraid of is your being taken prisoner."

Once, one Sunday in 1915, “K” had the privilege of extending the hospitality of his Kentish home, Broome Park, to King George and Queen Mary. The visit was very private; nobody but the members of the immediate Royal entourage knew of it at the time. Both the King and Queen were tremendously impressed with Kitchener’s stately home. A friend of “K’s” has said that Queen Mary’s praise of his flowers and art collection on this occasion gave the Field Marshal more pleasure than anything that had happened since the outbreak of war.

Their Majesties stayed to tea and, in honour of his guests, Kitchener brought out his most priceless" treasures, including his extremely rare Chinese porcelain vases. His royal guests promised to come on another occasion. But before that day arrived Kitchener was dead. For the tragedy of the Hampshire intervened. Queen Mary was always quite at home with Kitchener. Their keen mutual interest in china and antiques was a bond between them, and even in the dark early days of the Great War he and the Queen found time to discuss their respective collections. A CHAIR FROM THE QUEEN. When, one day, “K” mentioned to Queen Mary that he was looking for a certain type of chair to complete a set at Broome Park, the Queen found that in one of the store rooms at Buckingham Palace there Jay the very thing “K” wanted. Next day she sent it on to him, much to his delight. Little disinterested services of that kind always pleased “K” immensely,, for he came up against too many peo-

pie who were primarily interested in what they could get out of him. When the Boer War ended, in June 1902, Kitchener was made Viscount fbr his services and given the 0.M., and a Parliamentary grant of £50,000. He had since 1898 been eligible to sit in the House of Lords. But he was never at home there although, between the years of 1914 and 1916, he made 13 speeches in all. After having made a speech in the Lords he always returned home instead of going to the War Office, feeling weary and depressed. “It was twelve years before I summoned up courage to address the Lords.” he once remarkefl to Colonel Fitzgerald after his last speech there, “and now I feel that I need another twelve years' to recover.”