Josephine Tey Read online

  There were large contingents of soldiers stationed at Cameron Barracks in Inverness, while the Seaforth Highlanders were based nearby at Fort George.13 These were not only local Invernessians who had signed up, but also men who had come in from the surrounding areas; regular career Army men; and, as time went on, soldiers from other areas including (after 1917) Americans. Boats were also stationed in the Cromarty Firth. In the ‘August Madness’, that first patriotic rush of enthusiasm for the Great War, hundreds of young men signed up. One of the units particularly associated with Inverness is the Cameron Highlanders. The first and second battalions of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders were the regular army units who operated even during peacetime. The 1st Camerons were based just north of Inverness at Invergordon, and within a month of the declaration of war, they marched through town, cheered on by a crowd, and got onto a train heading south through Scotland, England and onto France. These were the soldiers who were already trained, who were theoretically ready for war. These professional soldiers were to be joined by the 4th Cameron Highlanders, the Territorial Army, and by the volunteers who had joined the TA and who were also being formed into new units. The 4th Cameron Highlanders was the battalion that most Invernessians were associated with. It was the battalion that Beth’s friends from school joined, and the battalion that her cousin Peter Horne joined. The Inverness Royal Academy and the local paper the Inverness Courier closely followed the progress of the 4th Camerons, and Beth followed it as avidly as everyone else. Her first novel, Kif, is in many ways a novel of the 4th Camerons.

  The 4th Camerons, at the start of the war, had about a thousand men, organized into different companies, each of which were based in different parts of the Highlands, from Inverness and Nairn right over to Fort William, Broadford and Portree. As part of the Territorial Army, men in the 4th Camerons had work outside the army, and volunteered in their spare time. An unusual characteristic of the battalion was that two-thirds of both the officers and men were Gaelic-speaking, probably the highest percentage of any battalion in the British Army. Officers were generally middle-class, from professions such as teaching, in contrast to the private-school educated English officers of the ‘regular’ army, such as the 1st Camerons. The popular Captain of ‘A’ Company in Inverness was Murdoch Beaton, whose name may seem familiar to those who know Gordon Daviot’s early work.

  Although the 4th Camerons were theoretically at full strength of a thousand men, in reality there were only about six to seven hundred ready to go, which meant they needed more volunteers before they could set out. It was not hard to find young men eager to join up: around a hundred volunteered in Inverness in the first two weeks of the war while in London two hundred and fifty men signed up with the proviso that they be assigned to a Scottish regiment. In Inverness, the 4th Camerons paraded through Bell’s Park, and the commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Ewen Campbell, made a stirring speech asking for volunteers. Bell’s Park is now known as Farraline Park: stripped of the bus stances which now take up the space there, it is an open square in front of an imposing, columned building (now the Library, but formerly a school). Beth was surely among the crowds who watched the kilted 4th Camerons marching to the sound of pipes and drums in this impressive setting. During the first few months there were briefly six thousand troops stationed in Inverness, a very large number for a town of only 20,000 people. The war must have seemed very close for Beth.

  The 4th Camerons, now up to full strength, were sent down to Bedford for extra training by the end of August 1914. Dressed in their kilts – and the majority of them speaking Gaelic – they made a formidable impression on the English town where they did their training. A short film, The Highlanders at Bedford, was made about them, which was then shown as a recruiting tool in Inverness in November 1914. Advertisements were printed every week in the local press to raise even more recruits, and the local papers also carried letters from the men who went away. Beth was among the many who devoured every scrap of information.

  The first indication that things were not going to go well, however, arose out of the unique character of the 4th Camerons. The regiment was made up of volunteers from the Highlands who had often never travelled far from their homes. They did a bit of soldiering on the weekends, but had never seen active service. Their trip to Bedford was their first trip out of their region – and their first exposure to large groups of people. The Bedford camp was crowded with men, and a measles epidemic swept through the camp. The Highlanders in the Cameron and Seaforth regiments, particularly those from the more remote villages, had never come into contact with measles and had no immunity. Fourteen men died. Twelve other men died from other infectious diseases. The measles epidemic delayed the 4th Camerons’ departure out to France, but they eventually left in February. While the early months of the war maintained some of the camaraderie and patriotic fervour of the ‘August Madness’, it was not long before trench warfare became embedded in earnest, and the families of those who died of the measles may have begun to think that their sons might have been the lucky ones.

  For those staying in the Highlands, travel, especially north (where troops and boats were stationed) was restricted and all Invernessians had to carry ID (a Local Pass). This wasn’t just a temporary or minor inconvenience. The rush of soldiers in 1914 began a process that, by 1917, had given the armed forces almost complete control over the north of Scotland and thoroughly militarized the landscape. The First World War was the beginning of a total change in the way of life, and in the Highlands this was particularly visible and long-lasting, with military bases and jobs still a feature of the landscape across the north and Moray today. Beth was used to spending family holidays at Daviot, near Inverness, a place that she loved so much that she used it in her later pen-name, but the First World War stopped this link to her childhood.

  However, while his daughter was watching the soldiers, in 1914 Colin MacKintosh was concerned with two changes closer to home. First of all his business: until 1914, his shop seems to have done particularly well, and he saw no reason to think that the war would make any difference.14 With such large numbers of troops moved suddenly into the area, it seems reasonable to assume that large amounts of food were suddenly needed, and Colin was there to supply fruit. Colin’s business had aimed for the top of the market, and he had been selling to the big houses, these same houses whose sons were now officers. These officers must have had to organize food for their troops, and Colin’s business was perfectly situated to serve the army barracks. In about 1914, Colin had saved up enough to move himself, his wife Josephine and their three daughters from rented accommodation to a bought house, costing around £42, at 4 Victoria Circus (later renamed Crown Circus). ‘Crown Cottage’, as it came to be known, was not a cottage at all, but a large Victorian villa in the best part of the Crown area. This was a significant step up for the MacKintosh family.

  Colin also had a family problem to deal with. His brothers Murdo and Dan he considered troublesome, people he could no longer work with, who had tried to tap him for money, and who had even tried to fight him in the back shop. He still paid the rent for his sister Mary and her son Donald. His other brother John, closest to him in age, he had considered settled: he had emigrated to Patagonia twenty years before, where he was working as a shepherd. But in summer 1914 John reappeared, in dire circumstances. John had been sacked from his job and deported to Britain, sailing into Liverpool and somehow making his way back to Inverness. When he arrived, he was in a terrible state. Previously a teetotaller, for the past two years John had been drinking heavily, had become moody, neglected his work and finally ‘became silly’, leading to his deportation. He was filthy, yet apparently happy and unaware of the state he was in. John was taken in by his brother Murdo and his wife, but they struggled with him as he wandered aimlessly and forgetfully around, not recognizing them, staring wildly and laughing and behaving with no sense of propriety. They were also concerned that John continued to insist that he was a wealthy man who h
ad somehow been done out of all his money. With no money for medical care, and a family of their own to look after, drastic measures were necessary. Murdo and his wife arranged to have their brother John sectioned, and he was admitted into Craig Dunain District Asylum.15

  John’s case notes from Craig Dunain are detailed, and show that he was suffering from a number of physical ailments, including persistent rheumatism which had troubled him for years. It was noted that he was not always lucid, but that he was able to give clear descriptions of life on a ranch in Patagonia. The theme of the money in the bank which had somehow disappeared recurred. John’s condition deteriorated fast, and he died on 15th July 1914, aged forty-seven. The final cause of death was pneumonia, but it had been preceded by a ‘General Paralysis’. Colin registered his brother’s death.

  Emigration to Patagonia was not uncommon in the Highlands, and, sadly, John’s story was not uncommon either. The climate in Patagonia did not always agree with Highlanders, and there were a number of diseases that John would have been exposed to that Highland doctors may not have recognized, or known how to treat. His symptoms, while clearly involving a mental element, also had a physical component, which may have had a deeper underlying cause. John’s complaint about money may not have been the ravings of a madman: there are several well-documented cases of Highlanders who had emigrated to Patagonia finding, on their return, that money that had been promised to their accounts on completion of their contracts was not forthcoming.16 Whatever the truth, John’s illness and death was a distressing experience for Colin, Murdo and the wider MacKintosh family. John was married, with children, but despite extensive searches I have not found out what happened to his widow and her family.

  John’s death was only ten days before Beth MacKintosh’s eighteenth birthday. As Colin kept his family at a distance, Beth was probably unaware of the finer details, just as Colin was distracted and unaware of what Beth was experiencing. It was a strange time: the war was about to change everything.

  Much has been made in biographical sketches of Beth’s attachment to a soldier who was killed in the First World War, and it is easy to see how she would have been caught up in the atmosphere of the ‘August Madness’ and the rush to volunteer, and in the romance of the young boy soldiers. It is also easy to see that Colin would not have approved of any serious romance: John’s death must have reinforced his determination to offer his daughters the best future possible, and, for Colin, a good future was inextricably linked to hard work. His daughters were going to work hard at school, go on to further education, and only marry at some unspecified date in the future. He would want them to have a marriage like his own and Josephine’s, built on hard work and mutual trust, and, crucially, with a solid financial foundation. Colin was keeping family secrets from his daughters, perhaps making it harder for them to bridge the gap between them. Because of this, Beth kept many of her thoughts to herself, not even sharing them with friends. Her romance in the Great War is one of the areas of her life that was the hardest to research, it was so shrouded in mystery, but she was clearly entering a new stage of her personal and emotional development.

  Chapter Four

  War, and first year at Anstey

  After the ‘August Madness’ and the crazy rush to sign up, the reality of war did not take long to assert itself. In a small town like Inverness, everyone was aware of losses. The first former pupil of the Academy to die was Albert Corner, in March 1915. Ironically, Albert’s mother was German.1 The son of the owner of the Inverness Courier, James Barron, was killed at Loos in 1915. George, the son of the IRA’s former rector Dr Watson, volunteered to join the army when he was only sixteen, and was killed by a sniper before he was eighteen. Hugh Melven, son of a well-known local bookseller, died in 1916, three weeks after spending time home on leave. His younger brother was already dead, killed the year before.2 Murdoch Beaton, rapidly promoted after several deaths to be in charge of the 4th Camerons, had the difficult task of writing home to families he knew well, to let them know that their sons had been killed. He wrote extraordinarily frank letters home to his own family, describing in detail the bloody attacks in the trenches.3 Private letters from relatives were routinely sent in and published in the Inverness Courier, giving the ordinary people in Inverness a realistic idea of life in the trenches.4 To modern eyes it is difficult to understand why men still volunteered, but for the first couple of years of the war there was still a strong belief that, however hard it was, it was the right thing to do. In descriptions written after the war there is a great deal of bitterness, but the contemporary quotes from the early years still emphasize patriotism. It wasn’t until later, when the stalemate and conditions in the trenches was exacerbated by the invention of new weaponry such as trench mortars, that notes of dissent began to creep in.

  Within Beth MacKintosh’s own family, there were radical differences in the experience of the war and it played its part in dividing the once-close Horne and MacKintosh families. As the father of three daughters, perhaps Colin saw the First World War differently to his brothers and brothers-in-law, fathers of sons. There was moral pressure from the beginning of the Great War for all men of the right age (between nineteen and forty) to enlist, which included most of Beth’s male cousins. Two of Beth’s cousins, both called Peter Horne after their grandfather, had very different experiences of the First World War, illustrating the different ways it affected the family.5

  The first Peter Horne was the son of Josephine’s older brother Robert and his wife Margaret. Robert was older than Josephine, and Peter was his second son, his firstborn, James, having died in infancy. Robert worked as a janitor at Farraline Park School in the centre of Inverness, and, as a member of the Territorial Army, was called up only a month after the Great War started. His son Peter was a couple of years younger than Elizabeth, and took over his father’s job – but went on to join the 4th Camerons as soon as he was able, in 1915.6 Peter was sent to France in September 1915, where he fought through the end of the Battle of the Somme. The Somme is notorious now for the huge number of lives lost, and the Camerons were particularly badly hit. In July 1916, the 1st Camerons were at full strength of around a thousand men. They were the regular army who, as professional trained soldiers, were given attacking assignments at the Somme. Two months later, at a roll call on the third of September, this battalion had only 132 men: a less than 15 per cent survival rate. Many of the 4th Camerons were sent to reinforce the 1st Camerons, and eventually the 4th Camerons were so depleted in numbers that they were disbanded altogether, and all the men deployed to different units. Peter Horne was posted to the 6th Camerons in August 1916. He was killed during the Battle of Arras on 24th April 1917. He is commemorated on a memorial in Arras, and also on a Horne family headstone in Tomnahurich cemetery in Inverness.

  Beth’s other cousin, Peter John Horne, was the son of Josephine’s younger brother, Peter, who worked as the printer-compositor at the Northern Chronicle. He was just one year younger than Beth. Unlike Beth, Peter had already left school, and had started training alongside his father as a Compositor Apprentice when war broke out. In 1916 he too enrolled in the army, but his enrolment form is clearly marked ‘Exemption from combatant service has been granted’. Peter John Horne was a conscientious objector. While the first Peter Horne was posted to France, Peter John was posted to a non-combatant corps in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, refusing to fight because of his deeply-held religious beliefs. Conscientious objectors were very uncommon during the Great War, and were treated as near outcasts from society. Josephine and her siblings had been brought up in a religious household, and, although neither Josephine nor her brother Robert seem to have held to this, Peter John’s branch of the family felt that they could not countenance sending their sons to war. One can only imagine how two brothers would feel, when the son of one was killed fighting in a war, while the son of the other was a conscientious objector. Peter John survived the war with his religious beliefs strengthened by his experiences. In later life he
was an evangelist, ending up in Bolivia.

  It wasn’t just men who were actively involved in service overseas: although women did not fight, many of them volunteered to help, doing nursing work for example. The IRA kept its pupils informed of what their former classmates were doing, and the 1916 school magazine had a particularly striking description of the work of two female former pupils, Dr Anna Muncaster and Mrs Green, who found themselves in Serbia.7 Anna Muncaster was ten years older than Elizabeth. After leaving the IRA she had gone to Edinburgh University, where she had gained a first class honours degree in medicine and had gone on to work in lunatic asylums. In 1915 she volunteered to join with the work being done in Serbia by Mrs Mabel St Clair Stobart, who had set up a field hospital for soldiers and various dispensaries providing medical aid to civilians. Serbia was one of the major theatres of the First World War and was well known as an area that welcomed Scottish nurses, providing also the base for Dr Elsie Inglis, who had gone abroad when her offers to help in the UK were rejected. In Serbia, Dr Anna Muncaster worked first as a sort of basic GP, giving aid as required to the Serbian people, but as German troops started to invade the country, including an aerial bombing campaign, Anna was sent to work in military hospitals. The German advance eventually meant she had to flee Serbia. In effect she became a refugee, forced to walk over the mountains in extremely cold weather, with little food, trying to find sanctuary. After a few false starts, Anna and her colleagues ended up in Montenegro, got down to Albania, and finally escaped by boat to Italy. From there, she went by way of Switzerland and France back to England. This forced evacuation took two months. In the matter of fact way in which participants in the First World War reported their journeys, Anna remarked in a letter to a friend that she had not had a bath during those two months, but at least she had managed to buy a hat and gloves in Paris! She survived the war, and was decorated by the King of Serbia. After 1918 she worked in England for a few years, then emigrated to South Africa, where she worked again in asylums.