Chapter XI
the modern Marlborough

  Europe’s Need—­The Plight of France—­A Delicate
    Situation—­The Man of “Grip”—­A Magnificent Retreat 116

Chapter XII
French, the man

  A Typical Englishman—­Fighting at School—­Napoleon
    Worship—­“A Great Reporter”—­Halting Speeches and
    Polished Prose.  A South African Coincidence—­Mrs.
    Despard and the Newsboy—­The Happy Warrior 121

Index 149

SIR JOHN FRENCH

CHAPTER I

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.

[Page Heading:  Playing with soldiers]