Of the boy’s home life at Ripplevale very little is known.  He was the sixth child and the only son of the family.  Both his parents dying while he was quite young, he was brought up under the care of his sisters.  But there is no reason to suppose that he was therefore spoilt; for one of these ladies shared in a remarkable degree the qualities of energy and determination which were to distinguish her brother.  Young French’s earliest education was largely guided by this gifted sister, who is now so well known in another field of warfare as Mrs. Despard.

It is extremely difficult to say what manner of boy the future Field-Marshal was.  Only one fact emerges clearly.  He was high-spirited and full of mischief.  Everything that he did was done with the greatest enthusiasm, and already there were signs that he possessed an unusually strong will.

Inevitably games quickly took possession of his imagination.  Very soon the war game had first place in his affections.  He was perpetually playing with soldiers—­a fascinating hobby which intrigued the curious mind of the rather silent child.  French, in fact, was a very normal and healthy boy, with just a touch of thoughtfulness to mark him off from his fellows.

He was not, however, to enjoy the freedom of home life for very long.  At an early age he was sent to a preparatory school at Harrow, which he left for Eastman’s Naval College at Portsmouth.  After the necessary “cramming” he passed the entrance examination to the Navy at the age of thirteen.  In the following year (1866) he joined the Britannia as a cadet.  Four years of strenuous naval work followed.  But like another Field-Marshal-to-be, Sir Evelyn Wood, the boy was not apparently enamoured of the sea.  As a result he decided to leave that branch of the service.

That action is typical of the man.  He is ruthless with himself as well as with others.  If the Navy were not to give scope for his ambition, then he must quit the Navy.  Already, no doubt, his life-long hero, Napoleon, was kindling the young man’s imagination.  But the English Navy of those days gave little encouragement to the Napoleonic point of view.  It was bound up with the sternest discipline and much red tape.  If rumour speaks true young French was irritated by the almost despotic powers then possessed by certain naval officers.  So he boldly decided at the age of eighteen to end one career and commence another.

To enter the sister service he had to stoop to what is dubbed the “back-door,” in other words a commission in the militia.  It seems rather remarkable that one of our most brilliant officers should have had this difficulty to face.  Incidentally it is a curious sidelight on the system of competitive examinations.  But there are several facts to remember.  Sir John French’s genius developed slowly.  One does not figure him as ready, like Kitchener, at twenty-one, with a complete map of his career.  In these days he was probably more interested in hunting than in soldiering.  The man who is now proverbial for his devotion to the study of tactics was then very little of a book-worm.  Indeed he seems to have shown no special intellectual or practical abilities until much later in life.