C.S. Forester’s fiction covered a wide range, though there
was a heavy leaning towards historical stories. The General (1936) is virtually
a biography of a fictional Army officer. It begins with Lieutenant-General Sir
Herbert Curzon, KCMG, CB, DSO being wheeled in his bath-chair along
Bournemouth’s promenade. Local opinion
in Bournemouth ‘is inclined to give Sir Herbert more credit than he has really
earned, although perhaps not more than he deserves.’ That ambivalent, cryptic observation then
leads into a flashback that covers almost the entire book.
The ‘virtual biography’ stems from the style and point of
view of the writing: ‘The day on which Curzon first stepped over the threshold
of history, the day which was to start him towards the command of a hundred
thousand men, towards knighthood – and towards the bath-chair on Bournemouth
promenade – found him as a worried subaltern in an early South African battle.’
At the time, Curzon was in the cavalry fighting the Boers.
By chance rather than design, he distinguished himself in the battle of
Volkslaagte and earned a DSO. Curzon is depicted as a man of honour without
much imagination. He desired to conform to type, particularly as his family
history could not compare with that of the majority of officers. ‘… it is
assumed that it is inherent in the English character to wish not to appear
different from one’s fellows, but that is a bold assumption to make regarding a
nation which has produced more original personalities than any other in modern
times.’ (p20)
The years passed and then the First World War was upon them.
Forester captures a great deal of the feel of the time: ‘There never had been a
mobilization like this in all British history…’ (p28) They conveyed some three
thousand horses to France for the expeditionary force.
Curzon believed in the maxim, ‘Feed the horses before the
men, and the men before the officers, and the officers before yourself.’ (p29)
He didn’t like to command his division by telephone, as other commanders did: ‘He
was still imbued with the regimental ideal of sharing on active service the
dangers and discomforts of his men.’ (p148)
Curzon had not mastered French, ‘which the civilians talked
with such disconcerting readiness. He had early formed a theory that French
could only be spoken by people with a malformed larynx…’ (p29) This is only one instance where Forester
employs his humour and irony. Another is: ‘Her Grace is not at home, sir,’ said
the butler at the door. By a miracle of elocution he managed to drop just
enough of each aitch to prove himself a butler without dropping the rest.’
(p68)
At length, Curzon was promoted to Major-General and given
the Ninety-first Division, to relieve a rather aged officer – ‘a doddering old
fool’ - and take his residence. The outgoing officer and his wife were not
pleased. ‘Until this morning they had felt secure in the pomp and power of
their official position. It was a shock for old people to be flung out like
this without warning… With the tenacity of very old people for the good things
of life they wanted to spin out their stay here, even for only a few days.’
(p88)
Eventually, Curzon marries well, the daughter of a duke.
‘The Bishop (he was a Winter-Willoughby too; by common report the only one with
any brains, and he had too many) went through the service…’ (p102) Afterwards,
at the reception, Forester presages the doom looming: ‘The sparse khaki amidst
the morning coats and the elaborate dressed would have been significant to an attentive
observer. Those uniforms were like the secret seeds of decay in the midst of an
apparently healthy body. They were significant of the end of a great era.’
(p103)
While Curzon might have been a bit of a snob, he was not as
out of touch as his in-laws: ‘… it gave the Duchess an uneasy sense of outraged
convention that aeroplane bombs should slay those in high places as readily as
those in low. She described the horrors of air raids to Curzon (on leave) as
though he had never seen a bombardment.’ (p175) The Duke’s sense of proportion
was less warped, if marginally so.
There are a few moving passages where Curzon’s stiff upper
lip almost falters with regard to his wife. ‘Curzon actually had to swallow
hard as he kissed her good-bye; he was moved inexpressibly by the renewal of
the discovery that there was actually a woman on earth who could weep for him.’
(219) [We’ll ignore the repetition of ‘actually’…]
As the war gets under way, Curzon’s 91st Division
is scheduled for Gallipoli, but he wants to face the Hun and manages to get the
orders changed. To the Western Front – Flanders’ fields…
Written just before the next global conflict, The General
shows that the adage ‘lions led by donkeys’ might have been good left-wing or
liberal propaganda, but it was unfair. The methodology of warfare had been
outstripped by the weapons. Common sense should have indicated that throwing
thousands of infantry at barbed wire and machine-guns was no way to wage war. ‘…
a convention had grown up under which the prowess of a division was measured by
the number of its men who were killed.’ They were playing a numbers game, not
dealing with human beings who had dreams, hopes and families.
Although Forester didn’t go into combat, he manages
nevertheless to convey some of the horror of trench warfare. The General is an excellent examination of a brave
First World War officer thrust into a situation largely beyond his
understanding where his beliefs and ideals are shattered by modern warfare.
