Douglas Haig, 1861–1928

Gerard J. De Groot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000338980
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

For seventy years Douglas Haig had been portrayed on the one hand as the 'Butcher of the Somme' – inept, insensitive and archaic; and on the other as the 'Saviour of Britain' – noble, unselfish and heroic. This polarised, strident and ultimately inconclusive argument had resulted in Haig becoming detached from his own persona; he had become a shallow symbol of a past age to be pilloried or praised. The middle ground in the Haig debate had been as barren as No Man's Land.

There should be no mystery about Haig. Certain from a very early age of his own greatness, he preserved every record of his achievements: diaries, letters, official reports etc. The opinions of his contemporaries are likewise readily available. But until this book the material had not been used to construct a complete and accurate picture. Critics and supporters have raided the historical records for evidence of the demi-god or demon and have ignored that which conflicts with their preconceptions. They have likewise raced through his early life in order to get to the war, in the process ignoring the complex process of his development as a soldier. Analyses of Haig's command have consequently been as shallow as the prevailing images of the man.

After eight years of painstaking and detailed research into previously neglected sources, Gerard De Groot gave us a more complete and balanced picture. This book, originally published in 1988, which will appeal both to the general and the specialised reader, is not simply a critique of Haig's command in the war, but an exploration into his personality. Close attention to his early life and career reveals him as a creature of his society, a man who mirrored both the virtues and the faults of Edwardian Britain. What emerges is an intense, dedicated, but ultimately flawed servant of his country whose ironic fate it was to grow up in one age and to command in another.

PART I

A Question of Upbringing

1

‘And the Training Makes a Gentleman’

It was whisky, not blood, which initially determined Douglas Haig’s course in life. His connection with the main family line and the ancestral home of Bemersyde in the Borders was distant.¹ John Haig, Douglas’s father, was a man of secure means but relatively modest pedigree. Though master of the Fife hounds (an appointment which in those days of social snobbery would not have gone to a member of the middle class), his reputation and influence (not to mention his income) was derived mainly from his whisky empire. Thus Douglas’s background defies precise classification – a fact of profound importance in his upbringing.

John Haig married Rachel Veitch in August 1839. He was 37; she a beautiful 18 year old. It was a poor match for her, an excellent one for him. The Veitches of Eliot and Dawyck were a proud family upon whom financial misfortune had of late descended. Marriage to a member of the trading community, ordinarily inconceivable, had become pragmatic. John Haig’s income of £10,000 per year outweighed the disdain of the dowerless Miss Veitch. The marriage brought him greater respectability and provided her with the resources to raise her children in the style of her class.

John and Rachel settled at Cameron House, near Markinch. Douglas, the youngest of eleven children, was born on 19 June 1861 at an Edinburgh residence used by the Haig children who attended school in the city. By the time Douglas was born, his father had aged well past his 59 years. Troubled by gout, asthma, and the ill-effects of heavy drinking, he spent every winter at continental spas, where the main aim was to dry out. The cures were occasionally, if temporarily, successful. ‘Your father is looking so well,’ Rachel wrote with delight from Vichy. He had, she told Douglas, for ‘the first time . . . done without Brandy, Whisky or Kirsche before breakfast’. Vichy had ‘acted like magic on your father’. Nevertheless, the heavy drinking continued until he died in 1878 of ‘abscess of the liver’.²

John Haig’s energies were concentrated upon his business. Though highly ambitious, he was at the same time widely respected as a fair and honest employer. But, as might be expected, he had little time or patience for family matters. He was not a good father. The drinking problem and his ill-health made him prone to fits of rage. His children, frightened of their father, did their best to avoid him. Douglas, like his brothers and sisters, was noticeably silent about his feelings for his father and recorded no grief when he died. A former groom at Cameron House, Thomas Houston, provided a revealing glimpse of the relationship between the two:

My brother was . . . riding a rather restive young horse . . . Master Douglas was behind a hedge and when my brother came near he jumped out and startled the horse and my brother had a fall, the horse’s hoof catching a cheek and leaving a mark quite visible now . .. Master Douglas was sent off to Edinburgh by his mother till his father cooled down.

John Haig, who took little interest in his son’s welfare, had a minimal effect upon his development. This situation was probably rued by no one. The eldest brother Willie – the ‘moving spirit in the family’ – played the surrogate father, providing the administration behind Rachel’s motherly inspiration.³

Rachel Haig believed that her genteel birth rendered her better able to supervise the children’s upbringing. She taught them the manners of her class, not their father’s. Her often overbearing attention was in complete contrast to his neglect. A kind-hearted, highly moral and deeply religious woman, she willingly sacrificed herself for her children. ‘Her devotion to us shortened her life by many years,’ one of them wrote.⁴ She was especially close to her three youngest sons – John, George and Douglas – nicknamed the ‘three bees’ for the way they constantly buzzed around her. Though her health was already failing by the time they were born, she nevertheless made certain that they did not suffer from a lack of attention. Aware perhaps that she would not live long, she was eager to do as much as possible for them while she could.

Douglas was by all accounts Rachel’s favourite. Though as an adult Janet Haig could excuse her mother’s attitude by claiming that she ‘knew herself to be especially blessed in her . . . little son Douglas’, when the children were young it caused friction. Douglas was often cruelly tormented by jealous siblings. His long blond curls, which Rachel adored, were on one occasion shorn by his brothers and sisters who had ambushed him while he was playing. Douglas arrived at his mother’s knee in tears, the curls tucked in his pinafore. When Rachel died, they were found among her most precious possessions.⁵

Virtually blind to his faults, Rachel turned Douglas into the classic spoiled child. He often got his way by throwing severe temper tantrums and knew how to trade good behaviour for sweets or small gifts. When a nurse found him impossible to handle, she, not he, was more often than not blamed for his misconduct. Like many spoiled children, Douglas stubbornly opposed his mother while at the same time recognising her as his most important ally – his security in a lonely and somewhat threatening world. She supported him unquestioningly in spite of his inability to justify her faith during her lifetime. His status as Rachel’s ‘blue-eyed boy’ gave him an overinflated sense of his own importance, an attribute which, though in time moderated, was never completely discarded.

Douglas spent his first eight years almost constantly in his mother’s company. Since he did not start school until May 1869, there was little outside influence upon his early development. He had few playmates (his mother did not encourage contacts with the humble country folk) and no close companions. Rachel was, therefore, Douglas’s most important role model. He ‘revered and loved his mother’, Emily Haig wrote. ‘It was her memory that inspired him to do his utmost to live up to her exalted standard of truth and uprightness.’ Though some standards were perverted through imitation, there were significant similarities between mother and son. Both were highly ambitious – though it must be said that, society being what it was, Rachel’s ambition had inevitably to be channelled through her sons. Both were also determined, confident, wilful and self-righteous – a combination which made compromise difficult. Yet Rachel and Douglas shared an ability to cloak their darker sides in a ‘quiet dignity’, an image of moral purity and serenity.⁶

This serenity arose in part from Rachel’s devout religious beliefs, mirrored by her son later in life. She derived immense comfort and security from her faith, in part because her belief in predestination absolved her from responsibility for the course which her life took. Though certain of every person’s ability to shape his or her own destiny, she was equally certain that everything was ultimately the expression of God’s will. For her, no contradiction existed between these certainties. Thus, occasional misfortune – such as Douglas’s lack of achievement as a child – was never allowed to erode her steadfast optimism.

Rachel kept a watchful eye upon her children’s religious training, requiring them to recite their lessons and pray daily in her presence. Whilst away at school, Douglas was instructed to send his weekly biblical texts, accompanied by his comments, to his mother. In her replies, she repeatedly reminded him of ‘the All-seeing, loving Eye ever upon you my dear boy’. The other children did not emulate her deep conviction; John, in fact, found her ‘perhaps too religious’.⁷ Likewise, Douglas, for most of his life, gave only half-hearted attention to matters spiritual. In the Great War, however, an intensity similar to Rachel’s suddenly materialised, and with it came the same belief in predestination.

The image of moral purity was also strengthened by the habit of order and cleanliness which Rachel cultivated in her son. This habit was later reinforced at every institution through which Douglas passed, but its source was definitely Rachel. Though lax in her discipline of him, she stressed regimentation in his daily life. Nurses were given strict instructions regarding the care of the children, departures from which were not tolerated. The following is an example:

NURSERY DUTIES

The nurse must devote her time and thoughts to the comfort and well-being of the three little children under her charge – cheerily – and happily, always being beside them.

Perfect regularity necessary.

Children’s porridge at 8 o’clock. Dinner at 1/2 past one. Tea at 6. Lights out and nursery quiet at 10. Children bathed every night – their hair washed once a week – their socks changed twice a day. Clothes kept in good repair – and everything connected with the nursery tidy, and neat. Day nursery scrubbed out every second night – bathroom twice a week, dirty things counted over and mended before washing on Monday.

Clothes brushed at night and boots and shoes before they rise in the morning. Nurse has to rise to wash and do up her own clothes. Nurse gets to church every other Sunday.

Janet commented that ‘the “Nursery Duties” remind me of [Douglas’s] own orderly ways’.⁸

In the Victorian ethos, order and cleanliness symbolised moral purity, which was in turn an essential attribute of the gentleman. Rachel, above all, wanted her sons to be gentlemen. Part of their training was a classical education at a first-rate public school, which, according to Rachel, enabled the gentleman to rise above the vulgar masses. Her thoughts on education and her objectives for her sons are evident in an 1859 letter to one of Willie’s tutors:

Our object is not to make Willie a distiller or anything in particular. We desire to develop in him to the utmost such gifts as he has received from God – to improve those intellectual qualities in which he may be deficient and to cultivate his moral powers: – to see him grow up a humble and earnest Christian – an accomplished, well-informed and liberal-minded gentleman – with these qualifications be his lot in life what may, he will command respect and be in a position to derive happiness in whatever position of life God may place him … As for myself I attach so much importance to scholarship – especially as an antidote to the vulgarity and narrowness of mind which active commercial pursuits are apt to engender in the best. . .⁹

The ideals of Muscular Christianity could not have been better expressed. Rachel’s hopes for Douglas were no less bold, as she indicated in a letter to John:

You must write to Douglas about your prospects – and it will be an immense spur to him in his Greek which he dislikes so much – When my brothers were at school, it was considered that a boy who did not learn Greek was uneducated – and to my idea an Oxford or Cambridge University man is of a higher stamp, than those who are not – of course you . . . mix with men in college who, in the course of a few years will be the great men of the day, Statesmen, lawyers, etc. and the training makes a gentleman!¹⁰

With Rachel’s guidance, a Victorian gentleman was what Douglas became.

In view of Rachel’s firm belief in the value of a classical education, it seems curious that Douglas’s schooling was at first approached rather haphazardly. The fact that he was given no formal training before he was 8 might be explained by his ill-health, his difficult behaviour, or Rachel’s reluctance to part with her youngest, and dearest, child. His first school (in St Andrews, to which he went in May 1869) seems only to have been a convenient place to stow him while mother and father took cures in Vichy. Douglas stayed there only a few weeks. In October 1869, he joined his brother John at Edinburgh Collegiate, a small day school located in Charlotte Square. A master later remembered him as a ‘clean, well turned out boy’ who was slow and backward.¹¹

John felt that his brother’s educational difficulties, particularly his problems with the Classics, originated at the Collegiate. The nature of his problems is not known, but it is certain that he was not of low intelligence. Rather, his early problems probably resulted from his late start, and teaching methods ill-suited to his individualistic and somewhat difficult temperament. While his experiences may have caused him some anxiety, there is no evidence that they resulted in permanent psychological impairment.¹²

In September 1871, Douglas again followed John to Orwell House, a preparatory school whose master, a Mr Hanbury, specialised in grooming students for Rugby. Rachel was determined that her sons should go to that temple of Muscular Christianity, but Hanbury refused to recommend any boy who did not meet Rugby’s high standards. Douglas, burdened by his slow start, was torn in opposite directions by his mother’s unrealistic ambition and Hanbury’s depressing realism. His time at Orwell House was therefore his most distressing educational experience.

Douglas stayed at Orwell House until October 1875. Reports from tutors reveal a difficult child with a consistently dismal academic record: ‘Douglas… is very backward in Latin… spelling very poor and writing careless . . . Rather tiresome at times … as he is backward he ought to be more attentive.’ Despite the problems, Rachel’s support remained steadfast. She did not scold her son, but instead encouraged him to improve as gently as she knew how. When Hanbury advised that It would not do Douglas any harm if he worked a little harder’, Rachel responded by writing ‘my own darling boy take the hint and try and work a little harder’. She elevated every rare small success to the sublime, while reminding Douglas not to be burdened by the more frequent failures. ‘Do tell me how your work gets on,’ she would urge him. ‘Tell me all about it, as there is no one, as you know, whose thoughts centre so much on you my darling Douglas.’¹³

Douglas was not allowed to forget that ‘your advancement into Big School is my great desire, as you know so well’. Rachel’s ambition may have caused him strain, but this was outweighed by her resolute faith in him. This faith, at times blind, caused her to question Hanbury’s more objective opinion of her son’s abilities. When she learned that he had advised Douglas that ‘it is hardly worthwhile his going up to Rugby as he would be chucked out in a year or so’, she instead insisted that Rugby was ‘not so particular as Mr. H. would lead one to suppose’. Eventually, however, she accepted the inevitable:

I had a letter last Saturday from Mr. Hanbury writing to know where we thought of placing you, as he could not advise you to go up for Rugby as your knowledge of Greek was so deficient you would never pass … Of course, as you know, I was very sorry to get Mr. H’s letter, but then I felt satisfied i...