"John"
John Lord Montagu of Beaulieu: A Memoir. By Lady Thou- bridge and Archibald Marshall. (Mae:mullion 215.)
Toe calling of a well-known man by his Christian name throughout a biographical study might be reckoned upon to grate upon those readers who never shared the authors' intimacy with their subject. It might also perhaps seem to be a t00 easy method of obtaining the desired emphasis upon the friendliness which Lord Montagu felt towards all and sundry and which he quickly inspired in others. Never- theless, the authors are entirely justified. Lord Montagu was " John " to many thousands of people. The social atmosphere of Beaulieu where he ruled, loving and loved, could hardly have been reproduced without the decision that whatever might be said in criticism, John should be John. And we take leave, if only for convenience, to follow their example through the rest of this review. After all, Jolm
encouraged it himself. Why the devil don't you call me John ? " he said once to a young man connected with his family who, remembering the difference in their ages, had politely addressed him as "Sir."
No landowner ever had a more scrupulous care for the amenities of his inheritance than John. Every observant visitor to Beaulieu must have noted how well the houses, of which John built many in recent years, have been sited. They have their own view without forcing themselves upon the view of the passer-by. They are reticent and seemly. Those who approach the village up the beautiful river from the Solent are continually conscious of an unsearred expanse of woodland and bird-haunted meadows, yet the houses are there. From his childhood onwards John was the devotee of Beaulieu. He was particularly proud of his ownership of the magnificent remains of the Abbey. He revered them and was an extraordinarily careful custodian of their stability, never confusing restoration with vandalism. He had almost an equal joy in Buckler's Hard on the Beaulieu River where so many stout eighteenth-century ships were built. To-day the Master Builder's dwelling-house is an hotel, but in that house and in all the others of the old industrial settlement there are ample signs of care for the fascinating legends which surround the ancient sources of British maritime renown.
Visiting the farina, fishing in the upper river, seine-netting in the lower river, shooting his covers, wandering in the forest, sailing a boat in the Solent, watching for a rare bird on the marshes, visiting his bird sanctuary or the heronry at Sowley Pond, John was manifestly happy every minute that he spent at Beaulieu. When lie was a child someone tried to convince him that there was something to be said for London. There was, for instance, the Zoo. " I should like," said John, "the Zoological Gardens in the country "—the wisdom of the child upon which the man was unable to improve.
A day spent with John at Beaulieu was a day filled with the lore of geology, of agriculture, of natural history, of forestry. There are some things which visitors to Beaulieu in his company will never forget : his explanation of how the prehistoric Solent River must have flowed out to the sea (when the Isle of Wight was still part of the mainland) near Bembridge, and how the chalk barrier which protected the valley of the river from the west must gradually have been beaten down, leaving the Needles in the Isle of Wight and the Old Harry rocks, in Studkuld Bay, Dorset, as a reminder of what had been his denunciation of the planting of conifers in the New Forest, which should have been reserved for the indigenous trees of England—a subject upon which, by the way, he ultimately convinced the authorities ; his exposition of the marvellous life-history of the eel on a spring day at Sowley Pond when the elvers were forcing their way from the sea up through the sluices into the fresh water.
Yet John regretfully spent a great deal of his time away from Beaulieu, not only in London but on professional visits abroad, because he was an unceasing worker and a public servant. He kept a child's love of railways undimmed through all his years. His father had wished him to join the Grenadier Guards, but John, one gathers, would rather have been a guard than a Guardsman if that had been the alternative. As it was his passion to learn all about engines and to drive them prevailed. Newspaper readers will remember how, during strikes, the Great Southern Railway used to turn for help to him—one of the few amateurs to whom they could entrust an express. His nice sense of humour was not often so thoroughly satisfied as when a grateful woman approached him at the end of is railway journey as he stood on the footplate and presented him with a compliment and sixpence for "defying his union."
Naturally, he become a pioneer of the motor-car. " Trans- portation " he was never tired of saying "is civilization." lie argued that the more speed there was in communications the more prosperity there insist be. The mechanization of the world was his vision. But although he preached speed lac was by no means a " speed-merchant " ; as the driver of a car he was unfailingly considerate, and few drivers who maintained a high average speed could possibly have inspired passengers with more confidence. And so again with his handling of his motor yacht ' Cygnet ' ; his bringing of her alongside a landing- stage in a lop and a strong-running tide was a lesson to everyone who saw it.
In the War his organization of transport in India was one of his most considerable achievements, and it was during one of his voyages to India that the 'Persia,' in which he was a pas- senger, was torpedoed in the Mediterranean. He was adrift in a water-logged boat with more than twenty men (some of whom soon died of exhaustion) for thirty hours before rescue came. Ile was believed to be lost, and obituary notices of bins were published in all the newspapers. Ile afterwards wrote an account of his experiences for the Spectator, to which be was a frequent contributor. There were those, however, who, knowing his tenacity, had never believed that he was dead. As John Crouch, the Beaulieu gamekeeper, one of John's greatest friends, said to somebody, "Well, you see, Sir, I know'd that if there was a bit o'cark afloat anywhere his Lordship would be on it." John acknowledged that pride kept him going. Tho Indian seamen whose eyes were on him should not—though John was too modest to put it in this way—be allowed to think the old thought of Cicero : "0 dorms antiqua, hen, Avian dispari dontinarc domino!"
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