Footnotes

A YOUNG CHURCHILL SIGNS THE VISITORS' BOOK OF THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF INDIA.

The 22-year old Churchill sailed to India with his regiment, the Queen's Own Hussars, in October 1896, where he stayed for 19 months. During that time he visited Calcutta, as shown in our visitors' book: '...he stayed with the Viceroy, Lord Elgin, dined with the Commander-in-Chief, Sir George White, and 'moved in high and exalted circles generally'... A mere eight years later he was to serve under Elgin at the Colonial office, his first ministerial appointment...' (Martin Gilbert, Churchill, A Life, 2000, p.85). Whilst there and '...comfortably quartered in the British military compound at Bangalore, he displayed little interest in the subcontinent around him, but followed the political news from home with the eagerness and frustration of an exile... Between 1897 and 1900, with the aid of assiduous lobbying by his mother, he managed to fight in three of Queen Victoria's wars while doubling as a war correspondent and turning all three of his experiences into books...' (Paul Addison, ODNB). Churchill joined an expeditionary force to the troubled north-west frontier as war correspondent with the Daily Telegraph and, after seeing some action in the field, he wrote his first book The Story of the Malakand Field Force, published two months after this visit to White in Calcutta.

The last entry of our volume is 17 March 1898, just days before White's final departure from India on 21 March. Sir George Stuart White had been promoted to India's Commander-in-Chief in 1893, following a distinguished career and rapid promotion under the patronage of Major-General (later Field Marshal) Frederick Roberts. His so-called 'forward' policy brought about a succession of frontier campaigns to better control the peoples of the north-west, which were to prove largely unsuccessful in the long term. After India, he was sent to Natal where his controversial strategy led to the battle and subsequent siege of Ladysmith in February 1900 (F.B. Maurice & James Lunt, ODNB). Churchill was one of the first British troops into Ladysmith in his capacity as war correspondent and wrote in glowing terms of White's determination and heroism.

Provenance: Lieutenant (later Major-General) Arthur Henry Marindin (1868-1947) of the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders), Aide-de-Camp to General White in India, September 1897 to March 1898 and in South Africa March to November 1900; thence by descent to the present owner.