Introduction
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
1 A Man of Principle The Life of Percy Alport Molteno, M.P. by Francis Hirst Introduction The single most exciting find in the Molteno/Murray family papers in the University of Cape Town’s Archives is Francis Hirst’s unpublished biography of Percy Molteno (1861-1937). In addition to his detailed account of Percy’s life, there are other interesting chapters. One is about Percy’s father-in-law, Sir Donald Currie, who was one of the great Victorian shipowners and a man who made a significant contribution to 19th century South African history. Another chapter relates the history of Glen Lyon where Sir Donald bought the three estates, to be left to each of his daughters. Francis Hirst has also written three chapters devoted to the life of Percy’s father, Sir John Molteno. These are the best written biography of our ancestor who became the first Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. The book also includes lovely glimpses of Percy’s brothers and sisters, and their family life at Claremont House, in the 1860s and ‘70s. Percy is a very important figure in the Molteno and Murray families. He was the only Molteno to become seriously wealthy – in large part as a result of his marriage in September 1889 to Bessie Currie. He was the lynchpin of the family for almost half a century until his death in 1937. His and Bessie’s homes in England (10 Palace Court, London, and their farm, Parklands, in Surrey), and later their Scottish home at Glen Lyon, were always open to the numerous Molteno brothers and sisters (fourteen in all), and their offspring who came over from the Cape. Percy also frequently used his wealth to support them financially at crucial points in their lives. Percy and Bessie were the founders of what is now the Scottish branch of the family. Previous to their marriage, only one Molteno had married a Scotswoman. This was Percy’s Uncle Charles Dominic Molteno who had married a widow, Mrs Glass, and moved from London to Edinburgh in the 1840s or 50s. 2 Another of Percy’s contributions was the research he undertook into the very early history of the Molteno family in Italy. This remains the only source for what little we know of its origins in Lombardy from the Middle Ages. Turning to the public arena, Percy played various roles in South African affairs and economic development. He tried to stop Britain drifting into its disastrous war against the Boer republics in 1899. And through his closeness to the Liberal leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who became Prime Minister in the Liberal landslide of 1906, he prompted the rapid restoration of self-rule in the defeated Boer Republics which had been turned into British colonies. Elected an M.P. for a Scottish seat in Perthshire in 1906 (a seat he held until 1918), Percy became deeply involved with those Liberals who feared that Britain’s accelerating arms race with Germany might result in the country stumbling into war, which is what happened with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. How Francis Hirst came to write this biography of Percy Molteno Francis Hirst and Percy Molteno were friends and political colleagues in the Liberal Party for decades. The Hirsts lived at 13 Kensington Park Gardens, W11 – which was only a few hundred yards from 10 Palace Court. Francis, who was 12 years younger than Percy, had had a brilliant career at Oxford – becoming President of the Oxford Union and getting a First. His working life he spent as an author writing a host of books on economic and political questions, and as a journalist. He was Editor of the Economist for near a decade. But as the War continued to go very badly for Britain, he resigned in desperation in October 1916 and started an independent weekly, Common Sense, devoted to advocating some way out of the endless slaughter. Percy, still a Liberal M.P. at the time, became one of the Directors. The two men worked closely together in their vain attempts, with a small group of prominent but now sidelined Liberal leaders, to influence the course of events. Francis and Percy also shared a commitment to Gladstonian Liberal principles. These included free trade, low taxation, and a limited role for government. Liberals of this persuasion also had a reluctance, not always adhered to, to resort to military means in settling international disputes. After the War, the two men remained friends. And in 1926 they spent a very happy few months travelling through the United States with the explicit intention of learning from American business and economic policies. And at the beginning of 1937 Percy invited Francis to join him on another long tour, this time to Latin America. Other commitments, however, led Francis to decline and very soon the recurrence of Percy’s acute asthma and eczema forced him also to abandon the plan. Within weeks of Percy’s death in September that year at the clinic in Zurich where he had taken refuge, Francis wrote to May Murray Parker, making clear that he knew the family were contemplating commissioning a life of Percy.1 May had been greatly loved by her Uncle Percy who looked upon her as virtually a second daughter. She had dashed to Switzerland to see him when he was so ill. Hirst now told her that he was very keen to write the biography himself. And this is what Percy’s daughter, Margaret, and her brother Jervis, must have settled on. 1 See bundle of letters between Francis Hirst and May Murray Parker, dated October 1937 to early 1938. UCT Archives, BC330, Box 107. 3 Hirst seems to have been thinking about writing the book even before Percy’s death. He had plied his old friend at the Clinic with questions about the family’s history, and received some material Percy dictated from him. He had also got information earlier in the year from Caroline Murray, Percy’s elder sister, who was living at Palace Gate in 1937.2 And he got further information about the family from their much younger brother, Barkly Molteno, as well as from May and her sister Kathleen Murray who had come over to London, probably with her mother, at this time. In getting down to work, Hirst also had available Percy’s political diaries and his vast correspondence with members of the family, friends and political colleagues (you can see his annotations on some of these letters in the UCT Archives). He had access, in addition, to Percy’s own writings and research notes on the history of the Molteno, Jarvis, Bower and Vos families, and his account of his trip to the Kimberley diamond fields. And, of course, he had his own knowledge of Percy from many years of having worked together, and a huge knowledge of Liberal Party politics as a result of his own involvement. In fact, in an important sense, Hirst’s biography is also a history of the struggle between the different factions for the soul of the Liberal Party in the opening decades of the 20th century. Why the book was never published Francis Hirst worked fast and competently, as you might expect of such an experienced and able author. He completed the whole text by late 1939. All 350,000 words of it! It was edited and typeset. The printer’s proofs have the date, May 1939, on them. Although still in galley form (ie the type had not yet been made up into pages with running heads), they had clearly been carefully proofread. They contain very few typographical errors (mainly proper names), and there is only a handful of queries in the margins for the author to sort out. So why was the book never published? One possible problem is that Hirst had clearly gone over-board as to length. The 632 galley proofs would have made two large tomes, each some 400 pages long. But more importantly, by the time the galleys had been finally corrected in 1940, the Second World War was in full swing and shortages of paper constrained what publishers could produce. But there seems to have been another reason. Percy’s only surviving brother, Admiral Barkly Molteno, had liked some of the draft material Hirst had shown him (in particular the chapter on the history of the Jarvis family which Hirst had sent him as early as March 1938). But when he saw the full text much later, he wrote to his niece, May Murray Parker, on 5 April 1940: ‘I don’t think it would be at all advisable to bring out Mr Hirst’s biography of Uncle Percy for very many reasons at the present time. It would mainly be ammunition for the disaffected republicans to sever all ties with the British Empire.’ This is a strange phrase. I can only speculate that Barkly, who had no political experience, may have been referring to the Irish Government which had opted to stay neutral in the War. Or he may even have thought that Percy’s critique of British policy towards Hitler in the 1930s would encourage General Hertzog’s Nationalist Party to redouble its opposition to South Africa’s involvement in the War. In fact, there is another letter which makes clear that Barkly had had a much stronger worry about the book. He saw it as likely to demoralise Britain’s war effort. This, in my view, reflected his alarm at his brother’s unqualified opposition to going to war with Nazi Germany.