Scrimgeour's Scribbling Diary

[SparkyUK]

Found this on the Bookseller from the recent Frankfurt Book Fair. If this is getting hype over there then it should be something very interesting. With a little bit of research, this is the Alexander Scrimgeour who went down on the Invincible at the Battle of Jutland.

The Bookseller from Frankfurt

"Anova's naval military history imprint Conway has acquired a "rare and exceptional" diary from the start of the 20th century. The diary, which spans the years 1912 to 1916, details the contrast between the whirl of Edwardian high society and the naval conflicts of the First World War. Written by the "supremely precocious" Alexander Scrimegeour - who died aged 19 - the diaries are being edited by Richard Hallam and historian Mark Beynon. The deal was done with Sonia Land at Sheil Land; Scrimgeour's Scribbling Diary: The Truly Astonishing Wartime Diary and Letters of an Edwardian Gentleman, Naval Officer, Boy and Son will be published in autumn 2008."

[SparkyUK]

I read in Waterstone's Book Quarterly Magazine that this was named in the top 6 WWI books coming out for the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day. They call it "one of the most compelling diaries from the war...".

I have a particular interest in these diaries as they're from a naval perspective. Should be worth a read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrimgeours-Scribbling-Diary-Astonishing-Edwardian/dp/1844860752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221383211&sr=8-1

[Halder]

I read in Waterstone's Book Quarterly Magazine that this was named in the top 6 WWI books coming out for the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day. They call it "one of the most compelling diaries from the war...".

I have a particular interest in these diaries as they're from a naval perspective. Should be worth a read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrimgeours-Scribbling-Diary-Astonishing-Edwardian/dp/1844860752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221383211&sr=8-1

My colleague's reading it at present and will be reviewing it the November edition of Navy News. He says it's first rate - a really good insight into the lives of junior officers, the RN, and also the ruling classes in Edwardian Britain. As a book, it's very nicely produced too.

We were discussing the paucity of first-hand accounts in the RN in the Great War. Accounts from the trenches continue to be published, and quite rightly. But Jack was every bit as active as Tommy in keeping a diary, yet not that many have printed, although quite a few have ended up with the IWM/RN Museum.

[SparkyUK]

Thanks Halder. I bought my copy from Waterstones this morning, and you're quite right, it is beautifully produced. Can't wait to read it now!

[SparkyUK]

I've finished reading this now, and it's gripping stuff. This and The White War are the two standout WW1 titles this year for me. I'd be interested to hear what everyone else makes of Scrimgeour's Scribbling Diary? It seemes to have flown under the radar a bit...

[MartinWills]

Such a fascinatingly different "dust jacket" as well. Mine's in a big stack of "to read" at present.

[simonharley]

I had a browse through it the other day. I will admit to finding the diaries "astonishing", if only for the fact that the young lad wasn't beaten either by his parents or by the gun room. "Supremely precocious" is an apt description. Some of his pen portraits are interesting, but some are blatantly tinged by arrogance and immaturity one might expect of a young man. What you need are the measured opinions many of these young officers wrote down when they'd grown up (the memoirs of Sir Angus Cunninghame Graham who served in "Agincourt" are far more interesting on that score).

While it seems rather interesting, the book is hardly anything new and I can wait until it is remaindered. I can only hope that nothing was excised from the diaries during editing.

Cynically

Simon

[SparkyUK]

I couldn't disagree more, Simon. But what are forums for, eh?

Scrimgeour's precociousness (which the publishers make no secret about) is what makes the diaries unique in their candor, as do his arrogance and immaturity, and I certainly don't think these characteristics tarnish anything that has been written. It's obviously a personal choice, but I find post-war recounted memoirs far less reliable as an account of war, than day-to-day diaries.

Yes, Scrimgeour was an arrogant little s.o.b., but this is what I love about this book!

[Halder]

This is my colleague's review from the November edition of Navy News (priced £1.80 at all good newsagents )

I'm with Sparky: the attitudes, arrogances, xenophobia and all that are what make it a much more reliable and accurate source than a memoir. It would have been interesting, had he survived the war, to see whether his attitudes and opinions had changed. That said, many of his contemporaries were equally scathing - you only have to look at their comments about the end of the war and the utter contempt in which they held the German sailor.

Elderly cruiser HMS Crescent took a horrendous pounding as she foundered in the North Sea in November 1914, and many feared she would not survive the night.

But it was not the guns or torpedoes of the damned Hun that worried the officers and men of Crescent – it was their oldest enemy, Mother Nature.

Mention World War 1 and the mind conjures up an Armageddon of trenches, barbed wire, blasted trees and mangled, shell-shredded corpses.

The woes of Tommy have been well-documented and depicted – but not so Jack.

Indeed, apart from Jutland and Gallipoli – neither of them the glorious Naval victory expected by the British public – the blue aspect of the Great War has tended to be overshadowed by the khaki.

So the detailed observations, thoughts, hopes and fears of Midshipman Alex ‘Toby’ Scrimgeour (Scrimgeour’s Small Scribbling Diary 1914-1916, Conway, ISBN 9781844860753) provide a welcome and fascinating glimpse of life in the Senior Service during the war, and of the mindset of a stratum of British society during a conflict more terrifying than most thought possible.

Scrimgeour enjoyed a privileged upbringing – his father was a successful stockbroker – and the eloquent young snotty carries with him the mores and attitudes of the Edwardian society which moulded him, which to some appears to be a grating superiority and class-conscious snobbery. But that effortless and intrinsic superciliousness ultimately makes Toby’s progress and fate all the more poignant.

The details of the November storm are typical of Toby’s journals – midshipmen were obliged to keep such documents as part of their training – and illustrate the never-ending danger faced by Allied sailors.

Crescent had sailed from Busta Voe into a gale and an “unpleasantly big sea”, and by the following day was hunting German minelayers off Foula in the Shetlands.

But the Germans, wisely, had stayed in port, because by the second morning out the severity of the storm prompted the Admiralty to advise all ships to seek shelter.

Crescent did not have that option, and spent eight hours crawling at a relative speed of one knot into Force 11 winds and 50ft waves, rolling up to 40 degrees each side. Turning for home would have put her broadside to the tempest, almost certainly risking a capsize.

Boats, davits, railing, wire stays, aerials and cowls were ripped away – one of her two funnels barely survived – and with galley fires and generators out of action sailors slept in sodden hammocks, ate cold food and watched by candlelight as crockery smashed and loose ammunition careered around.

Crescent finally reached harbour on the third morning of her ‘patrol’, to be greeted by a snowstorm – though Scrimgeour always appreciated a fine view of snow-capped mountains or a “gorgeous” sunset.

Young Toby joined the Navy as a cadet at the age of 13 in 1910, and the outbreak of war elicited a familiar bravado; on July 30 he was “pleased at the thought of the excitement of war”, and on September 5, after a fruitless chase by Crescent and “spoiling for a scrap”, he commented: “Those lucky devils in the army are having all they want.

“The dastardly crimes of the Germans will commit them to everlasting damnation in the blackest depths of the nethermost hell.”

Patrols with the storm-battered Tenth Cruiser Squadron were frustrating, with few sightings of the enemy, and the obsolete 7,800-ton Crescent was a wretched home, more akin to Nelson’s navy than that of the 20th century.

She had no fridges, so fresh food was limited and all too quickly replaced by tinned meat, chocolate and ship’s biscuit, and the exertions of sailing a ship of the line had been replaced by frequent and unpopular coaling, a filthy, back-breaking chore.

But Toby casts his eye wider than just ship-board life.

There are waspish pen portraits (Admiral de Chair is “a bit of an old woman”, while First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher is dismissed as “rather a cad”), and a sense of the paranoia of the time as anyone regarded as acting oddly is assumed to be a spy.

Genuine spies found that justice was swift and merciless; on October 28 1914 a Reserve Paymaster was court-martialed as a German spy, sentenced to death and executed within a couple of hours while his flotilla called in at Olna Voe in Shetland.

“This is the way we do things in the Service,” Scrimgeour concluded. “His crime was a blot against the honour of all Naval officers, but it must be remembered he was only temporarily entered for the war two months ago and was not a real NO [naval officer] at all.”

In between gruelling patrols, glimpses of Toby’s other life abound. There was a seemingly endless supply of grouse from family on Shetland (which did Scrimgeour’s standing in the wardroom no harm at all), as well as chances to go fishing.

A two-week refit for Crescent gave Toby the chance to do the rounds in London and visit his homer near Canterbury, dining out with families and friends, managing a little shooting and “pleasant flirtations” with Joko (the book’s love interest – she “has got an awful ‘pash’ for me now – not permanent, I expect” though her hair could do with being longer, in Toby’s forthright opinion).

Entries such as those for November 26 1914 (“Woke up late and had rather a rumpus with daddy, and consequently stayed at home all day, wasting a precious day like an ass”) remind us that this warrior was still just 17, and could still act like a teenager.

The sharp contrast between the proud, jingoistic sailor and smooth-tongued socialite fades during 1915 as the realisation dawns that the war will drag on, and even a move to the glamorous state-of-the-art battle-cruiser HMS Invincible fails to rekindle the devil-may-care attitude of the previous year.

Toby’s journal ends in December 1915, (the 1916 version presumably lies 200ft deep in the North Sea) and his final letters home give a sketchier coverage of Toby’s dwindling life.

They are still, however, alive with a familiar blend of military tittle-tattle and the minutiae of family life.

His final letter, on May 28, 1916, contains an inconsequential observation on Dickens’ Bleak House, and Toby signs off with “No more now.”

There was to be no more. The remaining letters in the book are from third parties lamenting the loss of yet another young life.

Toby’s first encounter with the enemy, on Trafalgar Day in 1914, had elicited a typically British response as the shells from a German armed raider whistled over: “It was very exciting yesterday when we were fired on.

“None of us have been under gunfire before. I was in the gun-room having tea at the time, and was too busy to notice much else when the bugle sounded off GQs for action.”

But he finally got his wish to engage the enemy more closely on May 31 1916 at the Battle of Jutland, and he paid with his life as Invincible blew up and sank in less than two minutes, taking all but six of her ship’s company of more than 1,020 with her.

This book helps open a window on the Navy’s contribution to World War 1, and puts a very human face on a prolonged, often tedious and faceless mechanical war at sea.

[simonharley]

I have "Sailor's Soliloquy" by Oswald M. Frewen, which is a mixture of diaries from when he was a very junior officer (1902-1910), personal editing many years later with relevant comments by himself and further editing by someone else not too long after his death. Frewen's aunt was Jennie Jerome Churchill (and whatever names she gathered after the death of Lord Randolph). His cousin was Winston Churchill and his first cousin was Shane Leslie and was therefore related to David Beatty. Frewen came from a similar background as Scrimgeour, but mixture of perspectives I alluded to in the first sentence makes for, in my opinion, a far better view of the Navy.

Of course, it isn't Scrimgeour's fault that he was never able to look back on his diaries, and from what I read he seemed smart enough and certainly well-connected enough to have become an Admiral one day!

As with anything, a middle way is the best - balancing possibly ignorant first hand accounts such as diaries against deliberately ignorant memoirs. I think Frewen's memoirs are an example of the right path to take. The only thing I find truly worthwhile in the "Scribbling Diary" are the views of certain officers (which in certain cases contradict some diary entries), but even then they'd have to be balanced with other people's views.

Simon

[SparkyUK]

A great review, Halder, many thanks for posting that!