Jack’s Naval Career

[mb0521]

I’d be interested to hear people’s opinions about Jack’s naval career. Do you think he was ‘forced’ into the navy by Barrie to remove him from the scene or do you think it was Jack’s choice? Maybe a bit of both. Possibly he wanted to get away from Barrie. How was he academically? Could he have managed at Eton and Oxford? Was he on good terms with Barrie in the 20s and 30s? Interested to see what other people think.

[andrew]

Absolutely not forced into anything by JMB - he was not the forceful type - but possibly seduced by JMB's friendship with Capt Scott, combined with an innate desire to strike out on his own. Jack was no intellectual, nor indeed a snob, and probably found the whole Eton thing a bit of a bore.

I'm intending to post JMB's letters to Jack and Gerrie later this year, so you'll be able to judge for yourself as to what terms he was on - mostly financial I'd say, but maybe I'm being too cynical. The impression I got from Nico, and from Peter's Morgue plus the letters twixt the two, is that Jack resented Barrie's evident take-over subsequent to his parents' death, but he was too much of a realist to put up any real resistance. The fact that he always referred to JMB somewhat sardonically as "the Bart" (short for Baronet, which JMB became in 1913) says more or less everything in my view ...

[mb0521]

Thanks for that Andrew. Your thoughts are as ever, invaluable and to the point. Do you think Barrie was pleased that Jack was out of the way or do you think it didn’t matter to Barrie one way or the other? Possibly, if Jack wasn’t particularly academically inclined then Barrie was acting quite fairly.

[EHuhn]

Hello, all.

This might be a question that is answered elsewhere, but it relates to the topic of the thread:

When did Jack actually join the Royal Navy? I am assuming it was before the war started, but I'm unclear on the actual timing.


-Elizabeth

[Brutus]

Jack joined the Navy in 1910, the year Sylvia died (p429 of Denis Mackail's biography).