I would be pleased to have any observations that any member may care to make about the following:
In Carrie’s diaries (or rather, the Rees extracts thereof) there is the following entry on May 5, 1904, shortly after the Kiplings had returned from their annual sojourn at The Woolsack:
“Rud spends the day in London lunching with Arnold Foster (sic) and calling on Littleton (sic) later – all in the matter of Wilton, the Australian whose pardon via the King’s clemency he secures.”
This didn’t mean anything to me, and so far as I know, it isn’t mentioned in any of the Carrington, Birkenhead or Lycett biographies, but some of our Australian members may find it ringing bells if I add that it was to do with the ‘Breaker’ Morant incident. I have annotated the entry as follows: “George Wilton was an Australian, a Lieutenant in an irregular corps of Imperial troops (the Bushveldt Carbiniers (BVC) – a mixture of Australian and South African troops, raised in South Africa during the war) who had been convicted by court-martial of the murder of Boer prisoners in the northern Transvaal (the ‘Breaker’ Morant case). Reading the ‘wikipedia’ description of the events (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker’Morant) 117 years after they occurred leaves one with, to put it mildly, an uncomfortable feeling. The account resonates with Kipling’s ‘A Sahib’s War’. which, however, had been written and published before the events of the ‘Breaker’ Morant case became known. Morant and another officer were executed by firing squad within 18 hours of being convicted. Wilton was also sentenced to death but reprieved by General Kitchener, being sentenced to life imprisonment instead. He was subsequently pardoned, released and returned to Australia, where he published ‘Scapegoats of the Empire’ in 1907. He died in 1942. It is not clear why Kipling interested himself in the case, nor what part he actually played in the obtaining of a pardon for Wilton.
Carrie tended to be erratic in her spelling of names – the two politicians Kipling saw that day were H O Arnold-Forster, the Secretary of State for War, and Alfred Lyttleton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, both of whom would have been the ministers concerned with the Morant case and its aftermath.
The account of events given in Wikipedia suggests that Kitchener is alleged to have said, if not ordered, words to the effect that any Boers captured while wearing khaki could be shot. Whether he did or not, it would appear that Morant and the others acted on that assumption, but went further, killing civilians and a pastor, their motive being revenge for the killing of Morant's friend and Commanding Officer.. Wilton had had his sentence commuted by Kitchener (again, according to Wikipedia), because he was under the influence of Morant and Handcock.
I would seem that Kipling had some sort of message for the two ministers. Was he being used as an unofficial link from the government of Cape Colony? Carrie evidently thought so. And Kipling had spent quite a lot of time with Dr. Jameson, the Cape’s prime minster at the time. And her entry to the effect that a pardon had been agreed by the ministers suggests that his message must have been a convincing one - the pardon was announced in the House of Commons three months later.
Alastair Wilson