Herbert Westlake Garton BA

• Matriculated: 1911

• Born: 8 August 1892

• Died: 15 September 1916

• Regiment: The Rifle Brigade

• Grave/Memorial: Thiepval Memorial: Pier and Face 16B and 16C

 Family background

b. 8 August 1892, the third son (and third of six children) of Charles Henry Garton (1859–1934) and Juliet Garton (née Westlake) (1857–1934) (m. 1884). From 1893, the family lived at Banstead Wood, not far from Epsom, Surrey. At the time of the 1901 Census it had eleven servants living in the house, and at the time of the 1911 Census nine. Others, who worked outdoors, probably lived in the stables and the Garden Cottage.

 

Parents and antecedents

Garton’s father, Charles Henry, was the second of the five sons of William Garton [II] (1832–1905), who, in the Census of 1861, described himself as a General Carrier. William then gradually diversified into brewing (Census 1871) and sugar refining (Census 1881). His father, William Garton [I] (1795–1833), had been a brewer in Bristol, and after William [I]’s early death his wife, Susannah Foley (1796–1880), kept the family brewery going, eventually with the help of her eldest son Charles Garton (1823–92), the brother of William [II], the uncle of Charles Henry Garton and therefore Herbert Garton’s great-uncle.

In 1847, Charles established Garton, Hill & Co. Ltd in Canute Rd, Southampton, and in 1855 this company, using Charles Garton’s patent, began to produce saccharin, a grape sugar (glucose) made out of cane sugar that was otherwise known as “invert sugar” and could be used in brewing, wine-making, distilling and jam-making. This invention, which had taken years of experiment and £30,000 of investment, brought about a revolution in the brewing industry especially, since it enabled brewers to move away from heavy, soporific beers and produce much lighter brews. In 1871, William [II], who had joined the family firm almost immediately after the plant was acquired in 1847, bought the Anglo-Bavarian Brewery in Shepton Mallet (est. 1864), England’s first lager brewery, whose name derived from the fact that it employed German brewers. The Gartons’ Southampton factory closed in 1882 when Garton and Sons moved its “Saccharum Works” to York Rd, Battersea, London SW11. Here, in 1893, it changed its name to Garton, Hill & Co. Ltd.; it finally closed in 1920.

In parallel with these developments, the Frenchman Alexander Mambré (later Manbré) (1825–1904) established his Saccharine Co. Ltd for turning starch into solid glucose sugar in London’s Spitalfields in 1855; it then moved to Hammersmith in 1876, a mere two miles away from the Gartons’ factory. But as, by 1918, the Manbré Saccharine Co. was in difficulties, Manbré was bought out and in 1919 the company changed its name to Manbré Sugar and Malt Ltd, with A. Boake (1844 [Ireland]–1925) as its Chairman (he left £227,881 3s.) and Albert Eustace Berry (1876–1961) as its Managing Director. By 1924, the two Hammersmith-based firms were making almost exactly the same thing – sugar and glucose for brewing, jam-making, and the manufacture of confectionery – and both firms were almost equally profitable (£247,149 and £212,982 in 1926, with their joint profits for 1920–26 averaging at £460,000 p.a.). In 1926, a proposal for an amalgamation turned into an outright sale when Manbré Sugar and Malt Ltd bought out the Gartons’ company for £2,300,000 and took over their Battersea works. The firm prospered, and when in September 1926 the new company, now calling itself Manbré and Garton, issued nearly 800,000 shares of various kinds, they were expected to yield between 7% and 11% profit.

During World War Two, Manbré and Garton developed a new and more rapid method for the production of penicillin in its Battersea factory using corn-steep liquor, and although it was badly damaged by a flying bomb in 1944, it was producing again in two days. The firm existed until 1976, when it was taken over by Tate and Lyle. Charles Henry had been the Chairman of the family firm (Garton, Sons & Co.) and became a Director of Manbré and Garton Ltd; he also became a Director of the brewers Thomas Wethered and Sons Ltd, which had been operating in the Marlow area since the late eighteenth century.

The firm’s success was due not least to the input of William [II]’s eldest son – i.e. Charles Henry’s older brother – Richard [from 1908 Sir Richard] Charles Garton (1857–1934), who is described as a financier, racehorse owner and breeder. He was also a politician, who had fought the Battersea seat as a Conservative in 1900 and lost by 254 votes to an opponent, John Burns (1855–1943), who was an independent radical in his views but remained aligned with the Liberal Party, and who would become a good friend. Richard Charles had studied the problems of fermentation at Owen’s College, Manchester (founded in 1851, absorbed into the University of Manchester in 1904), and the University of Marburg, Germany, pioneered the manufacture of liquid glucose (corn syrup) from such ingredients as maize, and become the permanent Governing Director of the family firm. He actively promoted the science and practice of brewing within the higher education system; his advice was sought by many companies; and he had a reputation for financial astuteness. Consequently, he was made a Director of two brewing concerns: E. Lacon and Co. (Yarmouth) and in 1902 Watney, Combe, Reid and Co. (Deputy Chairman 1924–28, Chairman 1928–32). For some years he was also a Director of Lloyds Bank. Although a Conservative, in 1912 he set up the Garton Foundation to promote the internationalist and anti-war ideas of Norman Angell (1872–1967) as those are set out in The Great Illusion (first edition 1910). In 1918, he received the CBE for his war-time services. He was a prominent and enthusiastic member of the racing fraternity; he was a benefactor to the town of Haslemere, Surrey, where he lived from c.1902; and in 1923 he founded the British Empire Cancer Campaign – of which he became the honorary Financial Secretary – with an anonymous gift of £20,000. On his death, only two months before that of Charles Henry, he left £2,642,364, of which £1,282,407 was paid in tax.

In 1893, Charles Henry used his increasing wealth to acquire Banstead Wood House, designed in 1884 by the architect Richard Norman Shaw RA (1831–1912) for the merchant banker the Hon. Francis Baring (1866–1938) in a style that is often – unfairly – described as “Stockbroker Tudor”, together with a 483-acre estate, near Chipstead, Surrey, which by 1900 had a domestic staff of ten (including a butler). The new owners’ relationship with the village of Banstead has been described as “feudal maybe, patriarchal certainly, but above all matriarchal”, and the Revd Arthur W. Hopkinson (1874–1960), Vicar of Banstead from 1918 to 1930, at a time when Banstead was rapidly changing from a one-street village into part of Greater London, has left us the following explanation for this description. Hopkinson was full of praise for the Garton family because it “stood for a great deal in the life of the parish”, and he recorded how they provided him, as Vicar, “with daily gifts of flowers, or fruit, or game, […] trips to dinner and the theatre in Town [… and] holidays in the Holy Land, in Algiers, on Dartmoor”, where, for some years, they owned a house at Throwleigh. He also tells us how Charles Henry, who chaired Banstead Parish Council from 1911 to 1927, provided the villagers with land for allotments during the war and subsequently, in 1931, gave the Banstead Parish Recreation Committee some valuable land in Garratts Lane to use as a playing field and recreation ground. But he left an even more graphic description of Charles Henry’s wife Juliet, the daughter of a Quaker corn merchant who “never lost her Quaker consciousness of the ‘inner light’” and who had been “brought into the Church through the preaching of a Mission in the parish where she lived”. Juliet Garton seems to have been even more active on behalf of the spiritual and physical well-being of the local people than was her husband. Every morning, she drove herself to the 8 a.m. Eucharist in the local church – All Saints in Banstead High Street, until St Mary’s at Burgh Heath, of which the Gartons became major benefactors, was built in 1909 – before hurrying back to preside at the family breakfast. Hopkinson continues:

From seven in the morning till after midnight she worked, and sympathized, and prayed, and gave herself wholeheartedly to others. All her children and her grandchildren went to her as a matter of course with their troubles and problems, and ambitions. Her power of understanding and her wealth of sympathy seemed limitless. She was super-eminently a great-hearted woman.

During the war, she supplied the villagers with rabbits that had been shot on the estate, milk at twopence a pint for any mother with a baby, and gifts of sugar, and after the war, she provided pre-fabricated huts in Pound Road for ex-servicemen, paid for 100 chairs, bookshelves and a Bible for the Banstead Men’s Club, and set up a laundry in Chipstead Road for housewives who had no proper washing facilities. In return, Hopkinson tells us, she expected her charges to show her due and proper deference.

Despite its feudal traits, Banstead Wood House was, for Hopkinson, “a revelation of what hospitality can be”, “a power-house of refreshment and re-creation”. Year after year the Gartons entertained the Oxford VIII for their weekend of relaxation before the Boat Race, and the Revd “Tubby” Clayton [(1885–1972), the founder of Toc ‘H’ in Poperinghe in December 1915], “Caesar” (Bishop Walter Julius) Carey (1875–1955), an evangelical missionary bishop in South Africa, and tired workers in the field of all types and all ages found a refuge there. “There must”, Hopkinson concluded, be hundreds of men and women who remember Banstead Wood House with gratitude. It always seemed to me an embodiment of the text “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. The fun, uproarious sometimes, was healthy because it was Christian. Every day began for family and guests, butler and footmen, cook and nine housemaids, with prayer. It was not an irksome extra, but the mainstream of a happy, contented household life.

Hopkinson also left us with the following insight into the relationship that existed between Banstead Wood House’s two principals:

Juliet without Charles would have been a magnificent ship in full sail but without a rudder. By their very unlikeness they were well matched. He was never impulsive, never impatient, an amazingly shrewd judge of men. In these respects only those who knew them will understand his saint-like qualities.

On his death, Charles Henry left his sons Charles Leslie and Arthur Stanley £2,709,702 net (c.£140 million in 2005), of which £1,406,910 was paid in tax, and individual bequests to seven hospitals; his funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners. When Juliet Garton died a few weeks after her husband, she, too, left nearly £3 million.

 

Siblings and their families

Herbert Westlake Garton was the brother of:

(1) Charles Leslie (1885–1941) (m. [1910] Madeline Laurence), two daughters, three sons;

(2) Phyllis Mary (1886–1974) (later Lady Phyllis after her marriage [1909] to Richard [later Commander Sir, 1^st Baron Burford (1937)] Southby [1886–1969]), two sons, marriage dissolved in 1961;

(3) Arthur Stanley (1889–1948) (m. [1917] Mona Macauley [1895–1986]), one son, three daughters;

(4) Lois Juliet (1896–1978) (later Rose after her marriage [1920] to Revd [later Bishop] Alfred Carey Wollaston Rose [1885–1971]), four daughters, two sons;

(5) Edward Clive Garton (1899–1918) (died of wounds received in action on 2 September 1918 while serving as a Second Lieutenant in the 9^th (Service) Battalion, the Rifle Brigade [The Prince Consort’s Own], the same unit as the one in which Herbert Westlake was serving when he was killed in action).

Charles Leslie was at Magdalen from 1904 to 1907 (BA 1907), where he made his name as a hurdler and an oarsman, but especially as an oarsman. Soon after matriculating, he represented the College in the coxless IVs of 4 November 1904, when he replaced James Douglas Stobart (1884–1970; Magdalen 1902–05, BA 1905) at No. 4, with W.A. Fleet at bow, and from 16 to 22 February 1905 he again rowed at No. 4 in Magdalen’s 1^st VIII that went Head of the River in the spring Torpids after “a hard and exciting race with New College” on the last day of the races. In his assessments of the individual members of the crew, the Secretary remarked of Charles Leslie: “Hands heavy over the stretcher & very laboured finish.” On 8 May 1905, Magdalen’s 1^st VIII began training for the Summer Eights (24–31 May) with Charles Leslie as No. 3. But the Secretary of Magdalen College Boat Club (MCBC) was implacable and described their initial efforts as “Very bad row. Very short, no swing, no rhythms. Bucket of the barges.” On 9 May he registered a “slight improvement” that continued on the following day, but on 13 May he described the row as “very & much too slow over the first half of the course”; on 15 May their performance had declined to “Rotten” and on 16 May it was “exceedingly slovenly” and lacking “life, leg drive, & swing”. On 17 May the merciless Secretary called the crew’s performance “Exceedingly slovenly […] again, & a most unsatisfactory row for we were again very slow over the first part of the course. […] but from the boat house in it was a dismal bucket; & no-one seemed properly rowed out at the finish owing to saving them selves [sic] at the start.”

So a new coach took over the training “& by dint of a few home truths seemed to wake the crew up & instill [sic] some idea of rhythm into us, & by making us row a faster stroke showed us that we could”. As a result, by 20 May the rowing was “on the whole better & showed more drive, length & swing” and this improvement continued on 22 May. So when the races started on 24 May, in “fine weather & good rowing conditions”, Magdalen rowed well and finished Second on the River, just behind New College. Magdalen’s performance improved so greatly that they went Head of the River on the second day, and after that the Magdalen VIII were not “really troubled” by their main rivals – New College, University College, and Christ Church – and passed the winning post well out of our distance away from their rivals (see G.M.R. Turbutt for a detailed description of the orgiastic Bump Supper that followed Magdalen’s victory). Although, when assessing the individual members of the crew, the Secretary once again reproved Charles Leslie for being “heavy with his hands over the stretchers & therefore not infrequently late on the rest of the crew”, for having “a rather peculiar & awkward finish, dropping his hands with a laboured effort from the shoulder, instead of from the elbows”, and for tending “to let his leg work off at the finish”, he finally conceded, albeit somewhat grudgingly, that overall he was “A Good waterman.”

On 2, 3 and 4 November 1905 Charles Leslie rowed in Magdalen’s crew that competed in the coxless IVs and reached the final, where they were up against their old opponent New College. At the boat house, three-quarters of the way along the course, the two boats were “exactly level”, but E.H.L. Southwell at stroke “picked up the stroke & kept it up the whole way to the finish & eventually Magdalen won a most exciting and well-fought race by ¾ length”. The Secretary then concluded his account with the following thought: “It is perhaps worthy of mention that the whole crew were Etonians and therefore “Floreat Magdalena et Etona’.” In 1906, although Charles Leslie was not a member of the VIII that went Head in late June for the second year running, he did take part in the Henley Regatta in July 1906 and was assessed by Southwell – the Secretary of MCBC for 1906/07 – as “an excellent waterman, who with bow [R.P. Stanhope] probably helped much to steady the boat against the somewhat bovine activities of less neat oarsmen”. Nevertheless, the Secretary shared his predecessor’s opinion that Charles Leslie was “rather short forward and late in applying his legwork, which is not yet strong enough”. The crew that began training for the coxless IV’s on 14 October 1906 was the same as the crew of the previous year, but it was beaten by Magdalen’s 2^nd crew on the first occasion that a College had entered two crews for the coxless IV’s. This time the Secretary was more positive about Charles Leslie: “Garton at bow has probably steered better courses in the Fours than almost any other man, and while having in great measure won our race last year, came very near to doing so again.” This race seems to have been Charles Leslie’s final appearance on the river as part of a major crew, for although he was at first selected to row at No. 5 in the Magdalen Summer VIII, in the end he took no part either in the Oxford race or in the Henley Regatta in summer 1907.

In 1913, Charles Leslie’s father gave him Holly Hill House, part of the Banstead Wood Estate, and during the war he became a Captain (Special Lists) and worked in the War Office. In February 1917 he received a special mention in dispatches that did not appear in either the London Gazette or the normal military records “to denote mentions by the Secretary of State [for War; i.e. Lord Derby (1865–1948), who held the office between 10 December 1916 and 18 April 1918] for valuable service in connexion with the War”. In 1921 he joined the Board of the Northern Assurance Company, and when he died, in 1941, Magdalen’s choir sang at his funeral.

Charles Leslie’s son, John Leslie Garton [later MBE, CBE] (1916–2002), who was at Magdalen from 1935 to 1939, had an even more distinguished career in the world of British rowing and came to “occupy the pinnacle of rowing’s governing body and the sport’s principal regatta”. In 1935 he became Captain of Boats at Eton; in 1936, he stroked the First Torpid that made three bumps and went Head of the River; he was Magdalen’s Captain of Boats 1937–38; he rowed against Cambridge twice and in 1938–39, his final year, he was elected President of the Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC). During World War Two he served as a Territorial Army officer in France (1940) with the Royal Berkshire Regiment, escaped via Dunkirk, and subsequently became a specialist in fire-fighting and bomb disposal. In 1944 he was seconded to the Staff of the 1^st Canadian Army and helped in the planning of D-Day, for which he was awarded the MBE in 1946. After the war, he worked for Brakspear’s Brewery at Henley-on-Thames, but also became Captain of the conveniently placed rowing club that is known as Leander, and acted as its Chairman from 1958 to 1959, its President from 1980 to 1983, and the Chairman of its Trustees from 1982 to 1995. Within the University of Oxford, he coached Magdalen crews until well into the 1950s, was a Trustee of the Magdalen College Boat Club and became Treasurer of the OUBC in the 1960s. In 1959, he was elected a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta, chaired its Committee of Management from 1965 to 1978, and later became its President. From 1948 to 1977 he was a member of the Council and Executive of the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) and its President from 1969 to 1976, and in this capacity he played a major part in setting up the multi-purpose National Watersports Centre at Holme Pierpoint, near Nottingham, in 1973. He then chaired the World Rowing Championships that took place at the new Centre in 1975, and as “the administrative supremo of British rowing”, he steered both the Royal Regatta and the ARA through hard and inflationary times. From 1969 to 1977 he served on the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the British Olympic Association and the Board of the Thames Conservancy. In 1974 he was awarded the CBE for services to rowing. From 1951 to 1965 he was the Chairman of Coca-Cola Bottling Company (Oxford) and in 1977 he served for a year as High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire.

Richard Southby was the Conservative MP for Epsom from 1928 to 1947.

Arthur Stanley, described by one authority as “the greatest of Oxford’s [rowing] heavyweights”, had already made a considerable reputation for himself when he was at Eton, and after matriculating at Magdalen in October 1908, he was, unusually, put straight into the victorious Oxford boat that would row against Cambridge in 1909, when six of the crew were from Magdalen (see A.G. Kirby). He was selected again for 1910, when he rowed at No. 6, and 1911, when he was the Captain. In 1910 and 1911 he rowed in the Oxford boat that won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, the first time ever that an Oxford college had won the Grand in two successive years. He took his BA in 1911. In 1912 he rowed in the Leander VIII that not only won the Grand, but also won a gold medal for Britain in the Summer Olympics at Stockholm with a crew of whom eight were from Magdalen with the ninth from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. During World War One he served from 1914 to 1920 as a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in Malta, the Dardanelles, Greece, Egypt and France, partly aboard the Special Service Vessel HMS Egmont. The old armoured cruiser HMS Achilles was renamed HMS Egmont in 1905 and then served until 1912 as a depot ship in the Grand Harbour at Malta where her main task was to process sailors’ movements in and out of the Mediterranean Fleet. When the Navy set up a shore establishment inside the medieval Fort St Angelo and named it HMS Egmont, the old cruiser was towed home and broken up. After the war, Arthur Stanley maintained a close interest in rowing: he became a member of the Henley Management Committee and coached the Oxford VIII in 1925 and 1930.

After the death of his parents in 1934 he moved into Banstead Wood House which, in 1936, he donated for the creation of a hospital that was called The Princess Elizabeth of York’s Hospital for Children and finally opened in June 1948.

In 1940, Rosalind Mona (b. 1918), Arthur Stanley’s eldest daughter, married the Olympic oarsman (1948) Richard (“Dickie”) Desborough Burnell (1917–95) (Magdalen 1936–39), a member of another rowing family, who was slightly older than her younger brother Charles Hubert Stanley Garton (1920–2004) (Magdalen 1939–40), another notable oarsman. Their son Peter (Magdalen 1959–62) followed his father and both grandfathers by rowing in the trial VIIIs and the ISIS VIII in 1960 and 1961, and for Oxford against Cambridge in 1962 – the Burnells’ third Blue in three generations. In 1962 he was in the OUBC crew that rowed as Leander at Henley but was beaten by the Russians in the final of the Grand.

Jean (1921–2009), Arthur Stanley’s second daughter, married (1944) [i] Sir Edward Henry Bouhier Imbert-Terry, the 3^rd Baron Imbert-Terry (1920–78) and (1983) [ii] Sir Lionel Bertrand Sackville-West, the 6^th Baron Sackville of Knole (1913–2004), who read PPE at Magdalen 1931–34 and was awarded a 3^rd in 1934.

 Lois Juliet’s husband became the Suffragan Bishop of Dover (1935–56) and the Senior Suffragan Bishop under Archbishops Lang, Temple and Fisher. Their sons Geoffrey Thomas Rose (b. 1923) and Michael Hugh Rose (1926–2003) were at Magdalen from 1941 to 1942 and 1948 to 1950 respectively.

 

Education

From 1901 to 1904, Herbert Garton attended Mr Hawtrey’s Preparatory School at Westgate-on-Sea, Kent. The school had been founded in 1869 at Aldin House, Slough, by the Revd John Hawtrey (1850–1925); was known as St Michael’s School from 1869 to 1925; moved to Westgate-on-Sea in 1883; and existed in various locations until it merged with Cheam Preparatory School, Headley, Berkshire in 1994 [cf. V. Fleming, E.C. Garton]. He then moved to Eton from 1905 to 1908, where he was a member of the Eton Rifle Volunteers, before spending one year (1909–10) in Tours and a second (1910–11) in Weimar, mainly in order to learn French and German in preparation for a career in the Diplomatic Service. He matriculated at Magdalen as an Exhibitioner on 17 October 1911, having passed part of Responsions in Hilary Term 1909, and in Michaelmas Term 1911 he took an Additional Responsions Paper on the French Politician and Historian Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877), which allowed him to take only part of the First Public Examination (Holy Scripture) in October 1912. In Trinity Term 1912 he took the Preliminary Examination in Jurisprudence, and he was awarded a 3^rd when he sat Finals in Modern History in Trinity Term 1914. He took his BA on 29 April 1915.

 

War service

When war broke out, Garton had just left Oxford to study for the Diplomatic Service, but on 18 August 1914 he applied for a Temporary Commission, and on 26 August 1914 he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the 9^th (Service) Battalion, the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own), that had been formed in Winchester a mere five days previously. He was promoted Lieutenant on 1 October 1914. Given which, his history runs parallel to that of the slightly younger E.K. Parsons. By November 1914, the Battalion was in billets at Petworth, where it trained until February. While it was here, Garton wrote to Magdalen’s President Warren on Boxing Day 1914 complaining mildly that “nobody quite knows what will happen next” and asking “for a small cheque to buy boots for the men in my regiment” since their own were “so miserably bad and the government issued some which were absolutely useless after one week’s marching, and we can’t get more for them” (cf. E.R. Donner). After being promoted Captain on 12 February 1915, Garton landed in Le Havre with the Battalion on 20 May 1915 as part of 42^nd Brigade, 14^th (Light) Division. The Battalion then travelled by train to Cassel (22 May) whence it marched to Bailleul (5 June) via Zeggers Capel (23 May), St-Sylvestre (27–30 May), Zevencoten (31 May–5 June). It spent six days in the trenches at Bailleul, taking casualties from heavy shellfire, and then, between 12 and 16 June 1915, it marched northwards to the Ypres area where B. Pawle, in the 8^th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, was in reserve for an attack by 3^rd Division. On 19 June, Donner’s Battalion went into the line, lent a Company for an attack, and suffered 40 casualties killed, wounded and missing. It stayed in the Ypres area until 27 July, mainly in the trenches near Poperinghe, but also just on the edge of the site of the débâcle that had taken place at Hooge Crater on 30 July 1915 (see Pawle, Renton and Jones-Parry). From 8 to 10 August, the Battalion took part in the fighting at Hooge, a limited action which largely consisted in a surprise attack by the British 6^th Division and elements of the 14^th (Light) Division in order to recapture the huge crater that had been created at Hooge on 19 July 1915 and then taken by the Germans ten days later. During the fighting at Hooge, Garton’s Battalion suffered heavy casualties and he himself was wounded on 10 August. But then, as a result of the stress of the battle, he began to display the following symptoms: a loss of confidence in his ability to lead men under the conditions of trench warfare, bad dreams, and broken sleep. So on 16 August he was admitted to No. 4 General Hospital at Versailles suffering from “neurasthenia” (i.e. nervous exhaustion caused by concussion and shell-shock), and on 20 August he was sent back for three weeks to the Battalion’s base in France. Garton then returned to active duty where it was found that his symptoms persisted, and so, on 8 September 1915, he was admitted to No. 3 General Hospital at Le Tréport, on the coast to the north of Dieppe, from where, a week later, he was invalided back to England via Dover on the SS Anglia. He was immediately hospitalized at the Special Neurological Hospital for Officers, which had been built in 1905 at 10 Palace Green, Kensington, London W8, where, on 24 September 1915, a Medical Board ascribed his nervous condition to the “result of the accumulative effect of severe shellfire and strain” and sent him on leave until 23 December 1915 in order “to regain his stability”. On 30 September 1915, C.C.J. Webb (Clement Charles Julian Webb, 1865–1954, diarist and Fellow of Magdalen 1889–1922) noted in his diary: “Herbert Garton at tea. He seemed very fit. His wound, received at Hooge, was healing but he was sent home to be at the nerve-hospital in Kensington Palace Gardens.”

 

 On 4 February 1916, Garton tried to return to his Battalion after insufficient rest and was sent back to England, where he appeared before Medical Boards on 22 February, 13 March and 12 April 1916. On 30 March 1916 he was ordered to report to the War Office for temporary intelligence and espionage work with Lieutenant-Colonel F.H. Browning (1868–1916), a famous Irish rugby player and cricketer who would be killed in Dublin on 26 April 1916 during the Easter Uprising. The military authorities then offered Garton a staff appointment in Military Intelligence in Egypt, but he wrote a letter to the War Office refusing the post and insisting that he be allowed to return to France and his friends in the 9^th Battalion on the grounds that he could not take a safe position while leaving them in danger. The request was granted; he was given 48 hours leave around 17 May 1916; and the 9^th Battalion’s War Diary records that he finally reported for duty on 26 May 1916, after the Battalion had moved south to the Arras Sector of the front and when, like the Brigade’s 7^th (Service) and 8^th (Service) Battalions which were also in the 41^st Brigade of the 14^th Division, it was experiencing a rise in casualties from c.5 to 50–60 per month. Not long after 17 June 1916, Garton must have heard of P.R. Hardinge’s death near the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and written the following letter to his family:

[…] I was in digs with your son Patrick at Oxford and I am tremendously proud to think I was one of his friends. He and I and Kenneth Mackenzie lived together at 65, High Street […]. I knew him all the time I was at Oxford, and took schools the same time as he did, I went on the river with him, played tennis with him, dined with him, went to the theatre with him, and he and […] I had the most glorious and unforgettable time. In this wretched war one gets callous and blunted and one’s capacity for feeling things gets less; but Pat’s death means for me the most appalling gap in my dreams of a future where we should all have met at Magdalen […]. It is no good becoming hopeless and sentimental at such a time as this and Pat’s letters to me were splendidly cheery […]; and the glory of his career in a way leaves hardly any room for regret.

On 2 October 1915, Lieutenant Evelyn Southwell, who had graduated at Magdalen two years before Garton matriculated there, arrived in France after serving for a year in England with the 13^th (Service) and the 15^th (Reserve) Battalions of the Rifle Brigade, and joined the Regiment’s 9^th Battalion on the following day, when the Battalion was in Reserve in the relatively quiet Ypres Sector. From then on, Southwell’s fate became inextricably linked with Garton’s, and in almost his last letter home, Garton said that he never for a moment regretted his decisions. Shortly after his return, he took over command of ‘C’ Company from Southwell, who ranked below Garton, even though he was the elder by seven years. But despite his disappointment, Southwell continued to work well with Garton and he stayed in his Company of the 9^th Battalion until he was killed in action on exactly the same day as him. On 22 July 1916, while the Battalion was in the trenches, the two men dined together, after which Garton wrote to President Warren:

I am afraid I never attended a ‘gaudy’ while I was up[,] but this is the day[,] I think[,] so we have just drunk ‘Floreat Magdalena!’ and he has gone out into the trench. He was a contemporary of [Charles] Leslie’s a long time ago. I hope and am beginning to believe in a reasonably quick decision in the war. […] I am afraid that when we all meet again in Oxford there will be many gaps in old friendships (such people as Pat Hardinge can never be replaced) but one must not think of that. Hollins and Eric Parsons, whom the war robbed of all but one term of Oxford life, are here. I think myself very lucky in having had the three most perfect years of my life at Magdalen before this [war] broke out, and I shall always feel that I cheated Fate thus, at any rate.

E.K. Parsons would also be killed in action on the same day as and in close proximity to Garton and Southwell. [Sir] Frank Hubert Hollins (1877–1963), the scion of a family of Lancashire cotton-spinners and cricketers, Eton and Magdalen 1897–1901, President of the Junior Common Room 1900–01, Double Blue (Cricket and Football), and a Captain in Garton’s Battalion, had served with the Battalion since it disembarked in France in May 1915 and would survive the war as a Major.

When the Battle of the Somme began on 1 July 1916, Garton’s Battalion was still in the Lens/Arras area and did not leave it until 31 July, when it began a week of rest in Candas before moving to the village of Fricourt, north-east of Albert, which had been captured on 2 July. The Battalion arrived here on 12 August and seven days later marched north-west to Longeval and the adjacent Delville Wood, where, for two days, it took over two new and very shallow trenches from the 10^th Battalion, the Durham Light Infantry, which was also part of the 14^th (Light) Division (42^nd Brigade). The Battalion then stayed in the Fricourt/Delville Wood area until 31 August 1916, losing 43 Other Ranks as casualties. On 24 August the Battalion went back to the front line, and although not involved in the first day’s attack by 14^th Division on Delville Wood (24 August), on the second day it attacked between the eastern end of the Wood and Ginchy and cleared Edge Trench, which ran along the north-eastern side of the Wood, upto its junction with Ale Alley. Although Garton’s Battalion was withdrawn from the front line on 26 August, its work was completed on 27 August by the 10^th (Service) Battalion, the Durham Light Infantry, who drove the Germans out of Edge Trench, barricaded Ale Alley, and left Delville Wood in British hands. During this period, the Battalion lost 47 officers and Other Ranks killed, wounded and missing. It was back in the line from 28 to 31 August and lost another 43 officers and Other Ranks killed, wounded and missing.

Garton’s Battalion spent the period 1–11 September at Le Fay, well away from the battle area, where it trained for the next major phase in the fighting, which would become known as the Battle of Flers-Courelette (15–22 September) and go down in history as the place where tanks were used for first time. On 13 September the Battalion arrived at Dernancourt, spent the day there, and then, during the night of 14/15 September, gradually moved up into the front line until it arrived on the rear slopes of Caterpillar Valley, facing north-westwards towards the right-hand end of the almost obliterated Delville Wood. 14^th (Light) Division was positioned along the Longueval–Ginchy Road (South Street) and out into the fields to the north of Delville Wood between the Guards Division (on the right/to the east) and the 41^st Division (on the left/to the west). On 15 September, the first two Brigades of the 14^th Division (41^st and 43^rd) began their attacks at 06.20 and 06.30 hours respectively in a north-easterly direction towards Gueudecourt, beyond Flers, a good three miles away, with Southwell’s 42^nd Brigade forming a third wave with a slightly later zero hour. So advancing “as if on parade” on a two-Company front, with ‘A’ Company on the right supported by Garton’s and Southwell’s ‘C’ Company, and ‘B’ Company on the left supported by ‘D’ Company, the 9^th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade set out from the trenches near Trônes Wood, just to the south of Delville Wood and the west of Guillemont. It reached the north-east corner of Delville Wood by 06.45 hours, and crossed Hop Alley and Ale Alley. But after that initial rush, it becomes difficult to reconstruct what happened. It seems that when the 9^th Battalion were about 400 yards from the First Objective (The Green Line), its four Companies changed into open order, whereupon they were caught by heavy machine-gun fire from the front and the German position on the right known as Pint Trench. But as the advancing Companies could not have rushed the machine-guns without going through their own barrage, they settled down in shell-holes to wait for the barrage to pass over them. Once this had happened, the Battalion began to move forward again and relieved elements of the 41^st Brigade at the Second Objective (The Brown Line or Gap Trench), just south of Flers and near Delville Wood. And although the Battalion was able to pass through Flers, which had been cleared of Germans by tanks and infantry between 08.20 and 10.00 hours, the right flank of the 9^th Battalion was still unprotected so that its advance was stopped by the machine-gun fire just short of Bulls Road, the Third Objective, which ran east–west just to the north of Flers. During the advance, ‘D’ Company ceased to exist, ‘B’ Company was driven back, but ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies held on near Flers until 16.00 hours, when the Battalion was withdrawn to Montauban in reserve. It now consisted of only four officers and 140 Other Ranks, having lost 294 Other Ranks killed, wounded and missing and 16 officers killed and wounded, including its Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Herbert Picton Morris (1883–1916), who died on 18 September from wounds received in action, his second-in-command, four Company Commanders including Garton, plus Parsons and Southwell. 42^nd Brigade did, however, take all its objectives and eventually stopped its advance just short of the village of Guédecourt, one-and-a-half miles north of Flers.

On 15 September, four tanks – D1, D3, D4 and D5 – were deployed at Flers to support the attack by the 14^th Division, and all of them were either destroyed, badly damaged, or forced to ditch. But to the left of the 14^th Division, two of the tanks that had been deployed to assist the 41^st Division (see H.R. Bell) – D16 and D18 – enabled Flers village to be captured very rapidly during the early stages of the battle, between 8.20 and 10.00 hours, even though they had no direct effect on that part of the battle in which the 9^th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade was involved. After Garton’s death, his military Chaplain wrote to his family:

He was killed in action […] while leading his Company in the attack – practically at the moment that the Battalion, which was in the front of the big advance, made its objective. He must have known that the duty assigned to us had been successfully performed, and that the operations generally had been triumphantly successful. His was an end, which, if we are to die out here, we might well envy. His influence with his men was a tremendous help to us – and his example of what a real Christian gentleman and soldier can be and do, will be a continual inspiration to us who remain to carry on.

Garton has no known grave. He is commemorated on Pier and Face 16B and 16C of the Thiepval Memorial. Shortly after Garton’s death, his family organized a Memorial Service, during which parts of the Chaplain’s letter cited above were read out and the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum’, a very ambivalent piece of writing by the popular author Mrs Geraldine Robertson Glasgow (dates unknown; first published in Punch, vol. 150 [26 January 1916], p. 78), was also read out. The service also involved a memorial address which concluded with the following paragraph:

Lives such as his […] so short – so ardent – so full of earnest service – are the foundation stones on which the new England shall by-and-bye be built – renewed in faith, and high in hope of a purer national life – an England which shall make all such sacrifices worth while, and testify to coming generations, that through an anguish of sorrow and suffering she has been purified by a cleansing fire.

The front cover of the Order of Service contained the following extract from stanza 39 of ‘Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats’ (1821), by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822): “Peace, Peace, he is not dead – he doth not sleep: He hath awakened from the dream of life.”

Garton, his brother Edward Clive Garton, and the 87 other members of Banstead Parish who died in World War One are commemorated on the Roll of Honour in All Saints Parish Church, Banstead, Surrey, and on the War Memorial with the Cross that stands in the churchyard of the Parish Church and is known as the Garton Memorial (presumably because the family paid for it). Garton was also commemorated in the Garton War Memorial Chapel that stood in the grounds of the Parish Church until it was hit by a bomb in 1940 and had to be demolished. The heading above the Roll of Honour reads:

To the Glory of God – they who are here commemorated were numbered among those who, at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in Freedom. Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten.

 After her sons’ deaths, Juliet ordered their rooms to be locked and never opened again. Garton died intestate but his estate was valued at £7,640 5s.; his family was awarded a gratuity of £155. It took until 7 February 1917 to sort out his money due to quibbles over small debts amounting to c.£4.

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

 

Special acknowledgements:

 **[Hugh E. E. Howson], Two Men: A Memoir [The Story of two Shrewsbury Schoolteachers: privately printed memorial book for Evelyn H.L. Southwell (1886–1916) and Malcolm G. White, (1887–1916)] (Oxford: OUP, 1919). On-line at: http://www.archive.org/details/twomenmemoir00soutuoft (accessed 20 April 2017).

*John L. Garbutt, Manbré & Garton Ltd 1855–1955: A Hundred Years of Progress, (London and Aylesbury: Hazell, Watson & Viney [1955]).

*Fiona Wood, ‘Garton, Sir Richard Charles (1857–1934)’, DNB, vol. 21 (2004), pp. 561–2.

*The Archives of the Banstead History Research Group [BHRG].

*John Sweetman, How a Village Grew and Changed, 2 vols (Banstead: BHRG, 2004).

*Blandford-Baker (2008), pp. 97–100, 105, 150–2, 154–5, 189, 193, 294–5.

The Editors would like to make it clear that Nigel McCrery’s excellent book Hear the Boat Sing (The History Press: Stroud, 2017) was brought to their attention as recently as January 2019. It provides detailed accounts of the lives of 42 Oxford and Cambridge Rowing Blues who died as a result of World War One, and as eight of these were Magdalenses or closely connected with Magdalen through a relative, it would seem that the Editors of The Slow Dusk and Mr McCrery have been following parallel research paths without being aware of each others’ existence and so have made use of the same resources. But whereas Mr McCrery has focused more on the finer points of top-class rowing, the Editors have focused more on family and social history. As a result the two projects not only overlap in places, but also complement each other well.

 

Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘[The order at the start was …]’, The Times, no. 37,722 (1 June 1905), p. 11.

[Anon.], ‘Rowing: Oxford University Fours’, The Times, no. 37,856 (4 November 1905), p. 7.

X Trois Étoiles, ‘Isis Idol no. CCCXCVIII: Mr Arthur Stanley Garton’, The Isis, no. 422 (20 November 1909), pp. 103–4.

[Anon.], ‘In Memoriam: Captain H. W. Garton’, The Eton College Chronicle, no. 1,587 (26 October 1916), p. 107.

[Anon.], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice: Short Notices: Magdalen College’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 35 (Extra Number) (10 November 1916), p. 17.

[Anon.], ‘Two Large Industrial Issues’, The Times, no. 44,376 (14 September 1926), p. 19.

Berkeley and Seymour , i (1927), pp. 107–09, 138–41, 152–76, 196–208.

[Anon.], ‘Sir Richard Garton’ [obituary], The Times, no. 46,736 (24 April 1934), p. 16.

[Anon.], ‘Mr C. Garton’s Large Estate’, The Times, no. 46,806 (14 July 1934), p. 17.

[Anon.], ‘Children’s Hospital in the Country’, The Times, no. 47,300 (17 June 1936), p. 14.

A.W. Hopkinson, Pastor’s Progress: An Autobiography (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1942), pp. 82–107.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 113, 142–4, 326.

 McCarthy (1998), pp. 101–3.

Christopher Dodd, ‘John L. Garton’ [obituary], The Guardian, no. 48,452 (21 June 2002), p. 22.

[Anon.], ‘John Garton’ [obituary], The Telegraph, no. 45,737 (1 July 2002), p. 21

Pidgeon (2002), pp. 35–45.

Geoffrey Robinson, The History of All Saints Church (Banstead: BHRG, 2007).

McCrery (2017), pp. 43, 47, 55–6, 111, 121, 151, 153–7, 180.

 

Archival sources:

MCA: PR32/C/3/511-514 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to E. C. and H. W. Garton [1916]).

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 1.

OUA: UR 2/1/75.

OUA (DWM): C. C. J. Webb, Diaries, MS. Eng. misc. d. 1160.

WO95/1901.

WO95/2534.

WO339/11591

 

On-line sources:

Freeman’s School Wellingborough, Sugar Refiners & Sugarbakers: http://home.clara.net/mawer/ (Locations of Sugarhouses – Southampton) (accessed 10 September 2017).

Banstead Photo Archive: http://www.bansteadvillage.com  (accessed 20 April 2017).

Publications by the Banstead History Research Group: http://www.bansteadhistory.com/f_blue_nav_bar_html2.html (accessed 20 April 2017).

The First Tank Crews: http:www.firsttankcrews.com (Tank crews D1–D6 [The Tanks at the Battle of Flers]) (accessed 10 September 2017).