Read Online Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey by John Masters - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Masters
Tags: Literary, General, Asia, History, Literary Criticism, War & Military, American, Biography, Autobiography, India
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Colonel? I know it isn't much, but, as a start...'
The vision faded. You worked hard to be rich. That I could do. But you didn't let up. Fifty weeks a year at least; on call day and night; watching stock markets, lunching with bankers, dining with merchants. For some ten years now I had been working seven days a week, usually more than twelve hours a day — but only for nine or ten months a year. Those long free months were vital to us. No, being rich could not be our object, because I was unwilling to pay the price.
'You don't want to be famous, do you?' Barbara said, in the tone she had used a year earlier, when she had said, 'Well, you may become a general but I'm damned if I'm going to become a Mrs General.' Now I could answer at once, 'No', because I had thought about fame and glory when wondering what was going to happen to the Indian Army. Those remarks of Sam Lewis and the Auk, about my becoming Commander-in-Chief, had meant a lot to me. Generations of Masters had been galley slaves in India, dying unsung and unhonoured in lowly jobs and lonely places. They would rotate in their graves with delight merely to see the words Field-Marshal Sir John Masters in print, let alone all those cryptic and to them unattainable letters that would follow the name. But it had not taken much consideration then to realize that it was not the end that mattered but the road, and now I could see fame as a spur, perhaps; but as an object, shaping our every move — no.
Did I have any great compulsion or drive which, by itself, would mean fulfilment? I could happily spend my travelling and exploring: but what of the home and education the children must have? I had enough ideas and experience to become a 'military expert' and thinker outside the army, like Liddell Hart. Perhaps, but my heart was in soldiering with Gurkha infantry, not in cerebrating. Politics? A Member of Parliament lectured our little dining club and afterwards invited me to go into politics. He was sure I would soon get a seat in Parliament, and quickly become a junior minister. Perhaps, again; but the only political party with which I felt the slightest sympathy was the Liberal Party, who were having a hard time keeping 6 seats out of 615. A Liberal politician was going to need some other means of support... which took me back to Square One.
Four weeks passed, with many objects considered and rejected. We began cruising among the wreckage, picking up surviving ideas: Independence. Travelling rather than arriving. Public and private liberty. A family unit. Sense of space. Opportunity.
Gradually we hammered them into a sentence, by God into an object.
To live as a family unit in a place that offers space, liberty, and opportunity to all of us and, to me, independence in a work that I like.
I wrote it down on a sheet of paper and put it away in a drawer. Later we would finish the Appreciation: the factors affecting the attainment of the object, the courses open to us, and so on. Then I typed out my formal request to be permitted to resign my commission, the resignation to take effect on December 31, 1948, and to be preceded by the customary twelve months leave 'pending retirement'.
I did not appreciate till years later how extraordinarily kind fate had been in forcing me to think out the purpose of my life. Like most people I had plunged into a career before I had the age or the experience to know what I wanted, before I could appreciate (whether in its military or ordinary meaning) what, on earth, I should do. I had no sense of vocation when I went into the army; indeed I had tried to become, at different times, a lawyer and a sailor.
The weeks rolled unhurriedly towards graduation. We visited the R.A.F. in Germany, to study the effects of mass-bombing on industrial areas (expensive and inefficient, I thought). We descended on the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, and were lectured by an admiral whose ancestor had been one of Nelson's captains at the Nile. The old salt
The vision faded. You worked hard to be rich. That I could do. But you didn't let up. Fifty weeks a year at least; on call day and night; watching stock markets, lunching with bankers, dining with merchants. For some ten years now I had been working seven days a week, usually more than twelve hours a day — but only for nine or ten months a year. Those long free months were vital to us. No, being rich could not be our object, because I was unwilling to pay the price.
'You don't want to be famous, do you?' Barbara said, in the tone she had used a year earlier, when she had said, 'Well, you may become a general but I'm damned if I'm going to become a Mrs General.' Now I could answer at once, 'No', because I had thought about fame and glory when wondering what was going to happen to the Indian Army. Those remarks of Sam Lewis and the Auk, about my becoming Commander-in-Chief, had meant a lot to me. Generations of Masters had been galley slaves in India, dying unsung and unhonoured in lowly jobs and lonely places. They would rotate in their graves with delight merely to see the words Field-Marshal Sir John Masters in print, let alone all those cryptic and to them unattainable letters that would follow the name. But it had not taken much consideration then to realize that it was not the end that mattered but the road, and now I could see fame as a spur, perhaps; but as an object, shaping our every move — no.
Did I have any great compulsion or drive which, by itself, would mean fulfilment? I could happily spend my travelling and exploring: but what of the home and education the children must have? I had enough ideas and experience to become a 'military expert' and thinker outside the army, like Liddell Hart. Perhaps, but my heart was in soldiering with Gurkha infantry, not in cerebrating. Politics? A Member of Parliament lectured our little dining club and afterwards invited me to go into politics. He was sure I would soon get a seat in Parliament, and quickly become a junior minister. Perhaps, again; but the only political party with which I felt the slightest sympathy was the Liberal Party, who were having a hard time keeping 6 seats out of 615. A Liberal politician was going to need some other means of support... which took me back to Square One.
Four weeks passed, with many objects considered and rejected. We began cruising among the wreckage, picking up surviving ideas: Independence. Travelling rather than arriving. Public and private liberty. A family unit. Sense of space. Opportunity.
Gradually we hammered them into a sentence, by God into an object.
To live as a family unit in a place that offers space, liberty, and opportunity to all of us and, to me, independence in a work that I like.
I wrote it down on a sheet of paper and put it away in a drawer. Later we would finish the Appreciation: the factors affecting the attainment of the object, the courses open to us, and so on. Then I typed out my formal request to be permitted to resign my commission, the resignation to take effect on December 31, 1948, and to be preceded by the customary twelve months leave 'pending retirement'.
I did not appreciate till years later how extraordinarily kind fate had been in forcing me to think out the purpose of my life. Like most people I had plunged into a career before I had the age or the experience to know what I wanted, before I could appreciate (whether in its military or ordinary meaning) what, on earth, I should do. I had no sense of vocation when I went into the army; indeed I had tried to become, at different times, a lawyer and a sailor.
The weeks rolled unhurriedly towards graduation. We visited the R.A.F. in Germany, to study the effects of mass-bombing on industrial areas (expensive and inefficient, I thought). We descended on the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, and were lectured by an admiral whose ancestor had been one of Nelson's captains at the Nile. The old salt
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