Charles à Court Repington

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Charles à Court Repington
Birth nameCharles à Court
Born(1858-01-29)29 January 1858
Rifle Brigade
Battles/warsSecond Boer War
Other workWar correspondent and author

Charles à Court Repington,

First World War. He is also credited with coining the term 'First World War' and one of the first to use the term 'world war' in general.[2][3]

Early life

Charles à Court was born at

M.P. His family name at birth was à Court. In his memoir, he later wrote: "The à Courts are Wiltshire folk, and in old days represented Heytesbury in Parliament... The name of Repington, under the terms of an old will, was assumed by all the à Courts in turn as they succeeded to the Amington Hall Estate, and I followed the rule when my father died in 1903."[4][5] He received his early formal education at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst
.

Military career

He commenced his military career as a commissioned

lieutenant-colonel. He served as a staff officer during the Second Boer War in South Africa 1899–1901, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) during the conflict.[7]

After returning from the war, what had appeared to be a promising military career was cut short during a posting to

Henry Wilson (a friend of Mary Garstin's late father, who had been asked by her family to get involved) on 9 October 1899. Repington told Wilson – at Chieveley, near Colenso in South Africa, during the 2nd Boer War campaign in February 1901 – that he regarded himself as absolved from his promise to give Mary Garstin up after learning that her husband had been spreading rumours of his other infidelities. During the divorce proceedings, it was revealed that Repington had ignored warnings about his behaviour (i.e. had "broken his parole") and had continued with the affair. Wilson was unable or unwilling to confirm Repington's claim that he had released him from his parole in South Africa. Repington believed that Wilson had betrayed a fellow soldier in this, but was forced to resign his commission and retire from the British Army in social disgrace with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on 15 January 1902.[8][9] In a subsequent career as a journalist, specializing in military matters, he was a strong critic of Wilson whenever the opportunity presented itself.[5][10]

Military correspondent

On returning to London, he took a position as a military correspondent with the

Morning Post (1902–1904), and The Times (1904–1918). His reports as a war correspondent from the scene of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905 were later published as a book entitled The War in the Far East. Repington was an advocate of the creation of a larger British Army (at the expense of the then all-powerful, in Edwardian England, Royal Navy), which brought him into conflict with Admiral Fisher).[11] He supported the creation of a British Army General Staff pre-World War I, feared a German "bolt from the blue" (i.e. an attack upon the British Isles by the German Empire before a declaration of hostilities), and was a "Westerner" (i.e., supported during the war the defeat of the German Empire by heavy fighting on the Western Front
rather than pursuing an alternative indirect strategy). According to his memoir Vestigia, an unnamed Radical paper once called him "the gorgeous Wreckington", but this was a personal attack in reference to his divorce scandal.

During World War I Repington relied on his personal contacts in the British Army and the War Office for his information, and his early reporting of the war acquired important material from his personal friendship with the first Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir John French, via which he was able to visit the Western Front during the opening moves of the conflict in late 1914, at a time when most of his rival journalists were prohibited by the British Government from going to the war front.

Repington appears to be the first person to have used the term "First World War" on 10 September 1918 in a conversation noted in his diary, hoping that title would serve as a reminder and warning that the Second World War was a possibility in the future.[citation needed]

"Shells Scandal"

In May 1915, Repington personally witnessed the failed British attack at

Ministry of Munitions under the future Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and a reduction in the power of the War Secretary Lord Kitchener
. Such blatant meddling in politics also damaged the authority of Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief of the B.E.F. and contributed to his enforced resignation from the post at the end of 1915. The affair had given Repington substantial influence over military policy via his newspaper reports, but he was personally temporarily prohibited from visiting the Western Front again until March 1916.

Prosecution under the Defence of the Realm Act

He resigned from The Times in January 1918 due to a disagreement with its proprietor,

Versailles; Lloyd George's plans to re-focus British military effort away from the Western Front towards defeating the Ottoman Empire, and the Government's failure to keep the British Army on the Western Front up to required troop strength for offensive operations. Repington claimed that the crowd in attendance was the largest since the trial of Dr Crippen, and later claimed that Robertson had told him that he could no more afford to be seen with him than either of them "could afford to be seen walking down Regent Street with a whore". Repington was found guilty and was fined.[15]

Repington was also a casualty of the

JL Garvin at the behest of the owner Waldorf Astor) attacked him and his reputation never fully recovered.[16]

Later life

After the end of the war Repington joined the staff of The Daily Telegraph, and subsequently published several books. These works included The First World War (1920), and After the War (1922), which were bestsellers, but cost Repington friendships for his apparent willingness to report what others considered to have been private conversations.

Death

He died on 25 May 1925 at Pembroke Lodge in Hove, East Sussex. He was 67 years old. His body was buried at Hove Cemetery, Old Shoreham Road.

Personal life

On 11 February 1882, Repington married Melloney Catherine (died 1934), daughter of Colonel Henry Sales Scobell, of Abbey House,

Henry Jenner Scobell. The marriage produced four children: Charles Edward Geoffrey (1888-1889), (Melloney) Catherine ("Kitty") Isabel (1891–1965), Elizabeth Frances (1892-1950), and Violet Emily (1895-1898); they were judicially separated in 1902.[17][18] Repington subsequently married Mary North (formerly Lady Garstin), and had a daughter, Laetitia Frances Mary, born in 1911.[19]

Honours

Selected works

References

  1. ^ "Lieutenant Colonel Charles à Court Repington". Rippington Family Genealogy. 2011. Retrieved 14 December 2011.
  2. ^ Proffitt, Michael (13 June 2014). "Chief Editor's notes June 2014". Oxford English Dictionary's blog.
  3. ^ "The First World War". Quite Interesting. Archived from the original on 3 January 2014. Also aired on QI Series I Episode 2, 16 September 2011, BBC Two.
  4. ^ à Court Repington, Charles (1919). Vestigia, Reminiscences of Peace and War. Houghton Mifflin.
  5. ^ a b c Reid 2001, p. 163
  6. Lives of the First World War
  7. ^ "No. 27359". The London Gazette. 27 September 1901. p. 6303.
  8. ^ "Naval & Military intelligence". The Times. No. 36628. London. 3 December 1901. p. 6.
  9. ^ "No. 27397". The London Gazette. 14 January 1902. p. 297.
  10. ^ Jeffery 2006, pp. 49–53
  11. ^ "Who's Who – Charles Repington". First World War.com. 2013. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  12. ^ Repington, The First World War 1914–1918, Vol.1, London: Constable, pp. 36–37
  13. ^ Holmes 2004, p. 287
  14. ^ 'The Private Papers of Douglas Haig 1914–1919' (1952), edited by Robert Blake (Pub. Eyre & Spottiswoode), p. 48.
  15. ^ Bonham-Carter 1963, p352-3
  16. ^ Grigg 2002, p500
  17. ^ Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage, Debrett's Peerage Ltd, 1963, p.621
  18. ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 1899
  19. ^ Lieutenant-Colonel Charles À Court Repington- A Study in the Interaction of Personality, the Press and Power, W. Michael Ryan, Garland, 1987, pp. 20, 130

Sources

Further reading