A. P. Herbert
Sir Alan Patrick Herbert CH, was an English humorist, novelist, playwright, law reformist, and, from 1935 to 1950, an independent Member of Parliament for Oxford University.
Born in Ashtead, Surrey, he attended Winchester College and New College, Oxford, receiving a starred first in jurisprudence in 1914. He joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a seaman in the First World War, becoming an officer in the Royal Naval Division. He fought in Gallipoli and on the Western Front, as a battalion adjutant in 1917, before injury removed him from the front line. After the war he published The Secret Battle and in 1924 joined the staff of Punch. As an MP he campaigned for private-member rights, piloted the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937 through Parliament, opposed Entertainments Duty and campaigned against the Oxford Group. He joined the River Emergency Service in 1938, captaining a boat on the River Thames in the Second World War as a petty officer in the Royal Naval Auxiliary Patrol. In 1943, he joined a parliamentary commission on the future of the Dominion of Newfoundland.
Early life and education
Herbert was born at Ashtead Lodge, Ashtead, Surrey, on 24 September 1890. His father, Patrick Herbert Coghlan Herbert, was a civil servant in the India Office, of Irish origin, and his mother, Beatrice Eugenie, was the daughter of Sir Charles Jasper Selwyn, a Lord Justice of Appeal. His two younger brothers both died in battle: Owen William Eugene, Second lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery, killed at Mons in 1914, and Sidney Jasper, Captain R.N., killed 1941 aboard HMS Hood. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was eight, shortly before he left for The Grange in Folkestone, a preparatory school.Herbert then attended Winchester College, winning the King's Medal for English Verse and the King's Medal for English Speech, presented by Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. He took an active part in the college debating and Shakespeare societies. As a Winchester student, Herbert sent verses to the offices of Punch and received notes of encouragement and suggestions from the editor, Owen Seaman. Herbert was also Captain of Houses, one of the college's three football divisions.
Herbert went to New College, Oxford as an exhibitioner. He made his first public speech at the Kensington branch of the Tariff Reform League, speaking extempore on home rule. His first contribution to Punch was printed on 24 August 1910: a set of verses entitled "Stones of Venus". He went up to Oxford in October and made his first speech at the Oxford Union in November. His work began appearing not only in Punch, but in The Observer, the Pall Mall Gazette and Vanity Fair.
Herbert received a "not very good Second" in Honour Moderations, and apparently disenchanted with Classics, changed his degree to Law. He went into lodgings with Walter Monckton and others and was good friends with the notables Duff Cooper, Harold Macmillan and Philip Guedalla. Herbert finished at Oxford in 1914 with "a very good First" in Jurisprudence. He then decided to join his friend Jack Parr as a volunteer at Oxford House in Bethnal Green for a year. He spent the time "doing what I could:" washing dishes, sweeping floors, running errands and collecting money.
First World War service, 1914–1918
On 5 September 1914, Herbert enlisted at Lambeth Pier as an ordinary seaman in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, which later became one of the constituent bodies of the Royal Naval Division. In early October, news reached him that his brother, Owen Herbert, had been posted "missing, believed killed" in the retreat from Mons. Herbert reached the rank of acting leading seaman before being commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in early 1915, when he was posted to Hawke Battalion of the Royal Naval Division."C" and "D" companies of the Hawke Battalion left for Gallipoli in early 1915, briefly stopping in Malta before arriving at the Moudros on 17 May, and finally reaching Gallipoli on 27 May. Herbert took command of No. 11 Platoon, "C" Company, composed mostly of Tynesiders and also two men from a remote Durham mining town. A week after his arrival, the battalion suffered heavy casualties at the Third Battle of Krithia. In July 1915, Herbert went down with illness and had to spend time recovering in a military hospital. When he was passed "fit for light duty", he was seconded to the Naval Intelligence Division at Whitehall. It was then that he decided to rent No. 12 Hammersmith Terrace as a dwelling.
In summer 1916, when he was passed fit for duty, Herbert returned to Hawke Battalion at their base camp in Abbeville, where he was made assistant adjutant. The battalion moved to the front line at Souchez in July 1916, and in mid-November it took part in an attack on Beaucourt-sur-l'Ancre during the Battle of the Ancre, which saw almost the entire battalion wiped out. Herbert was one of only two officers to come out unscathed from the attack. When the battalion returned to the front line at Pozières in February 1917, Herbert was made the battalion's adjutant, but he was later injured from shrapnel during an attack on Gavrelle, west of Arras.
On medical leave back in England after the injury, Herbert began writing his first book, The Secret Battle, which he finished "in a few weeks". He was elected a member of the Savage Club and raised by Punch to the "exclusive group of its contributors who were allowed to attach their initials to their work." On 2 October 1918, Herbert sailed from Liverpool in a convoy for Alexandria, as assistant to the Commodore. After arriving at Port Said, he was given a free pass to Cairo and allowed to make a number of unaccompanied incursions inland. He was able to visit several places on the North African coast, and from Tunis took a train to Constantine, Algeria and then to Algiers. On 11 November, he went by train from Oran to Tlemcen. Exactly at 11 am, he heard that the Armistice had been signed. As he wrote, "I must have been the only Englishman for at least 80 miles."
Herbert was granted shore leave at Gibraltar and took the chance to travel to Seville, then to Córdoba. He arrived in Madrid on 22 November and dined with the Embassy's naval attaché, Captain John Harvey, as well as Filson Young and others, before making the return journey to Gibraltar.
Interwar career, 1918–1935
The Secret Battle was recommended to Methuen Publishing by E. V. Lucas and announced in their spring list in 1919. It was "read all night" by Prime Minister Lloyd George, who brought it to the attention of Churchill, then Secretary of State for War. Montgomery saw it as "the best story of front line war" and Herbert himself believed that court-martial arrangements were subsequently "altered in some way" as a result of the book. However, the book had no great commercial success, which his biographer Reginald Pound puts down to the fact that "Readers, it seems, were tired of war as a dramatic theme."Herbert was called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 1919 and entered the chambers of Leslie Scott. He was joined by two Oxford friends, Walter Monckton and Henry Strauss, who were called on the same day. Although he spent time at Inner Temple, he never practised law and did not enter a legal career. He later said he was "forever sorry" not to be "of the proud and faithful brotherhood who serve the laws of England."
Unable to sustain himself on Punchs "eccentric rates of payment", Herbert wrote his second book, The House by the River, in two months. It was published in 1920. He handed his literary business to A. P. Watt, who sold the American rights to The House by the River and published a collection of his prose submissions to Punch under the title Light Articles Only.
In January 1924, Owen Seaman, the editor of Punch, invited Herbert to join its staff. Herbert accepted and his accession meant he would receive a salary of £50 a week. In 1925, Herbert attended the Third Imperial Press Conference on behalf of Punch, where he made his first speech in front of a large audience in Melbourne, where it was described as "delectably witty" by Sir Harry Brittain.
In 1926, Herbert was invited by Nigel Playfair to write "an entertainment" for the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. The result was Riverside Nights, performed at the Lyric in April 1926. His next play, The White Witch, was performed at Haymarket Theatre in September 1926.
Early parliamentary career, 1935–1939
Herbert first encountered Parliament in 1934, when he brought the Kitchen Committee of the House of Commons to court for selling liquor without a licence. Hewart, LCJ ruled that the court would not hear the complaint because the matter fell within parliamentary privilege. Since the decision was never challenged in a higher court, it led to a unique situation of uncertainty as to "the extent to which statute law applies to either House of Parliament." The following year Herbert published Uncommon Law, and Hewart contributed a generous introduction.Herbert first had the idea of standing for Parliament a few weeks before the 1935 general election, when he ran into Frederick Lindemann, who had just been rejected as Conservative candidate for Oxford University. Herbert decided to stand as an Independent, aided by Frank Pakenham as his election agent. Herbert wrote an "unconventional" 5,000-word election address, which included the statement, "Agriculture: I know nothing about agriculture."
Herbert was elected as an Independent supporter of the National Government. Defying the advice of more experienced members, including Austen Chamberlain, he made his maiden speech on 4 December 1935, the second day of the opening session of the new Parliament. He protested to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin on a motion that would give precedence to government bills over private member's bills. He went into the "No" lobby alongside the members of the Independent Labour Party and fellow University member Eleanor Rathbone, but the motion was passed by 232 to 5. Churchill praised Herbert for his "composure and aplomb" and famously said: "Call that a maiden speech? It was a brazen hussy of a speech. Never did such a painted lady of a speech parade itself before a modest Parliament." During the speech, Herbert promised to introduce his Matrimonial Causes Bill into law by the end of the Parliament.
Herbert's novel Holy Deadlock deals at length with the inconsistencies of English divorce law. Malavika Rajkotia writes that "This novel sparked off the first divorce law reform movement in England, which led to the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937". In 1936, Herbert failed to be drawn in the private members' ballot but managed to get the Conservative Rupert De la Bère to sponsor the bill. On 20 November, Herbert made a speech in its favour and it passed its second reading by 78 votes to 12. It was given a third reading in the House of Lords on 19 July 1937 and passed by 79 votes to 28. It was passed, somewhat strengthened by the House of Lords, in 1938 as the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937. It allowed divorce to be given without requiring proof of adultery, but fake adulteries and bizarre rules about collusion persisted until the Divorce Reform Act 1969 came into force in 1971.
During the prewar period, Herbert drafted a number of bills that were printed on the Order Paper, including a Betting and Bookmakers Bill, a Public Refreshment Bill and a Spring Bill, which was written in verse. Herbert made numerous attacks on the Entertainments Duty, which had been introduced as a "temporary, war-time tax" in 1916. In his campaign against the duty, Herbert worked closely with William Mabane, and they made some headway when in 1939 the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon reduced the duty. Herbert also spoke out against the proposed Population Bill in 1937 by making a speech that was received with "loud laughter" in the Commons chamber, making it, according to Punch, "an astonishing occasion". Herbert and others brought in several amendments to the bill before it reached the statute book in 1938.
Herbert was also a fervent opponent of the Oxford Group and its leader, Frank Buchman. In particular, he opposed the use of "Oxford" in its name and its supposed association with the University of Oxford. He was supported by the university in his endeavours, particularly by the Oxford Union, which unanimously passed a resolution in support of him. Support for Herbert was also expressed by H. A. L. Fisher, the Warden of New College, Oxford, and Douglas Veale, the Registrar of the University of Oxford.